I attended a public elementary school in Chicago in the late 1960s. Once a week, every Wednesday afternoon, all the Catholic students (which was probably about 50% of the class) would leave the school and walk to the nearby Catholic school for several hours of catechism. From what I understand, the remaining non-Catholic students would just do busy work while were gone, not any real lessons.
People I’ve told this to in later years are incredulous. In retrospect, it does seem extremely odd to me that a public school would cater to one particular religion like this, to the extent of basically giving them 10% of the total school time. It seems like any non-Catholic who objected to this might have a good First Amendment argument.
Does anything like this still happen anywhere in the US today?
It happened in my elementary school until the mid-60s, but they only got off about an hour early.
I’d say that it’s rare today, but probably happens somewhere. According to an old NY Times article, the numbers of students were declining back in 2000. But a Supreme Court ruling from 1950 decided it was constitutional.
I dont think that this is a case of the government establishing a religion. Its a heavily catholic school district accommodating its students much like school districts accommodating Jewish students during the High Holy Days.
No one else thinks that’s creepy… and really arrogant of the church? “It’s okay that you’re missing science or math classes; what we tell you is so much more important!”
Our catholic kids just went from school to the church after regular school hours. Come to think of it, that’s what our church did with our youth group, and what the YMCA did, though theirs was a fun “stay off the streets and out of trouble” hour.
Ok, reread the OP and saw that non-catholics were “just doing busywork”. So then ALL students were getting less education!
It’s possible that I’m misremembering this. It seems like it was the whole afternoon, but as Einstein proved, an hour of catechism is equal to four hours of normal time.
Our CCD classes were at night, at least the one and only year I went - school year 68-69. When I told my mom the girl teaching our class was talking about masturbation, I was immediately removed from the program and I’m guessing the pastor got an earful from Mom. :eek:
It wasn’t only Chicago, NYC also has a release time program which is apparently required by the state education law. There’s a chancellor’s regulation form 2009 designated the last hour on Wednesday as released time , so that means they are only leaving one hour early. I know it is still in effect at least for grades 1-5, because my parish’s religious education program starts at 2:15 pm on Wednesday for those grades. It’s a predictable hour a week, and although I have never been a public school student who remained behind, I don’t see any reason to assume that that hour was used for either busywork or math and science classes. Sure, the kids going to religious education are missing something , but it could be art or music or a review session.
Oh, and it’s not restricted to Catholic students - according to this , it’s pretty common for LDS students in Utah to use release time and some Jewish students in NY use it as well. It probably depends very much on 1) the demographics of the area and 2) whether other religious groups offer instruction on weekdays- I know when I was a kid , my Lutheran friends went to Sunday school
In the 90s in a great plains state, there were still no school activities on Wednesday nights… and all practices had to end by 5:15 and kids out of locker rooms by 5:30 so that kids could go to church activities on Wednesday nights. However, this was actually for Protestants primarily as few Catholic churches did anything on these Wednesday nights. Not quite as extreme as dismissing early from the school day, but still showing that christianity had some effects on school schedule beyond the cities cited.
I was enrolled in a Catholic school in Camarillo, CA for first, second, and third grades. Shortly after the school year ended, my dad was offered a transfer from Newbury Park to Long Beach. So he put our house on the market, found us a house to rent in Redondo Beach, and looked for a house to buy in Torrance (we moved in on 12-23-1964). So most of my third grade education took place in the public schools of the South Bay. My parents got us into our parish’s parochial school inthe fall of ‘64, but while we were in public school, we spent Saturday mornings in CCD classes. The idea of taking time out of public school to attend to this would have gobsmacked me, had anyone brought it up.
Later, during my seventh and eighth grade years, I spent many of my afternoons volunteering as a gofer in the CCD office. I wanna say Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Still later, when Kayla was in fourth grade at a public school, her school participated in a completely voluntary after-school program where a local Christian education initiative had a temporary classroom/bookmobile in the school parking lot for religious instruction of kids whose parents wanted to sign them up for it.
