May 23, 2025 • 15 mins
For Shop Talk, Coach Bill tells the story of learning about "church schools" from his football players. It's a sad history that is not well known.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army and normal folks.
Shop Talk number fifty three. Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's a little aggressive, but I like it. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
If George was here, I wouldn't have to do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You can't mention him every shop talk. It's gonna get weird.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't care. I love George. He's hilarious, he's cute
as it could be. I don't know where he came from.
So anyway, this shop talk is church schools? What church schools?
It's a term I learned my second, first or second
year at Manassas, and the phrase itself taught me a
(00:44):
massive lesson that I quickly want to share with you
on shop Talk number fifty three, which we'll get into
right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Welcome back, everybody.
(01:06):
Shop Talk number fifty three. Church schools? What is that?
So my second year of Nassas, we put together a
new schedule for the coming fall, and Manassas typically played
a lot of schools from the urban area inside the city,
(01:26):
and I wanted the kids to get exposure to other
kind of kids and other kind of programs, and so
I scheduled on our schedule a couple of private schools
out east. And when the schedule came out, one of
my players came to me and he said, coach, we're
playing church schools. And I looked at him and I'm like,
(01:49):
what on earth are you talking about a church school?
What is that? And he said, I don't want to
be disparaging to the school. So I was just say,
I'll make up. Let's call it First Baptist Academy. We're
playing First Baptist Academy FBA. They're church school The other
(02:10):
ones are like private Christian schools or college prep schools,
private schools, non public schools, day schools, day schools another
good example. But my inner city kids call them church schools.
And I said, church schools. What a weird thing to
call schools church schools.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I had never heard it until you told me this story.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I've never heard of it. So I started kind of
asking around adults. Here's what I found out, and I
looked it up. In Memphis at that time, there were
forty nine private schools, some K through six, some pre
K through eighth, some high school only, some pre k
(02:55):
through twelve, some parochial, some small private Christian schools, some
really non denominational school some college preparatory schools. But anyway,
there was fifty call it fifty five. It was in
the fifties, and I looked up their charter dates and
(03:17):
all but six, so call it, you know, fifty out
of fifty six, all but six they're charters were nineteen
sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine. Bussing. So what happened in
the urban areas is when bussing started and kids started
(03:38):
getting bussed to different community public schools, the largely white
population from these urban areas didn't like that, and so
they needed, they wanted a place to go to school
(03:59):
outside of the pub book school system. And at that time,
back in those days, there were certainly parochial schools, and
there were some really expensive college prep schools. But the
average person who wasn't Catholic or couldn't afford the really
expensive schools but didn't want to do with bussing, was
(04:23):
faced with an issue. And so what happened was churches
all of the city set up schools, and they were
basically white flight schools, largely outside of the inner city area,
sometimes in the suburbs. And so these churches set up
(04:47):
schools so their children didn't have to be bussed. So
began what I believe to be the disintegration of many
urban school districts in some of our larger cities. Because
along with that exodus to the church schools left the money,
(05:11):
the booster club, the parents who could be active supporting
the schools, the support, and the diversity. And here we are,
some fifty years later, and what's left is once again
largely segregated by race and socioeconomics and class, urban schools
(05:36):
against the backdrop of many private what the inner city
people might call church schools. The thing that bothers me
the most about it is one of my friends once said,
he repeated this, I think, I'm sure he's not the
author of it, but the most segregated day in the
(05:57):
United States is Sunday, and it should be the least
segregated day. If we are called to engage in our community,
help our fellow man, serve those less blessed than us.
How is it that Sunday is when we're most segregated?
