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Comment by sundaeofshock | Hacker News Reader

> lifestyle changes to free up $10k.

Seriously? Do you have a family? Raising kids is really expensive, even without sending them off to public school. After rent, food, clothing, medical care, and transportation, there is not much left.

As for your comments about religious school, I am basing my comments on real the real world experience of having gone to a religious school for 7-years. All of these schools require some type of education about the school’s founding religion. At a minimum, we are talking about a regular class. Many schools require their students to adhere to the standards of the religion during the course of the school day. Please explain to me how this is not indoctrination?

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If an extra $10k out of an overall family income of $65k is impossible then I'd say that this family isn't managing money well. Were they not putting anything into savings before? Did they have no savings? Again, it'd be a significant sacrifice to afford private school - I've said so since the beginning - but it is possible for a lot more than just "a tiny minority" (your original words).

> All of these schools require some type of education about the school’s founding religion. At a minimum, we are talking about a regular class. Many schools require their students to adhere to the standards of the religion during the course of the school day.

And from this, you jump to "indoctrination". I and other family members have been to religious schools as well. One of my sister's closest friends was Jewish, and went to Catholic without any type of issue. And both my sister and I are about as atheistic as you can get. If merely teaching a class about the founding religion counts as indoctrination then this is a very, very permissive definition of indoctrination you're using.

Advocacy of a specific religion should not be part of a citizen's formal education. Private religious schools receive public funding and public accreditation, and they should not, nor should any other private school, for that matter.

I'm not sure why you're mentioning public funds, seeing as it was never brought up. Regardless, public funds can only be used for secular education: https://www.pewforum.org/2009/05/14/shifting-boundaries5/. Public funds can be spent on religious schools provided that the funds go to secular education within those schools.

The above commenter immediately claimed that private religious schools are "indoctrination" - despite the previous comment only mentioning religious schools in passing (since they're generally less expensive than secular religious schools). That kind of intense blanket leap to a serious allegation is not indicative of reasonable view on the subject, regardless of one's opinions on public funds going towards religious schools.

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