I transferred from a public to a Catholic school in my junior year, because we moved from a small town to a big city, and my parents thought it would get us away from all the "bad influences" of public schools. Here's just a few things I witnessed:
-Five pregnant girls in my graduating class alone, at least 6 or 7 among the underclassmen.
-Rampant cheating. (Which they turned a blind eye to because they wanted to keep gloating about how Catholic schoolkids had higher test scores)
-A thriving fake ID business.
-It was easier to count how many kids weren't abusing substances. One girl got expelled because she and several of her friends got drunk before a school dance, and she puked and passed out right at the feet of the Dean. The other girls got suspended.
-Abusive relationships.
-Neglected kids, who often had no lunch, no other clothes besides their uniforms, and had to wait after school as late as 6 PM for a parent to come pick them up.
-Kids getting disciplined simply for questioning the religious doctrine they were being spoonfed. (My parents got called because my brother asked why it was wrong to love together before marriage. My dad said that meeting was the biggest fucking waste of time ever)
-Forced conformity, uniforms for every activity, strict rules on how hair could be cut and styled, no room in the curriculum for individual reading or independent study.
-Several suicide attempts. In the years following graduation there were at least four successful suicides, including siblings of a couple of my good friends.
-Racial segregation & tension well into the 80's. You never saw black and white students hanging around together, even among the clubs and sports teams. There was actually a news report of the tensions between the two groups exploding into race riots on campus in the mid-nineties.
-And yes, dysfunctional families out the wazoo.
As far as I know there was never any attempt to get help for any trouble students, or to get to the root of any of these problems. It was always swept under the rug in a desperate attempt to show off how perfect Catholic families are, and how their kids are model schoolchildren.
No wonder we all ended up on drugs.
