Speaker 1: Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army and normal folks.
Speaker 1: Shop Talk number fifty three. Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2: That's a little aggressive, but I like it. Well.
Speaker 1: If George was here, I wouldn't have to do it anymore.
Speaker 3: You can't mention him every shop talk. It's gonna get weird.
Speaker 1: I don't care. I love George. He's hilarious, he's cute
Speaker 1: as it could be. I don't know where he came from.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this shop talk is church schools? What church schools?
Speaker 1: It's a term I learned my second, first or second
Speaker 1: year at Manassas, and the phrase itself taught me a
Speaker 1: massive lesson that I quickly want to share with you
Speaker 1: on shop Talk number fifty three, which we'll get into
Speaker 1: right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Welcome back, everybody.
Speaker 1: Shop Talk number fifty three. Church schools? What is that?
Speaker 1: So my second year of Nassas, we put together a
Speaker 1: new schedule for the coming fall, and Manassas typically played
Speaker 1: a lot of schools from the urban area inside the city,
Speaker 1: and I wanted the kids to get exposure to other
Speaker 1: kind of kids and other kind of programs, and so
Speaker 1: I scheduled on our schedule a couple of private schools
Speaker 1: out east. And when the schedule came out, one of
Speaker 1: my players came to me and he said, coach, we're
Speaker 1: playing church schools. And I looked at him and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what on earth are you talking about a church school?
Speaker 1: What is that? And he said, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be disparaging to the school. So I was just say,
Speaker 1: I'll make up. Let's call it First Baptist Academy. We're
Speaker 1: playing First Baptist Academy FBA. They're church school The other
Speaker 1: ones are like private Christian schools or college prep schools,
Speaker 1: private schools, non public schools, day schools, day schools another
Speaker 1: good example. But my inner city kids call them church schools.
Speaker 1: And I said, church schools. What a weird thing to
Speaker 1: call schools church schools.
Speaker 3: I had never heard it until you told me this story.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. So I started kind of
Speaker 1: asking around adults. Here's what I found out, and I
Speaker 1: looked it up. In Memphis at that time, there were
Speaker 1: forty nine private schools, some K through six, some pre
Speaker 1: K through eighth, some high school only, some pre k
Speaker 1: through twelve, some parochial, some small private Christian schools, some
Speaker 1: really non denominational school some college preparatory schools. But anyway,
Speaker 1: there was fifty call it fifty five. It was in
Speaker 1: the fifties, and I looked up their charter dates and
Speaker 1: all but six, so call it, you know, fifty out
Speaker 1: of fifty six, all but six they're charters were nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine. Bussing. So what happened in
Speaker 1: the urban areas is when bussing started and kids started
Speaker 1: getting bussed to different community public schools, the largely white
Speaker 1: population from these urban areas didn't like that, and so
Speaker 1: they needed, they wanted a place to go to school
Speaker 1: outside of the pub book school system. And at that time,
Speaker 1: back in those days, there were certainly parochial schools, and
Speaker 1: there were some really expensive college prep schools. But the
Speaker 1: average person who wasn't Catholic or couldn't afford the really
Speaker 1: expensive schools but didn't want to do with bussing, was
Speaker 1: faced with an issue. And so what happened was churches
Speaker 1: all of the city set up schools, and they were
Speaker 1: basically white flight schools, largely outside of the inner city area,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the suburbs. And so these churches set up
Speaker 1: schools so their children didn't have to be bussed. So
Speaker 1: began what I believe to be the disintegration of many
Speaker 1: urban school districts in some of our larger cities. Because
Speaker 1: along with that exodus to the church schools left the money,
Speaker 1: the booster club, the parents who could be active supporting
Speaker 1: the schools, the support, and the diversity. And here we are,
Speaker 1: some fifty years later, and what's left is once again
Speaker 1: largely segregated by race and socioeconomics and class, urban schools
Speaker 1: against the backdrop of many private what the inner city
Speaker 1: people might call church schools. The thing that bothers me
Speaker 1: the most about it is one of my friends once said,
Speaker 1: he repeated this, I think, I'm sure he's not the
Speaker 1: author of it, but the most segregated day in the
Speaker 1: United States is Sunday, and it should be the least
Speaker 1: segregated day. If we are called to engage in our community,
Speaker 1: help our fellow man, serve those less blessed than us.
