Question:
Maybe this is just another one of my ranting and ravings. I am sure that what I write will make some of you think. Several years ago I was at an adult Tourette support meeting. There were 5 people there. 4 of the people had gone to parochial schools. I was the only one that did not. Every one of these adults reported that they were physically and mentally abused by the nuns. I think this was very commonplace with anyone with any learning disabilities and nuns during the 50's thru the 70's. The fact is that I have heard that someone's brother had his finger broken by a nun hitting him accross his knuckles(ouch!!!!!!) I was a math tutor at a trade school about 12 years ago. I helped many students understand remedial math. I saw a lot of young men with learning disabilities that really had to struggle with understanding simple math. One particular man really comes to my mind. His age was perhaps between 28 and 30. He told me of a story that still makes urin curdle. He told me that he had attended a parochial school. He had trouble understanding math. A nun would stand behind him and drill him in math. Every time he would make a mistake, the nun would stand behind him and SMACK!!!! - she would slap him on the side of the head. This young man was croutching down in his seat with an attitude of self defeat. I have some skills at teaching people who need to learn by a different pathway to their brain. I first just talked to him. I talked to him about his calculator. I told him that it would give him an output of a number if he input a series of numbers. I used a simple syntes like 2 + 2 = 4 (try this - you will see that it works) I then built up his confidence with increasingly harder math useing his calculator. By the end of the meeting, he was proficiently performing the required complicated math required for his homework. I remember watching the news back in about 1957? or 1958? I remember a parochial school fire where over 100 children burned to death or died of smoke inhallation. These numbers would have been minimized had the school performed fire drills and had adequate fire safety systems in an antiquaated building. Another factor was that the nuns had these little children sit at their desks and pray rather than seek safety by trying to reach the outside. After the fire was over and all these children were dead and buried, the nuns told the surviveing children that those who had perished were GOOD little boys and girls and had gone to HEAVEN. The logic was that those little boys and girls who were still alive were NOT good little boys and girls and did not deserve to go to heaven.. A friend who has TS and went to parochial school told me that at one time when he had problems with his TS behavior, the nuns had everyone pray for him - because he was the one little boy who was in most need for prayer. You can immagine how he felt when he was singled out to this kind of humiliation. We can also talk about the pedophile priests but that is another story. Priests useing parochial schools as their recruiting grounds for pedophile sodomy? I really wonder if Father Geogan's sins were all forgiven and he is now sitting in heaven???

Answer: Thanks for the validation. I remember watching the news and seeing all the little caskets in church for the memorial service. This story came up on the history channel again about one year ago and gave me some further information about this tragedy. BTW, those nuns tend to live very long lives. Lack of stress in their sheltered lives allows them to live well into their 80's 90's and beyond. There is no way of telling how much psychological damage that they did when they were teaching little boys and little girls.