parochial school (UNCLASSIFIED)

[victor steinbok]

Ever since I learned the meaning of "parochial school", I was under
the impression that it implied any school under a religious authority.
If it was meant to apply only to Catholic schools, no one told about
that to Jewish schools in Chicago (30 years after Paul Johnson's
observations), which self-identified as "parochial" in official
communications with various school associations. In 20 years I've been
dealing with ed schools, I have never heard the term used narrowly to
apply to a particular denomination. The term has been used routinely
to distinguish religious schools from generic private schools,
particularly as the issue has become important legally in the context
of vouchers.

VS-)

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>...
>
> 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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