Speaker 1: How is it that Sunday is when we're most segregated?
Speaker 1: But maybe a bigger question is how is it that
Speaker 1: there's a population of people all over the urban areas
Speaker 1: in our cities that refer to the schools that our
Speaker 1: children go to as church schools. Church schools, the very
Speaker 1: place where everybody, regardless of race or saysioeconomic status, should
Speaker 1: feel safe and included, ends up being the nomenclature for
Speaker 1: the very segregation that has crippled the public education inside
Speaker 1: many of urban areas. Church schools. I almost wish I'd
Speaker 1: never heard the phrase, because as I look deeper and
Speaker 1: deeper into it, it is wrought with segregation, disenfranchisement and
Speaker 1: loss for kids in our city, and white flight, and
Speaker 1: it has developed into what I think is destructive for
Speaker 1: our society, that we have a largely less fortunate public
Speaker 1: going to large urban city districts, and anybody else who
Speaker 1: could afford something different out in the outlining areas of
Speaker 1: suburbs going to church schools. Look up the charters of
Speaker 1: the schools in your town in the city, and ask
Speaker 1: yourself what was the beginning of that? And certainly here
Speaker 1: fifty years later, I don't think there's nearly the racial
Speaker 1: component to it that there was at the beginning. I
Speaker 1: think we've evolved as a culture a little bit, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that folks that are still in urban
Speaker 1: school districts when they hear the name of your school,
Speaker 1: or they think of the place that your kids go
Speaker 1: to school that they don't think of them as church schools,
Speaker 1: and the work we need to do to fix that.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Alex?
Speaker 3: A couple of things that reminds me of Bob Mazakowski.
Speaker 3: If you remember he said, Bob.
Speaker 1: He's I want to hang out with Bob. He's one
Speaker 1: of the funniest guys in the world.
Speaker 2: We can make that happen.
Speaker 3: But here he's like, you see the you know, the
Speaker 3: brochures for these private schools, and they always got the
Speaker 3: black cat on there, and it's like you going to
Speaker 3: the school and you can't find them, and maybe maybe
Speaker 3: like Jamal's in there, like they got one Jamal and
Speaker 3: the basketball team.
Speaker 1: But like, Bob is hilarious, but that is so true.
Speaker 1: You see the brochures and it's got an Asian kid
Speaker 1: or a Hispanic kid or a black kid and a
Speaker 1: couple of white kids, and they're nice little church school shirts.
Speaker 1: And then you go to the school and you're like,
Speaker 1: where are these guys. It's funny. Bob said that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said also did say and people need to
Speaker 1: hear this in the right Vein. You know, you got
Speaker 1: a Jamal on the basketball team, and you gotta and
Speaker 1: and you got to Albert Washington on the football team,
Speaker 1: and they're on the brochures. But when you go to
Speaker 1: the school assembly doesn't look like that.
Speaker 2: Two other thoughts too. I mean, when you.
Speaker 3: Have this happen, you've also to all these schools of power,
Speaker 3: a lot of the political power, the.
Speaker 1: Money, the power, the support.
Speaker 3: Also, just like we've talked about with like I think
Speaker 3: about it with the rescue dogs, with the All Fours
Speaker 3: Rescue League. You know here in Memphis, it's like you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have this happen in your neighborhood, or it wouldn't
Speaker 3: happen in Germantown to have all these stray dogs running
Speaker 3: around terrorizing, right, and these you know, frankly white people
Speaker 3: with political power. You know, nobody cares that this is
Speaker 3: happening in the inner city. And nobody cares that some
Speaker 3: of these schools are terrible and it's really not supposed
Speaker 3: to be a white black you know thing, and it
Speaker 3: shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 1: I bet they care where the church schools are located. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got to fix this. It's so messed up. We
Speaker 1: have to look in the mirror and be honest about
Speaker 1: ourselves about where a lot of this stuff started. And
Speaker 1: although you know, you can't repent for another man's sins,
Speaker 1: and likewise, you know, in twenty twenty five, if you're
Speaker 1: going to a quote church school that was started in
Speaker 1: sixty eight, you know why and how that church that
Speaker 1: church school was founded, doesn't That doesn't mean you share
Speaker 1: that same viewpoint from sixty years before. However, we do
Speaker 1: have to be honest enough with ourselves about the perception
Speaker 1: that was left behind that still exists. And if we
Speaker 1: are honest with ourselves and we'll understand that a little bit,
Speaker 1: we might understand why there is fear, distrust, disenfranchisement, and
Speaker 1: all the rest in many of our inner cities.
