by Trisha Mcfadden

Created on: June 24, 2009

I attended Catholic School for twelve years beginning in the early sixties. If you share my experience, I apologize for the chill that just ran up your spine.

Discipline started early and was relentless. I was only five when I started first grade, having a September birthday with an age cut-off of December. I can still remember lining up in complete silence to enter the building, go to the bathroom, and depart from the building. Fearful someone may start to talk or cry and we would all be sent back to our seats.

My most vivid memory was Sister Mary Matthew who taught second grade in November of 1962. I recall being told to pray because the President had been shot. The whole school prayed the rosary: over and over again. I recall an older student standing in the doorway announcing the President had died. What did it all mean? I was only seven years old. As I was thinking to myself, Will we have recess? Sister Mary Matthew began to yell at us. She spouted venom and told us it was our fault he had died. Told us we hadn't prayed hard enough hadn't behaved during the three-hour ordeal. I was devastated. I cried on the bus, I cried at home, I cried as I watched the funeral on TV. My mother commented to my father puzzled about my reaction to the recent events. They neither found the answer for my sorrow. I surely could not tell them I had killed the President.

At my elementary school we had all the amenities needed to maintain a solid Catholic disciplinary program. There was the dungeon. It was located below the convent and the place where all bad boys were taken to think about their crimes. The golden ruler used to bring instant pain to bare knuckles. The wooden paddle, a three foot long, two inch thick piece of wood used to hit the backsides of children lined up against the coatroom door.

The above were all the tactics used to intimidate, I mean teach, children up to eleven years old. The standards were set on behavior and the expectation bar was high with no question in our minds what would result from anything less than perfection. I suppose it was also to give us a taste of the fires of hell.

As we grew older, the methods of discipline changed. Public ridicule was the norm. Announcing your name and offense on the PA system, making you sit in the middle of the aisle in the invisible chair, pulling you out of a circle of friends by your hair or ear. Threatening detention, demotion and expulsion if we did not behave.

These were all for minor offenses. Just typical child/adolescent behavior. You will not find a single crime committed at St. Philomena's Grade School or Archbishop Prendergast High School in its history.

While I am fairly certain we were the last generation to be subjected to such disciplinary measures it has still left its mark. My friends and I now laugh at these events when we get together and reminisce but the majority of us have our own children enrolled in the public school system.

For if nothing else the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sister of St. Joseph taught us how NOT to discipline our children.

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