Always annoyed me, back in the ‘70s, that the catechism kids got to leave school early to go to CCD, but Hebrew school wasn’t accommodated. It had to wait to start after school was over, so we got home later.
Western NY
Christianity had, and still does have, a large impact on school schedule. That spring break always fell at Easter, winter break always covered Christmas, and generally there are few events on Sundays but lots of events on Saturdays (and Friday nights) speaks to Christian normative scheduling.
This is similar to my experience ca. 1960. My older sister and I went to public school during the week and had a l-o-n-g CCD class (around here it’s now called PSR) on Sunday mornings.
Of course, this was in Texas. In 1960 Texas the public schools started their days with prayers, and the Baptists would have hit the roof if anyone had suggested letting the Catholics out of class early.
At the high school where I taught, LDS students were allowed to schedule religious education classes during first period. The LDS church was just down the street. They got no credit for it. Other churches could have done the same thing, but since none owned buildings near the school, it would have been impractical. Also, I don’t think any of the other churches wanted to interfere with the school day.
The grade school I attended was in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, so we got off for Jewish holidays as well as xmas/easter/etc. I could never remember what the different Jewish holy days were about, so I’d be wishing friends a very merry whatever, only to be told that it was a day of atonement. Meanwhile, 6 year old me had no clue what atonement even meant.
I think the usual practice was what the OP described. Students, Catholic and non-Catholic, would all attend their regular academic classes. And at some point during the week, there would be a time when no regular classes were scheduled. Non-Catholic students would have some down time while Catholic students went to religion class.
My personal experience as a young papist was that our “religious education” class was taught at a local Catholic school. Catholic children from the area public schools would be dropped off on the way home from school on Wednesdays; the school bus would stop at the Catholic school and all of us would get off.
There were flaws with this plan. First, the program was designed to accommodate the students from two different public schools. And the schools didn’t have the same schedule. So the students from one school would show up and the class would begin. About forty-five minutes later, the students from the other school (which was my school) would show up. We’d only get about the last ten minutes of the class.
The other flaw was transportation after class. The Catholic school would transport home students who lived in town. But it didn’t have any school buses that ran out of town. So my parents had to come and pick us up every Wednesday.
My public elementary school in a fast-expanding Los Angeles suburb circa 1960 contained all “temporary” buildings for classes and a construction trailer in the parking lot for Religious Studies hours - I barely remember those now, so I guess Xianity didn’t take. The campus was all open then but is now fenced like a prison. Welcome to the future.
We had a similar program in our public schools, in western Minnesota in the late 1960’s. On Wednesdays, too. Wed had to walk several blocks to the church where it was held. During the Minnesota winter, many kids chose to sit around in study hall rather than walk outside.
But it wasn’t just for Catholic kids. Until the last 3 blocks, we Catholic kids walked with the Scandinavian Lutherans (we had 4 different Lutheran churches in town, mostly divided by ethnicity). A couple of the churches farther away had vans or church buses to pick up their kids. Some churches chose not to participate, maybe they couldn’t find anyone to teach classes on Wednesdays. And some kids came from tiny rural areas; their churches were far away. The Catholic ones went to the catholic church in town, but some Protestant ones couldn’t fine a church in town that they agreed with.
Are you sure that only Catholic kids were excused for Wednesday religious education? Even back then, I’d think it was offered for everyone. Maybe only the local Catholic churches were organized enough to take advantage of this?
Elementary school in the 70s. Wednesday after school was for religious education, whether Catholic or Lutheran. Because my mom worked on Wednesdays, I would sometimes go home with my Catholic friend and waited for her to finish CCD.
The Catholic after school program was 4th-6th grade, and the Lutheran after school program was 7th-8th grade.
Don’t know about the Catholic program, but Wednesdays are still used as family night at my parents’ church. So the kids go to the program after school and then the parents join for dinner, served by the senior group to which my parents belong.
Michigan has a law allowing school districts to offer a bible study class off site for interested students up to 2 hours a week. I did not allow my kids to go - no way was I going to let them board the hand painted Jesus bus and go off to some lonely farmhouse in the country to get bible lessons.
I went to CCD as a kid, on wed nights or Sat mornings.
