Catholic Schools Week

As a product of 17 years of Catholic schooling, this article caught my interest. It's basically what the Catholic church, in its very mission, should do to dissuade bullying.

Catholic schools are charged with creating conditions and fostering values that lead to the full intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual development of every child.  This demands creating safe communities that protect girls from indirect, covert forms of aggression that prey on their insecurities (and make them more insecure) and teaching values that are currently countercultural, particularly among teenage girls.

One remedy:

A second step might be confronting the adolescent obsession with popularity.  Simmons notes that “popularity changes girls, causes a great many of them to lie and cheat and steal.  They lie to be accepted, cheat their friends by using them, steal people’s secrets to resell at a higher social price.”  This race for popularity is “as dangerous an issue for girls as weight, appearance, or sexuality.”  A key step is to build authentic community in the classroom, something for which Catholic schools should be particularly well-suited.  Catholic classrooms should seek to build a family-like environment where caring about others is a shared norm, even if students will not always be able to live up to that standard.  Not everyone will be best friends with everyone else, but in this type of environment, friendships will be more likely to have a foundation in compatibility rather than being the product of social ambitions.

There needs to be a constant emphasis that the only close friends worth having are ones around whom each girl can be herself and who share her inclination to keep it real.  By developing real relationships, instead of ones where they use others or are used instrumentally, girls can see the benefits of friendship and trust, instead of losing their ability to trust those close them. 

It should be stressed that Catholicism contains the important message that each person’s worth is innate, rooted in the fact that each person is made in the image of God, entirely unique and infinitely valuable.  This is a hard concept to grasp, but if this message is taught, constantly reinforced, and seen to shape the behavior of teachers, administrators, and others, girls will be able to increasingly disconnect their sense of self-worth from their popularity or coolness.  Given the type of behavior that is inspired by the quest to be cool or popular, this is a very worthy goal.

Now I applaud these concepts. I really do. But I don't think Catholic schools do an innately better job of addressing these issues. They can emphasize a commitment to dignity and love for others, but it all starts at home. If anything, parents need to be educated in this respect. Adolescent popularity contests extend to the generation beforehand, and values like respect, honor, and generosity aren't going to be extended to others if superficiality, cheating, lying, and disrespect are what is exhibited at home. And it is more than that-it is genuine concern about the day, genuine interest so parents know their children are not cheating  on homework, know who their children's friends are, and recognize when those friends disappear due to adolescent cruelty.

It is a tough subject, and angst of these years will exist regardless of what one attempts to remedy it. But the Catholic Church can only do so much, and really, not very much at all. At least it did not in my experience.

Old Star Connection

I had lunch last Friday with Tracey from high school days. It has been at least seventeen years since I had least seen her. Wow, that is almost a half of a lifetime ago.  But it was just like getting together with any girlfriend, because you always have certain things in common. Housing, babies, jobs, aging parents, married life, etc.  Everyone from school is doing pretty well.  Babies are definitely on her brain and they've had some troubles. I was never close enough with her to really open up, but it is funny that you can feel so immediately at home with someone that knew you back then. When you were fifteen and did not know what the hell the world was going to throw at you.  Or seventeen and with strangers. I guess we both did ok, after all. 

That Was Then

So I read a lot of blogs, but this particular entry really touched me.

You know, it's been twenty years since junior high, and I think at least once or twice a week I think about those days. Maybe it is seeing everyone on facebook, and seeing their relationships that are so tight after so long, or the fact they have changed or have not changed or whatever. It is amazing at how you lose judgment of some of those people who tortured you on the softball field, or ridiculed you for getting straight As, or excluded you from a pool party even after they "pretended" to be friends with you for a while, at least until the popular crowd came calling. I will never forget the feeling of shame and unhappiness every June when all of the "cool kids" got invited to Julie's pool party, and I was one of a handful left out. The facebook friends even remember that when it was her birthday! I still remember being taunted by parents playing softball, or people calling me ugly and reminding me of the reasons I'd "never have a boyfriend." It is so relentless, and so difficult.

And twenty years later, I have great friends and a great husband and a great job and money and luxuries I didn't have then. And yet a part of it remains. And I described it in my comment as bittersweet, because it is. Those feelings resonate with me so many years later. And I won't justify it as silly, because it wasn't. It was not funny. It was hurtful. And one of my core beliefs is that we are responsible for our own actions, and our own reactions, ultimately. And at 14, you know the meaning of right from wrong, good from bad, hurtful and kind. And you can be brave or be a coward, or you can be generous or be selfish.

I would NEVER go back to being 12 or 13 or 14 again. I know there were kids, like Maria A., who had it so much worse than me. And all of these years later, I worry and wonder how she is. I know there were kids who escaped a lot of it, and who were neither teased not teasers. And I know some who were vicious, and I wouldn't friend them without any kind of apology. Or without one.

I do worry, if I have children and especially a daughter, how I would feel if they received the same level or any level of harassment or teasing. It would break my heart. And it is so easy to tell her you grow up, you move on, you make friends, you meet boys, you become liked and loved and happy and social. But at 12, when being lonely and without friends is one of the worst things imaginable, you can't offer that kind of reassurance because 34 or 24 or 19 are SO far off.

Yes, it does get better. But patience is demanded. I will always regret, with a feeling of bittersweet, not having happier memories from those years. Thank God for my family, because that really is the most important thing. But to a 12 or 13 or 14 year old girl, you still need more, as selfish as it is.

Breaks My Heart

These stories of teens being bullied break my heart.

Alex had been harassed and ostracized at school, mostly by a small group of students.

Among other things, his parents say Falan's report detailed eyewitness reports of a lunchroom incident that happened the day before their son died.

