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| 11. Re: catholic school
memories - Private
Benjamin (Toni) 1982 |
It's
safe to say that I'm also a product of a private
catholic school education after having being placed in
an all girls catholic school from 6th grade to 12th
grade by my dad who thought that my going to school with
boys would be a distraction, even though I had just come
out of a very wonderful co-ed private episcopalian
elementary school, and not once where boys considered a
distraction. Sucky? Yes. Sometimes fun? Yes. But NEVER a
distraction---at least 95% of the time they weren't.
Either way, my grades didn't suffer. Anyways, I can
think of quite a lot of things that sucked about going
to a catholic school, especially going to one during
your impressionable teenage years, but my experience
wasn't all that bad.
Good: Well, this is a
partly good experience. In the beginning, when I was in
my 6th or 7th grades, my catholic school would always
take these very interesting field trips to Washington,
Lancaster, PA, etc, in these REALLY nice coach
buses. I'm telling you, we had the luxury of a clean
bathroom, tall cushioned seats that ever so slightly
reclined, air conditioning AND heating, and tinted
windows that helped to block out annoying UV rays. It
was perfect! I used to always look forward to the field
trips we had just so I could get to ride in those posh
coach buses the school always ordered for us. That
didn't last long though, since once we hit eighth grade,
the school got cheap and continued to order those tacky
yellow cheese buses with the leather seats that always
stuck to your skin, no heat, no air conditioning,
windows that would never work properly, and a bus driver
who always had some kind of attitude. It
sucked.
I think another advantage of my being in
private school was its total disassociation from
statewide school rules when it came to school vacations
as well as its openings and closings. What I loved about
going to catholic school was being able to have longer
vacations than my public school friends and being able
to start my summer vacation sooner than all my public
school friends. And on snow days...oh boy! What joy I
got out of telling my friends that my school closed down
because of the snow, while they still had to go because
THE STATE INSISTED!
I guess I should talk about
the educational benefits as well. I won't deny that the
classes offered at my catholic school were pretty top
quality. We had everything from various levels of Latin
to Marine Biology. Even though I hated the large amounts
of work they gave in catholic school, I did learn, and
its educational benefits helped to shape how I am today.
So I guess I should give catholic school its props on an
academic standpoint.
Bad: As mentioned in the
above paragraph, the ton of homework we were assigned
pretty much sucked. I think I experienced my first night
of all nighter homework when I was in eighth grade when
I was stuck doing an historical project for my world
history class in which a ten page paper was required. I
never enjoyed those nights when I knew that sleep would
be out of the question.
Of course, the main thing
that was bad about catholic school was the uniforms. We
wore grey wool kilts, white polo shirts and red blazers
with brown shoes. I don't think it was necessarily the
uniform that sucked as much. I mean, we were all very
capable of snazzing our uniforms up to our liking.
However, what sucked about the uniforms were the fact
that the school was so strict in enforcing its dress
code. The kilts had to be either at or below the knee;
we couldn't wear large outlandish earrings such as large
hoops; the heels of our shoes had to be flat, and what
really sent me over the top was when someone in
administration made a rule that we couldn't wear colored
bras underneath our polo shirts. They ALWAYS had to be
white. So after that, I pretty much got fed up with the
school and their uniform rules, and so did pretty much
all of the rest of my classmates. And we being the
degenerates that we were, never followed a single one of
their rules. I continued to wear my skirt short (nothing
distasteful or anything, but the length was definitely
kept ABOVE my knees), I wore my hoop earrings, I wore
shoes with a platform heel, I chewed gum, I wore red,
black, orange, polka dot, any color of bra other than
white, etc. It felt so liberating!
Another bad
thing about my catholic school was its lack of
diversity. The majority of the time I was there, I was
only one of about a handful of minority students
attending. I know for a fact that I could count up to 20
minority students that attended my school. 20 minorities
that made up a 400 person student body! I could count on
both hands the amount of black students who attended,
and I could only count on one hand the amount of
hispanics, asians, indians, middle eastern folk, etc,
that attended my old catholic school. So that was pretty
sad. We didn't really talk to much about racial
relations as a result. I mean the only other time that
we would even come close would be on Black History
Month, when our schools black student union would put on
some kind of assembly for the entire school. What was
funny to me was that the school had a Black Student
Union, however we hardly had enough black folks at the
school to even technically call it a "Black Student
Union". So towards my senior year, most people started
to call it the "Multicultural Awareness Union". My
school didn't just start to diversify until my senior
year, when I noticed a lot more African-American
students in the incoming 6th and 9th grades, which was
refreshing to see, but even sadder to see that it took
so long to do.
Ugly: I think the ugly thing
about catholic school, at least the one I attended, was
its tendancy to play favorites. I think...well actually
I know that the school I went to tended to favor those
with money, or those who would donate hefty amounts of
money to the school, and in return, the kids of the
parents who would donate the large amounts of money,
would get a dang near free education. They would hardly
have to pay any kind of tuition. It was ridiculous. Keep
in mind that they didn't do this overtly. I found this
out from the kids of the parents, some of whom where in
my class. So it really went to prove the theory that it
isn't always what you know, but who you know, if you
know what I mean.
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