Speaker 3: It was interesting, is actually my high school Santy Nasius
Speaker 3: in Chicago, Sant Nacia Church School. But I don't know
Speaker 3: what you're as started, but they they would intentionally ask,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's an affluent school, like the families who
Speaker 3: are going to afford it to pay more like four
Speaker 3: to five thousand dollars a year more to help other
Speaker 3: kids go. It's literally like twenty five percent of the
Speaker 3: kids that are Natius or based on a full ride
Speaker 3: you know from that. So it's I mean, there are
Speaker 3: things you can do now to rectify this problem with
Speaker 3: church schools, and it's especially incumbent on those who are
Speaker 3: more affluent to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that aid does not need to be requisite
Speaker 1: on how well you shoot a basketball or how fast
Speaker 1: you run a football, And unfortunately many schools use that
Speaker 1: aid for their own benefit or.
Speaker 2: Ours is purely academic.
Speaker 3: Was funny, is like we weren't that good at sports
Speaker 3: because it's such an academic school.
Speaker 1: Well, good for y'all. But what I'm saying is there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of quote church schools, there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of parochial schools, and there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: college schools who do that very thing under the guise
Speaker 1: of aren't we doing a good thing for poor folks?
Speaker 1: But when you look at who they're helping out, what
Speaker 1: are they trading that hope for?
Speaker 2: So? Ours was so bad?
Speaker 3: Like when we were losing in a basketball game, the
Speaker 3: students would charts cheering, you're gonna work for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's not a cheer illustrates exactly.
Speaker 2: What not at all.
Speaker 3: But I'm saying like we were so good about bringing
Speaker 3: students in. Not for athletic reasons that our team was bad.
Speaker 1: But consider the cheer. I just consider the cheer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: We should just end this episode before I get more inappropriate, y'all.
Speaker 1: The whole idea behind this shop Talk is not to
Speaker 1: make anybody feel guilty about where they send their kids
Speaker 1: to school. It's to give you perspective and why there
Speaker 1: is perspective about the segregation in our school systems that
Speaker 1: is no longer segregation among districts, and is segregation among
Speaker 1: public and private and parochial schools. And I think it's
Speaker 1: important to understand what others think about what we're doing
Speaker 1: and the history about their perspective where it comes from,
Speaker 1: because that helps us to understand how to bridge gaps.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole point bind church schools.
Speaker 2: There you go, Thanks for bringing us back home. Bill.
Speaker 1: That's it. So Shop Talk number fifty three, let's try
Speaker 1: to eradicate the mentality of church schools by being honest
Speaker 1: with ourselves and recognizing maybe the sins of the past.
Speaker 1: If you like this episode, please rate and review it.
Speaker 1: If you have any ideas for shop Talk, you can
Speaker 1: email me any time at Bill at normal Folks dot us.
Speaker 1: I'll respond and if you have an idea for guests,
Speaker 1: send them to us. Alex will talk to them and
Speaker 1: hopefully get them on.
Speaker 2: What else. Joined the Something, I don't know, I feel tired.
Speaker 3: I think we're good to wrap it up. Join something, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: All those things, yeah, any and all of these things
Speaker 1: will help us grow. Shop Talk and army and normal folks,
Speaker 1: and army and normal dead folks, an army of teenagers.
Speaker 3: Army of normal teenagers that normal. That episode isn't out either.
Speaker 3: You're talking about all these all right?
Speaker 1: Shop Talk number fifty three. We'll see you guys next
Speaker 1: week