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| Catholic Grade School |
In chapter one (Things Catholic Children Should Know) of the Handbook for Grade School Nuns are the following stories:
- The equator is eight thousand miles long and teachers should "not accept contradictions on this point."
- Once a little boy was digging in his back yard, and he found a piece of uranium. He held it up in the air, and a plane which was passing overheard stopped dead. It did not move on until the little boy buried the uranium again.
Why eight thousand miles? Notes Bowen, if one rounds off pi pretty drastically, "the diameter of the earth is about 8,000 miles (the equator being about 24,000). The point, as I take it, is that grade-school nuns aren't very good at math, science, or distinguishing their pupils' questions from challenges to their authority."
Myers adds the following, at the same time teaching us Astronomy 101. "The earth's diameter is 8,000 miles long, slightly less, actually; the equator, being the circumference of the earth, is calculated by the formula c = d*pi, which is about 25,000 miles. Therefore the good sister was just confusing the diameter and the equator. Actually, I may have contributed this item to Bellairs. When I was in the sixth grade, my teacher, Sister Thomasina, tried to tell the class that the equator was 2,500 miles long. I instantly chimed in with 'Nooo! It's 25,000 miles!' After class she called me up to her desk and gave me a dressing down for correcting her in public. Naturally, I would have related this story to John at some time or other."
The uranium story is pure Bellairs invention. Myers explains that the general public was familiar with radioactivity, at least in general terms, and even E =MC² resided at the edge of public consciousness, at least with the science fiction crowd. "What the public did not quite grasp was the size of the Bomb and its power. The size was thought to be very small. In fact, one of the first nuclear thriller movies, the English Seven Days to Noon, had a mad scientist lugging a Bomb all around London in a small satchel, the bomb's power held in awe. I remember by first reaction to Hiroshima as a seven-year old, 'Wow! A whole city destroyed! Neat!' But the power was actually greatly exaggerated in the public consciousness. For maybe twenty years after Hiroshima, or maybe even up to the present time, whenever there was an unseasonable weather pattern or seeming climate change, a remark typically heard would be, 'It's that atom bomb!'"
"I'm not sure how thickly rumors about nuclear power were swarming about when John was a boy, but I have no trouble believing that grade-school nuns somewhere were telling them," says Bowen. "It's hard to realize nowadays how credulous, superstitious, and badly educated some of them were. The women's orders were taking measures at that time to improve the process of 'sister formation,' and they made a good deal of progress. Some impressively educated nuns were around in the sixties (these tended to be the youngest ones) but unfortunately this campaign of improvement fell off drastically amid the later sixties. Some of the best nuns left the religious life, and while many others seem to have stayed, the numbers of nuns of any kind whatever are way down. I have the impression that this is even more true of nuns than it is of priests, which when you consider the scope that women are allowed in the Church would not be surprising."
Bellairs makes mention of growing up in parochial schools in his writing and while some excerpts are greatly exaggerated - chapter eleven of St. Fidgeta - we can't help wondering how frightening an experience attending such a school might have been to such a sensitive young soul as John's.
"I think in my comments I've probably suggested several ways in which the experience could have been frightening," notes Bowen. "Hell, I was pretty frightened myself, and I didn't even go!"
"I can't really vouch for the effect of a Catholic grade school on John's psyche, but you could not be more wrong in assuming the experience was frightening," says Myers. "Quite the opposite in fact. It provided a great sense of comfort and clannishness. Bellairs' book is just one of a great sub-category of literature dealing with the tribulations of the Catholic school experience. Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes spring immediately to mind, as do such lesser-to-outright-meretricious works such as Do Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up? and the various (lousy) Nunsense reviews. I believe even James Joyce got into the act. Most of the works, but admittedly not all, treat the subject for its comic value but do have an undercurrent of affection.
"In the U.S. at least, parents send their kids to Catholic schools because of their own positive experience (they were never at any time forced to), often at considerable financial sacrifice. The authority of the priests and especially the nuns, who of course formed the backbone of the Catholic school system, was absolutely unquestioned. Granted, they weren't all geniuses, but the ones I encountered were for the most part intelligent and dedicated. The nuns deserve special mention; they were devoted and for the most part talented women, many of them whom into the convent in the first place for the opportunity to develop their intellects and exercise authority, goals not easily attainable in society at large. I guess you could say that the Catholic school was part of the extended Catholic family.
"I did find that going to a Catholic school offered two great advantages. One was that, as religious instruction was part of the curriculum, I could stop going to Sunday school. Second, on Catholic holy days of obligation (these are days on which Catholics are required to attend Mass), the class would assemble for early morning mass and then have the rest of the day off, freedom made doubly sweet by the realization that public school kids all had their noses to the grindstone. But this has nothing to do with Bellairs, so apologies for the digression. In conclusion, if I have painted too rosy a picture of Catholic schools, let me leave you with the words of Alfred Hitchcock, who was educated by the Jesuits in England. He said (and this quote is approximate; I don't have it in front of me): 'If I saw a young lad about to enter a Jesuit school, I'd scream, 'Run! Run away little boy! Escape before it's too late!''"
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