They say Alex had approached a table of popular students when one of the girls at the table used an expletive to tell him to him to go away.

Then she added, "Don't you know everyone hates you?"

There were reports of other incidents, his parents say, with a small group of students surrounding and taunting him in a secluded hallway with no cameras when no one else was around. Some also frequently chanted "Creeper, Creeper," using a nickname they'd given him.

His parents say yet another student spread a rumor that Alex was looking in her windows at night, which his parents insist wasn't true.

Still, Alex remained stoic.

"Is it the total reason he took his life? That is unknown," Falan says. But he does believe "it is part of the 'why.'"

He learned it was "not cool to be smart." He was teased and bullied while playing tennis. He was harassed. And today with facebook and social networking, kids can take this bullying even further out. They can make someone's life miserable.

Not much changes between generations of children.

Seventeen

There are days to remember, for good or for bad. Wedding day. Day you met the boy. Day you got your first real job. Day you graduated from college.

Days to forget, though you never will. 9/11. When loved ones pass away. When fifteen year old girls pass away. Horrible days.

It was seventeen years ago Monday--the same day of the week--when Star closed. I was seventeen, so it was almost a half-lifetime ago. Wow. I was a Junior in high school, and I remember that morning and sitting in the library and being a bit shell-shocked. At the time, it was one of the worst moments in my life. It still is.

Senior year is supposed to be this almost idyllic time, a happy year as you transition from being a child to an adult (sort of an adult, maybe). But I never enjoyed senior year, and that marked the start of one of my saddest years.

All of these years later, it affects me. Maybe in a different way than it did then. I still don't fully trust the leadership of the Catholic church, and I never will trust the Detroit archdiocese. I never thought they cared. I know people can be racist and mean. I know they can be selfish. I know that sometimes hopes and expectations can be lowered dramatically, when you least expect. I know that you can go your separate ways and not look back even though you don't fully move forward.

My heart always breaks a little when I hear about a school being closed, to this day, especially if it is a Catholic school. I understand economic realities and those kinds of practicalities. But I don't think there's a way to soften the blow, and even thought it is NOT FAIR, it still has to happen. But I know how much it hurts that day and the next day and six months later.

I don't even say this as someone who left behind a lot of friends, who was part of the "in crowd." I endured Senior Year, I didn't care so much about forming friendships then, and I survived and later thrived in college and afterward.

But I say it as someone who wanted that year to be a time of achievement, academic or otherwise. And I postponed that, well, not really. I settled for something else, a symbolic achievement.

And it is okay. I made my peace with that for the most part.

But every April 19, I take a moment and remember. And even if it is a half of a lifetime later, I remember being seventeen and hearing the news and having my heart break just a bit and NOT BEING FINE WITH IT. I remember still.

Twenty Years Ago II

So it struck me that my twentieth "reunion" year at St. V's is this year. Twenty years. I've written about it before a bit in the facebook context, but I have not wanted to dwell on it. I prefer to focus on the here and now. But it's two decades, and that long since I've seen those facebook "friends."

It feels like another time, another era, so long ago but there are still so many incomplete or unresolved feelings about that time. Like the cliques of popularity still exist and I'm still an outsider, even though I would never want to be "in." And I shouldn't care, right?

You always want to be popular and have friends and share memories and I feel like I don't have that before 1994 or 1990. And as much as it shouldn't matter because my life is so much more fulfilling now and I've accomplished what is important to me, but at the same time I feel....unresolved. Not like you want to confront anyone exactly. Just have acknowledgment of something they probably have never lost a single night of sleep from.

Silly. Not so.

Old Catholic Schools

This piece in the Post today discusses how former Catholic schools in the District are being converted into charter schools. Personally, I'm a fan of this concept: can't afford to keep struggling Catholic schools open? Convert them, so that the education and discipline remains. Give students a choice--choice being the operative word--to attend somewhere beside their usual horrid public school.

But this still makes me sad, that Catholic schools close and so many are so unaffordable. It makes me wonder about the students in the halls of St. Veronica, which is a charter now. I hope they appreciate the education they receive there. I'm glad they are still halls of learning. But it's bittersweet the Catholic option had to close in the first place.

As to whether I'd say my future children to a Catholic school? Maybe, if I could afford it. Maybe, if I could stomach it. That is a question for another date, though...

Fifteen Years Later

On May 22, I celebrated my fifteen-year anniversary of high school graduation. It's funny because I don't remember very much from that day. I do remember wearing the white gown and cap, delivering a speech, that dress I wore, saying good-bye to friends and star girls and being very, very excited to be done with high school. In facebooking, there's this tendency to be very nostalgic and have all sorts of fond memories of school, like everything was wonderful and you were all such tight friends back then and there weren't crappy days or lonely days or days when you just wanted to be on your own, starting over in a new city far, far away from Detroit. Fifteen years later, you are the same person with the same regrets and the same memories but clouded by years of other stuff. You view those days through the lens of a 33 year old, with a bit of nostalgia despite it all. I think it's because you hear about Gossip Girls-esque shows where high school seems so wonderful and glamorous and money and grades and introversion and social sophistication don't seem to mean anything. You weren't terribly lonely or lacking a boyfriend or drawn in some insular world of television and dreams and wondering where life would lead you.

The curiousity about where and what some girls are up to is gone now, for some. I think the same feelings of insecurity, and of not living up to potential, and not being socially sophisticated linger. But other things, good things, happier things exist, and I can't ever wish to go back to being 18. I'm happier being 33, with a job (even this one), and a home and a husband. And friends, real ones, not ghosts on a webpage. I enjoy the here and now so much more.