parochial school (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Charles C Doyle]

Isn't that simply because until pretty recently nearly all "religious" primary and secondary schools in the U.S. were Roman Catholic?

In the South, the burgeoning of Protastant parochial schools strangly coincided with the racial integration of public schools . . . .

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Mullins, Bill AMRDEC [Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL]
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 10:40 AM

>From Sunday's _Huntsville Times_:

"Administrators at a Huntsville parochial school say that efforts to
discuss buying one of the city's public schools have gone without
response from the school system, despite a financial crisis that will
force the closure of several schools over the next year.

Officials at Whitesburg Christian Academy and its parent, Whitesburg
Baptist Church, say they have gone so far as to discuss the idea with
the realty company handling the sales of four currently empty school
buildings."


Obviously, the writer is using "parochial school" to refer to a school
with a Baptist background.  I, until this very day, thought that
"parochial school" meant a school run by the Roman Catholic church.  OED
says "a school established and maintained by a religious body", but
several of the cites seem to imply that only a Roman Catholic school is
parochial.

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