Tales Out of School presents a memoir offering a critical examination of the culture that exists with with an analysis of the unconscious and theoretical dimensions of this psychological and sociological agenda. Author Linda Arbour reflects upon her experience as student, teacher, and administrator in the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, public secondary Catholic schools of Toronto, Ontario. Arbour insists that these schools exist to transmit the counter-cultural values of Jesus, values of equality and inclusion, where power is used to enhance the growth and flourishing of everyone, not merely to duplicate the secular norms of social upward mobility and individual status. Even so, as viewed through the lens of a newly recognized social Catholic tradition, she describes the cultural impasse she encountered while trying to realize these values. Within the structure of the Catholic school system, she discovered a morass of traditional male privilege and cronyism and a professional culture hostile to the flourishing of women as well as of teachers in general. She challenges future teachers and administrators to gain a heightened awareness in order to address these concerns within the context of the gospel by imagining a culture that emphasizes a concern for the most disciplined and talented students.

Tales Out of School

A Challenge to Catholic EducatorsBy Linda Marie Arbour

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Linda Marie Arbour
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8909-2

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................ixPart One: The Personal is Political..................................................................1Holy Family Parish...................................................................................1Melanie..............................................................................................10St. Joseph's College School..........................................................................13A World of Unlimited Possibility.....................................................................21The Newman Centre at McGill..........................................................................21Peter, Isla and other Compagneros....................................................................34The Newman Centre in Toronto.........................................................................46Teaching at my Alma Mater............................................................................58The Toronto School of Theology.......................................................................66Implementing Vatican Two.............................................................................77Cor Ad Cor Loquiter..................................................................................79Child Poverty, the Bishop and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association.....................91Liberal Reform and the Religious Right...............................................................99The Coalition of Concerned Canadian Catholics........................................................110The Department Headship..............................................................................121The Castrati: Seven Years of Dumbing Down............................................................128O'Connor.............................................................................................132Loretto..............................................................................................138Ubi Honor, Ibi Sum...................................................................................143The Principal's Centre at Harvard....................................................................150St. Basil's..........................................................................................153Part Two: Reflections for Future Teachers and Administrators.........................................158No Cross, No Crown...................................................................................158Community Is Everything..............................................................................165From Monastery to Marketplace........................................................................172Newman and the Shift in Religious Education..........................................................178A Quiet Revolution in Toronto........................................................................188Authority and Authoritarianism.......................................................................196Women in Patriarchal Cultures........................................................................201Seeing Means That Everything Changes.................................................................206The Powerlessness of God.............................................................................229The Turn to the Laity................................................................................234In The End...........................................................................................241Appendix.............................................................................................243

Chapter One

The Personal is Political

Holy Family Parish

Looking south over Lake Ontario on a sunny July day, I had forgotten how serene the morning sky could be. Usually as I perform my early trek along the boardwalk from the Palais Royale to the Palace Pier, I fret over the defecation of the gulls and Canada geese, often my only company at this time of day. But my exercise completed, today the sky is many layers of blue, soothing my troubled spirit as I sip my cappuccino at the pavilion café.

This place is bathed in my past as well as my present. In the nineteen fifties, I came here with my brother, Art, and my sister Carolyn, to swim on a hot summer's day. A quarter to get in and a few cents more for a cold drink with the sandwiches we had brought with us. The money came from our allowance, and was not freely spent. We called it The Tank in the local lingo. No one referred to it as Sunnyside Pool as they do now. Sunnyside was the amusement park with a roller coaster and rides. One day Art dared the two of us to dive from the high tower. As always, Carolyn and I allowed ourselves to be bullied into it, eager to prove to ourselves and to one another that we were not cowards.

But this summer morning I am not here to swim. I am marking the beginning of my retirement from education. The pool is occupied by a Scandanavian water polo team intent on their practice for the day's competition, and oblivious to the early walkers like me who stare and admire their glistening youthful bodies and male camaraderie. I trek along this boardwalk in front of The Tank by the western beach from late April to mid-November, sometimes with a neighbour, as often alone, especially in the morning. In May and June especially, the evenings are full of young people, chatting and flirting over the tables of the café. Their excited voices are celebrating the aftermath of sand volleyball or the evening practice for the Dragon Boat Races at Centre Island in June. I find their energy and youthful anticipation of their unknown futures as intoxicating as the evening air.

I grew up not far from here, one block from the lake on Dowling Avenue. In the forties, this part of Parkdale was upward mobility for my parents. We moved to Parkdale from Berkeley Street in Cabbagetown in 1946 just after my sister Carolyn was born. Louise Grenier Arbour, my paternal grandmother came with us. The big Victorian house had ten rooms on three floors. The original owner, an architect, and Scotch as my mother would say, had designed the house to his taste - a large veranda in front of the foyer leading through French doors into a large living room. The first thing you noticed was a well-lit alcove with diamond shaped, lead pane windows where the tree stood at Christmas time. Above the front window and above our sofa, the original owner had designed a stained glass tribute to the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, more clearly lit from the veranda outside. A working fireplace and marble mantel lined with family photos was the centrepiece of the room along with the velvet portieres on the left that hung behind the piano over two large sliding doors that opened into the next room. These special features revealed the refined taste of the builder, something not lost on my father. Though I knew the stained glass winders were unique and beautiful, the sentiment they reflected bore no connection to my Polish-French Canadian consciousness. Nothing of the British Isles had to do with us, and certainly not a Presbyterian Scot, however populist. Parkdale was a safe place to live in during the fifties before the construction of the Gardiner Expressway destroyed the gentle village...