You Are… Final Paper

Molly Sweeney

EDU 727: Social Context

Dr. Martinette Horner

December 6, 2020
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For the final part of this project I chose to interview my aunt, Patricia Topolski. I chose to

interview Aunt Pat because she is a relative I can always count on to tell me stories and to keep

the family history alive. Aunt Pat was born and raised in the city of Buffalo, New York. She is

the oldest of my mother’s siblings and was in high school when my mother was born. She talked

about how the only option in my grandparent’s household was to get your education even though

they were not fully educated themselves. My grandfather, Edward, was high school educated and

an employee of the GM manufacturing plant in Buffalo. My grandmother, Ann, was only

educated to her sophomore year of high school and remained a homemaker after my aunts,

uncles, and mother were born. These traditional roles were something that Aunt Pat touched on a

lot as a theme of her home and school life.

Aunt Pat, along with all of her siblings, attended Catholic schools. For her elementary

and middle school she attended Blessed Trinity Catholic Parochial School in Buffalo. After

finishing grammar school in 1966, she went to an all girls Catholic school called Mount St.

Joseph's from 1966 - 1970. After high school Aunt Pat took a gap year and worked in the Millard

Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo. She then decided she wanted to become a nurse after watching how

hardworking and compassionate all of the nurses were at the hospital. She started her 3 year

nursing program in 1971 and graduated with her RN degree in 1974. As you can see, Aunt Pat

went to school in a very crucial time of our country’s history and she talked a lot about how this

changed the culture of her very traditional school during those years.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me from talking with Aunt Pat was the fact that she

was taught by all nuns. I also attended Catholic schools growing up, but there was only ever one

nun that worked in our schools. With all of the teachers being nuns, there was a very strict and

uptight staff at the schools Aunt Pat attended. Aunt Pat continuously talked about the traditional
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culture of her school. There were no non-Catholic students and no African American students

until she went to high school (even then she said that there were only about 3 African American

students in her classes). Aunt Pat also talked a lot about the emphasis on academics and

discipline. The topics that you learned at school carried into your home and you worked to make

your parents and family proud through your academic achievement. The other side of this is that

the values of your family carried over to school and the nuns, staff, and other students at the

school did not offer new or different perspectives than your parents. Everyone thought the same

way and no one was ever really thinking about breaking the status quo.

As I mentioned previously, Aunt Pat grew up in an ever changing time in our country’s

history. She was in sixth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and discussed how it did

not change anything directly during the school day, but made students more aware of the civil

and political unrest in the country. She also talked about the Vietnam War and how that split

classmates between two groups: pro war and against war. Another important movement that

Aunt Pat mentioned many times was the Women’s Liberation movement. During this time her

uniform went from more traditional black dresses with detachable collars to more relaxed

clothes. She also talked about how nuns went from wearing a full habit to more layman’s clothes.

Finally. a lot of our discussion talked about the civil unrest and similar issues that are affecting

African American men and women today after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in

1968. The events listed above did not feel super influential to Aunt Pat and her years in school,

but the larger impacts were huge in the historical context of schools.

The most common themes that I heard from Aunt Pat and her time going through

schooling were the ideas of traditional, Catholic schools and the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Catholic schools and private schools in general were, in part, born from the idea that specific
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religious groups wanted to move outside of the common schools created during the inception of

our country. Although these schools began in a very traditional and structured way, they became

less and less structured starting around the time of the Women’s Liberation Movement and other

events that occurred in the 1960s. The Women’s Liberation Movement is the biggest part of my

aunt’s schooling that stuck out to me. This movement of women gaining rights and becoming

more free thinking individuals is one of the most pivotal moments of schooling to date as far as

women are concerned.

The idea of the privatization of schooling goes back to shortly after the Revolutionary

War in the 1800s. The reason that most people created and sent their students to private schools

was because they “believed schooling should mold the virtuous citizen” (Spring p. 75). This idea

continued through many years of Aunt Pat’s schooling. Her parents along with other Catholic

parents wanted to create young adults who were similar thinkers to themselves and wanted them

to attend school in a place that upheld the same values as those they were being taught at home.

Although this thinking of creating the virtuous student and citizen occurred early in our country’s

history, the real end of the common school and focus on private schools happened during the

years of religious and conservative presidents: Reagan, Bush, and Clinton (Spring 2011). These

schools were mainly created due to the Supreme Court’s ruling of prayer and religion in public

schools creating a divide in the equal education of all students. These schools were created under

the pretense of religion leaving out large groups of people in the process.

Another social implication of the privatization of schools is the fact that creating a school

solely based on religion left out a whole lot of other people. Aunt Pat talked about only even

knowing or meeting five African Americans at her school. She also talked a lot about how she

never met someone outside of the Catholic faith until college. Creating private, religious based
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schools in itself created a giant gap in the equity and equality of education. My aunt (and

honestly myself) was sent to a private, Catholic school by her parents to expand and elaborate on

the beliefs that she held in her household. She was pushed into the mindset of her ancestors

without a choice and in the process never got to meet or experience people that were different

from her. This to me is the true issue with the traditional values of Catholic schools because we

do not allow for expansion of ideas or beliefs. This is a similar theme in the ideas surrounding

the Women’s Liberation Movement.

My aunt went to school at a crucial time for women. She was in a private school

suppressed by traditionalism as well as the fact that women had to act a certain way. One big part

of history that was created when my aunt started high school in 1966 was the National

Organization for Women (NOW). This organization had its hands in the fight for the rights of

women in schools during its first years of activism (Spring 2011). One piece of this fight that I

found most interesting was NOW “urging parents, counselors, and teachers to encourage women

to pursue higher education and professional education” (Spring p. 411). My aunt talked about

how only about half of her class went to college after high school in 1970, which was a steep

contrast to my graduating class where it was almost unacceptable to not go to college in 2013.

Women were suppressed in so many different ways before and during the 1960s and it crept into

their education creating larger and larger gaps between men and women in society.

Talking to Aunt Pat was so eye opening for me. She grew up in a very interesting and

diverse city in New York and never met people that were different from her until she went to

college. Her very traditional school put her in a box of set beliefs and did not allow people that

were different from her in any way to get into that box. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Aunt

Pat began to meet more people who were different from her and was influenced by the demand
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for women’s rights during the Women’s Liberation Movement. Historically women have been

thought of as less than men and their education was less valued, all of which began to change

during this movement. Aunt Pat is a strong, independent woman who broke free of the traditional

values held by her family and used that freedom to build herself a beautiful life.
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Appendix

Interview Questions

1. Where did you attend school? (Names & Cities)

2. What type of school did you attend?

3. Tell me about the climate at your schools. How were the people? How did they interact

with each other?

4. Tell me about the culture at your schools. What were the traditions? What were some of

the unspoken rules?

5. What were your classes like?

6. What were the expectations and requirements of you at school?

7. What major political, social, philosophical, and economic events happened during the

years you were in school?

8. How did those events affect your education and career path?

9. What were your classes in high school preparing you for? (HS, vocation, trade)

10. Talk about your college experience.

11. What did your family and friends think of your going to college? Was this typical of the

ideology of that time?

12. What was the community like in your schools?

13. Who was involved in your schooling? Why?

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Resources

Spring, Joel H. The American School: a Global Context from the Puritans to the Obama Era.

McGraw-Hill, 2011.