2003 03 20

I'm likely one of the few people who's experienced primary and secondary education from both sides of the fence. I went to both a Catholic grade and high school, as well as a public grade and high school.

In Catholic high school I learned how to dislike and fear my peers, what it was like to have a best friend. how to appreciate the wonders of having a uniform to wear every day, religious objection, atheism, hypocrisy, class differentiation between the haves and have-nots, and what an incrowd was.

In public high school I learned how to skip class, smoke in the washroom, how entertaining it could be to sneak alcohol into the building (I was legal drinking age that year - 19 in Ontario), the joys of a broader mind, what being cool meant, what having another best friend meant, and that teachers were human too (Mr. Gillis got wasted on the class trip to Montreal - more so than any of the students).

I preferred public school at that time, because it was a place I had chosen to go. I did it without parental permission, because I needed another year of high-school and didn't want to spend one more minute in the confines of Catholicism, a religion I'd long since lost, ahem, faith in, or any desire to be a part of. I just up and went.