At one point, these art students disappeared from the cafeteria. As it turned out, their teacher had given them permission to eat lunch in the art room so they would have extra time to work on projects. We weren't too keen on the idea of our cafeteria group splitting up so one friend in the class suggested we all go to the art room together during lunch. The teacher wouldn't be there because she had trusted her students to work on their projects without supervision. None of us thought a few additional students in the art room would be a big deal. Famous last words.
Since the place was located in a small wing off the main building, it felt like a refreshing oasis far from the maddening crowd. Someone found a radio with a tape player so a few of us brought in cassettes of our favorite bands for everyone to listen to. It was nice having our cafeteria group remain intact and in many ways, lunch in the art room underscored our place in the school's culture: creative, thoughtful, quiet souls disconnected from the popular crowd. With a nod and a walk down the hall, it felt like we were heading to a secret club but after a couple of weeks, these lunch sessions seemed routine.
One day, I was joking with an acquaintance when out of the corner of my eye, a nun appeared in the doorway. She looked around the art room and wondered why we were all here. A few kids tried to explain but she wasn't having any of it. She got a piece of paper and a pencil and one by one, asked for our names. In a display of resignation, I spelled out my last name for her. We were then instructed to pack up our things and go back to the cafeteria. I had just read George Orwell's 1984 so it felt like our little respite had been broken up by the Thought Police. I was filled with a cold, sinking feeling and as we walked back down the hallway, I sang a line from the 1956 song The Party's Over to lighten my mood.
Many people think teenagers aren't too considerate but our group was very concerned about what this would mean for the art teacher. None of us wanted to see her get in trouble because of our actions. After an investigation by some of the nuns, we received a verbal reprimand and everyone was prohibited from leaving the cafeteria during lunch period. The art teacher shook her head at us in disgust. From her point of view, she felt we took advantage of the trust she gave her art students.
I didn't think what we had done was so bad because there was no malicious intent in our hearts. We only wanted to maintain the comfort our lunchroom group provided. There was no sense of entitlement and we were careful not to be disruptive. The radio's volume was low and our conversations were subdued. While the nuns had every right to discipline us, blindly handing out punishments just to keep everyone in line wasn't a very Christian approach.
During my high school years, I kept hearing the phrase “Fenwick is family” but the authoritarian nuns only saw our infraction and not the reasons behind it. Did they care that some students were struggling to fit in? Apparently not.
I had ten years' total of Catholic school, and I had many such experiences. The nuns and lay faculty never explained the rationale behind school policies (formal or informal). They thought it all to be common sense and that students should automatically know what they knew. There was not much understanding of child or adolescent development...it was as though students were expected to be little adults (after all, isn't age 7 the "age of reason?") Today, we know that the brain isn't fully developed until after age 20. Finally, the faculty always had an absolute horror of being found deficient in some way, i.e. they could get in trouble with the higher-ups without tight-fisted control of their classrooms. It was common for teachers (some perfectly nice human beings) to start off the school-year with a nasty tirade just to "show 'em who's boss" display the upper hand. They also expected children and adolescents to have massive amounts of spiritual maturity, when we were all just trying to grow up. I'm sorry you had this experience...you all had a good thing going there in the art-room. But your faculty were afraid that all hell would break loose and that the school would become a chaotic mass of uncontrollable experimentation. I don't mean to slam all the adults involved...I'm sure they had their good points. But I think the most insulting thing of all (besides their taking away your sanctuary) was the accusatory attitude of "how dare you...you should have known!" when it was they who failed to understand your exact levels of maturity and to communicate school policy, and have a reasonable conversation about it after-the-fact. Fun times!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insightful comments. (There will be more on this clash of personalities in the next post.)
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