We watched the movie Doubt last night. It starred Meyrl Street as Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the “. . . the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline. I remember well the type.
I started the first grade at St. Joseph’s in 1957, back when Mass was in Latin and corporal punishment was the norm in Catholic schools. The nuns terrified us all in the first grade. Mother Superior was like the commandant of a prisoner of war camp. Discipline was handled in the classroom with a whack across the knuckles with a wooded ruler. If that didn’t work, you would be sent to Mother Superior’s office. She had a leather strop to beat the children with. No one I knew ever needed a second trip.
Rain of shine, we would play outside during recess. You were not supposed to get your clothes wet in the snow, but of course it happened. One boy in my class broke the rules, and he was forced to stand on the heater in our classroom with a towel wrapped around him like a skirt while his pants dried next to him. Humiliating, yes, and painful to spend hours in stocking feet standing on the metal grate while we continued our “education.”
Talking in class was probably the worst breach of discipline. There were two first grade classes at St. Joseph’s, and one day things must have gotten out of hand in the other. The nun teaching that class paraded three kids from room to room, explaining they had been talking in class and asked if we felt they should they should cut off their tongues for punishment. I remember sitting there as the three were told to stick out their tongues, scissors at the ready, while we decided their fate. Our class decided they should cut their tongues off, probably because we thought that was what the nuns wanted and we were too frightened not to.
All three were told to cut off their tongues, and all three, in tears, hesitated. The nun told them again to do it. Two of them just stood there crying. But the third, a boy, with his eyes closed and shaking with fear, cut off the tip of his tongue. The nuns huddled up briefly, speaking in French. Jeanine Bouche sat next to me in class. Jeanine spoke French and normally she would tell us later what the nuns were talking about. She didn’t say a word. No doubt fearing for her own tongue.
Brian's Blog 
Isn’t it funny how memories like this stay with you? …for life. Catholic school was a mystery to me when I was growing up. I was raised as a Methodist. There were Catholic kids who came over to public school at around eight grade. It wasn’t until I grew up I learned the unique doctrines and traditions of different Christian denominations.
The school I went to still practiced corporal punishment in the form of a paddle. Bend over, grab your ankles, get three stinging blows to the butt (or the backs of your legs if he missed). The principal was a large man and seemed to delight in administering this “correction.” That is until he ran into the wrong Iowa farm boy, who took the paddle from him and beat him with it. He wasn’t so anxious after that. His invincibility was shattered in the eyes of the students. That’s usually the case when bullies are confronted, or misguided authority challenged …they fall apart.
I like this post of yours …there’s something visceral and sinister about it, and I think you showed a restraint describing it I don’t think I’m capable of.
I get the heebee-geebees every time I think about that day. Can you imagine what if must have felt like to actually cut the tip of your thongue off? Later in life, I got another bad feeling when I realized the power an adult had over a child and the horrible way she used it, all in the name of Christ. In a way, much more evil because the physical wounds heal.
“Can you imagine what if must have felt like to actually cut the tip of your thumb off?” That’s precisely the point, isn’t it? The problem is I CAN imagine it! And I CAN imagine standing on a hot steel heater grate.
“Later in life, I got another bad feeling when I realized the power an adult had over a child and the horrible way she used it, all in the name of Christ” I know some young children and I can’t tell you how jarring it was to me to realize you can fill their heads with anything! You have to be constantly vigilant what you expose them to, because some things they will never be able to erase. It is not always physical things like you witnessed, but vile stories passed off as some kind of moral compass.
I remember in Sunday school as a small child hearing the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham binds his son (about 10 years old), trusses him up on a wood pile and is going to stab him because of a voice he thinks is God tells him to. Just in the nick of time, an “angel of the lord” swoops down and tells Abraham not to do it, it’s all some kind of sick, sadistic celestial joke. I had nightmares about it. This was passed off to me and other children as some form of moral instruction. I suspect it is still taught every Sunday to kids around the country. If they taught this in public school they would be arrested for child abuse!
I dunno …I just thought it was barbaric! In other biblical stories children weren’t as lucky as Isaac ..no swooping angel to stop the madness before 40 of them were mauled and eaten by “she-bears” for making fun of a bald guy, or other delusional fathers sacrificing their daughter because they made a deal with God to win a battle.
Must have been tired, wrote thumb but meant tongue. The tongue was snipped for talking…