parochial school (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

I can only speak to Nashville, where I was raised.  Busing for
desegregation began there in the 1971 school year.  There were a number
of private schools that opened up then (both religious and secular), but
there were others that had a long history before that.  Nashville has a
long history of secular private schools, and religious private schools.
One of the most prominent religious ones (David Lipscomb, affiliated
with the Church of Christ) goes back to the 19th century.  I had a
number of friends who went there, and my own home church (Vultee Church
of Christ) had many members who sent their children there.  I never
heard it (or any other Protestant religious school -- no history with
Jewish, Islamic or other religious schools) referred to as "parochial"
growing up.


After looking into it for a short while, it appears to me that
"parochial school" has two distinct usages -- one which includes Roman
Catholic and other religious schools, and one which is only Roman
Catholic schools (that is, some people use "parochial school" in a way
which specifically excludes non-RC schools).



> 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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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
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