I've long entertained a dubious regard for the practice of lying to children about the existence of Santa Claus. Parents might claim that it serves to make children's lives more magical and exciting, but as a general rule, children are adequately equipped to create fantasies of their own without their parents' intervention. The two reasons I suspect rest at the bottom line are adherence to tradition, and finding it cute to see one's children believing ridiculous things.
Personally, I considered this to be a rather indecent way to treat one's own children, and have sometimes wondered whether a large proportion of conspiracy theorists owe their origins to the realization that practically all the adults in the country really are conspiring to deceive children for no tangible benefit. However, since I began frequenting this site, I've been exposed to the alternate viewpoint that this realization may be good for developing rationalists, because it provides children with the experience of discovering that they hold beliefs which are wrong and absurd, and that they must reject them.
So, how did the Santa deception affect you personally? How do you think your life might have been different without it? If your parents didn't do it to you, what are your impressions on the experience of not being lied to when most other children are?
Also, I promise to upvote anyone who links to an easy to register for community of conspiracy theorists where they would not be averse to being asked the same question.
No kidding. BTW, it's been a while since I did any actual academic reading on the topic, but I came away with the distinct impression that the quality of the school didn't matter even a small bit as much as how much effort the student/family put into it.
My own stint in a Catholic highschool reinforced this impression - for most of the kids there, it was just a big money & time sink (long commutes from all around, my own was roughly 3 hours a day).
I strongly suspect that there are greater marginal returns for your daughter in other strategies like buying lots of relevant books, prodding her to use effective study strategies like spaced repetition, or a foreign exchange program. (Actually, I think foreign exchange programs are fantastic for highschoolers.)
There are a few ways she can make this inference. She never sees you there herself; your name is not on the tithing roster (loyal parishioners sign up to get customized envelopes for their checks; I imagine names on envelope-less checks are also recorded*); none of the other moms talk about you; lack of documentation like baptismal certificates; and so on.
Practically speaking, once you're in, it doesn't much matter how much you tithe. Catholic highschools as far as I can tell operate much like public ones inasmuch as you have to do badly academically or screw up before they will actually expell you or not let you return the next year (same thing).
You should also ask whether your parish has a Catholic highschool scholarship. Mine did, and it helped a lot. (However, mere regular mass attendance is definitely not enough for a scholarship; they go to the kids who participate in a lot of church activities, unsurprisingly.)
Yup! This should perhaps not surprise you; you must have read of communities in the Midwest or the South where the church is the focus of an entire web of small groups and organizations and social connections, and teenagers need that sort of thing just as much.
Depends on the church, of course, but my church had quite a social circle or clique of teens who orbited around church activities. You'd usher on Saturday (volunteer work and service-hours you could use to fill requirements at the Catholic highschool), go to Boy Scouts meetings at the church, spend Friday night at Teen Night having snacks and watching religious movies etc, sometimes go to teen-focused Bible study sessions, bus off to NYC or DC for an anti-abortion protest, run the stereotypical fundraiser like baked goods or car wash so you and your friends could go to the big annual youth rally at where-ever**... you get the idea. One could easily spend all one's time at the highschool or church.
'Fraid so. You're just seeing the attenuated edge of the close connection between religion and social networks. One doesn't have to be Catholic to have entree into them - Catholicism is not as virulent and xenophobic as, say, Scientology's treatment of defectors or the hardliner Amish 'Meidung' shunning. Quite a few of my classmates weren't Catholic. But it's definitely more difficult.
If Catholicism (and religion in general) were just about taking a 10% paycut, it wouldn't be so popular.
I wouldn't worry too much; if your church and highschool are very similar to mine, attendance will only exacerbate or polarize whatever tendency she has. Is she already irreverent, skeptical, and logical? Then the occasional school-wide mass or religion in class will only irritate her. I feel kind of foolish giving advice and trying to 'other-optimize' in a sense, but I would look at what does she do with her own money and in private; if she buys a crucifix and starts praying in the morning...
* I don't know for a fact that my church - or yours, for that matter - kept track of donations and tithing suchly in either fashion, but I would be surprised if they didn't. ** There was a specific one, but the location escapes my mind at the moment. 'Attleboro, Massachusetts' keeps coming to mind, but I don't see any Google hits really fingering Attleboro.