Catholic Grade School

Back in the 50’s corporal punishment was accepted in Catholic grade schools (and parents) so if you were punished by the teacher, you could be hit with a ruler, a wooden pointer or a hard-bound book really whatever was handy at the time.  Most of the teachers were nuns but there were also a few lay teachers and both seemed to rule with an iron fist.  Every kid gets in trouble now and then.  The only time I remember getting hit was by a lay teacher because I was talking and I got knocked out of my desk when I was hit with a book.  Holy crap, I’m really glad they hadn’t invented Tasers yet (Zap).  It was kind of an unwritten rule to not tell you parents if you got in trouble at school because you might get in more trouble at home.  My parents were never hitters so I didn’t worry about that but it was just a cautionary measure.  In school the rule was never “Innocent until proven Guilty” in fact it wasn’t even “Guilty until proven Innocent” they never tried to prove you innocent, it was just “You’re Guilty” if a teacher punished you and unlike today this was generally backed by the parents.

I don’t want to lead you to believe that school in the 50’s was a bad place we had fun times there as well it’s just the teachers were strict so we quickly learned the rules or ways around them.  We had recess, school picnics, church picnics, altar boy picnics and a few fun jobs throughout the day. 

One of the most fun jobs was to clean the erasers, so how could that be any fun, I’ll tell you.  Unlike today we had chalkboards (blackboards) and the teachers used chalk all day long, erasing the boards after each lesson or sometimes the students got to erase the boards.  So at the end of the day the erasers were filled with chalk dust and they needed to be cleaned.  The teacher would pick 2 kids (2 boys or 2 girls) I could be wrong but I don’t ever remember a boy and girl chosen together, any way they would take the erasers out to the fire escape to clean them outdoors so there wouldn’t be a mess inside.  The way we were instructed to clean the erasers was to hold one in each hand at arms length and bang them together and the white chalk would make a cloud of dust but as kids we found alternate methods that seemed to work just as well plus it was a lot more fun.  The chalk seemed to fly off the erasers just as well if you hit them on your buddy’s back, head or dark blue uniform pants but sometimes throwing them on the brick wall was fun because it left a nice chalk residue on the bricks.  It was always interesting to see the kids come back after cleaning the erasers because they sometimes looked like they were ghostly relatives of the long lost of Casper.  I’m sure the teachers were aware that they did not use the proper cleaning technique but they knew we were kids and the erasers were clean.

In the back of the classroom there was a cloakroom (coat room) which is where you hung your coats and kept your lunch and breakfast.  You took breakfast on those days you went to morning church, you weren’t allowed to eat breakfast before communion so your mother would pack a breakfast for you or you could buy something in the cafeteria.  Mimi (my wife) had an interesting story about her breakfast meals at school.  She liked cereal as many kids did so he mom gave her a bowl of cereal but instead of giving her a carton of milk she poured the milk on the cereal when she made it, really what’s that called cereal soup. That had to be worse than c-rations I had in the Army.  Mimi hated it, I mean who wouldn’t, but her mom never changed her routine, I guess it was easier for her.

Sometimes the teacher would punish you if you were being a disturbance to the class by making sit in the front corner of the classroom but sometimes these kids would make faces and cause the other kids to laugh.   So in some cases you may be sent back to sit in the cloakroom instead.  The thing is kids didn’t view the cloakroom as a punishment; it seemed more like a reward.

Kids being kids sometimes picked on others which is typical but it didn’t seem vicious like it appears today, you just learned to laugh it off which usually spoiled the fun of person taunting you.  Sometimes your friends would stick up for you and that usually squelched the harassment.  As I think back today I don’t recall any traumatic experiences that occurred which negatively affected my life while attending Catholic Grade School so my memories are pretty positive about my grade school experience.