(06:19):
But maybe a bigger question is how is it that
there's a population of people all over the urban areas
in our cities that refer to the schools that our
children go to as church schools. Church schools, the very
place where everybody, regardless of race or saysioeconomic status, should
(06:42):
feel safe and included, ends up being the nomenclature for
the very segregation that has crippled the public education inside
many of urban areas. Church schools. I almost wish I'd
(07:04):
never heard the phrase, because as I look deeper and
deeper into it, it is wrought with segregation, disenfranchisement and
loss for kids in our city, and white flight, and
(07:26):
it has developed into what I think is destructive for
our society, that we have a largely less fortunate public
going to large urban city districts, and anybody else who
(07:48):
could afford something different out in the outlining areas of
suburbs going to church schools. Look up the charters of
the schools in your town in the city, and ask
yourself what was the beginning of that? And certainly here
(08:11):
fifty years later, I don't think there's nearly the racial
component to it that there was at the beginning. I
think we've evolved as a culture a little bit, but
it doesn't mean that folks that are still in urban
school districts when they hear the name of your school,
(08:33):
or they think of the place that your kids go
to school that they don't think of them as church schools,
and the work we need to do to fix that.
What do you think, Alex?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
A couple of things that reminds me of Bob Mazakowski.
If you remember he said, Bob.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
He's I want to hang out with Bob. He's one
of the funniest guys in the world.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
We can make that happen.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
But here he's like, you see the you know, the
brochures for these private schools, and they always got the
black cat on there, and it's like you going to
the school and you can't find them, and maybe maybe
like Jamal's in there, like they got one Jamal and
the basketball team.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
But like, Bob is hilarious, but that is so true.
You see the brochures and it's got an Asian kid
or a Hispanic kid or a black kid and a
couple of white kids, and they're nice little church school shirts.
And then you go to the school and you're like,
where are these guys. It's funny. Bob said that, yeah,
(09:34):
and he said also did say and people need to
hear this in the right Vein. You know, you got
a Jamal on the basketball team, and you gotta and
and you got to Albert Washington on the football team,
and they're on the brochures. But when you go to
the school assembly doesn't look like that.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Two other thoughts too. I mean, when you.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Have this happen, you've also to all these schools of power,
a lot of the political power, the.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Money, the power, the support.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Also, just like we've talked about with like I think
about it with the rescue dogs, with the All Fours
Rescue League. You know here in Memphis, it's like you
wouldn't have this happen in your neighborhood, or it wouldn't
happen in Germantown to have all these stray dogs running
around terrorizing, right, and these you know, frankly white people
with political power. You know, nobody cares that this is
(10:28):
happening in the inner city. And nobody cares that some
of these schools are terrible and it's really not supposed
to be a white black you know thing, and it
shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I bet they care where the church schools are located. Yeah,
we've got to fix this. It's so messed up. We
have to look in the mirror and be honest about
ourselves about where a lot of this stuff started. And
although you know, you can't repent for another man's sins,
(11:01):
and likewise, you know, in twenty twenty five, if you're
going to a quote church school that was started in
sixty eight, you know why and how that church that
church school was founded, doesn't That doesn't mean you share
that same viewpoint from sixty years before. However, we do
(11:25):
have to be honest enough with ourselves about the perception
that was left behind that still exists. And if we
are honest with ourselves and we'll understand that a little bit,
we might understand why there is fear, distrust, disenfranchisement, and
(11:49):
all the rest in many of our inner cities.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It was interesting, is actually my high school Santy Nasius
in Chicago, Sant Nacia Church School. But I don't know
what you're as started, but they they would intentionally ask,
I mean, it's an affluent school, like the families who
are going to afford it to pay more like four
to five thousand dollars a year more to help other
kids go. It's literally like twenty five percent of the
(12:14):
kids that are Natius or based on a full ride
you know from that. So it's I mean, there are
things you can do now to rectify this problem with
church schools, and it's especially incumbent on those who are
more affluent to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, and that aid does not need to be requisite
on how well you shoot a basketball or how fast
you run a football, And unfortunately many schools use that
aid for their own benefit or.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ours is purely academic.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Was funny, is like we weren't that good at sports
because it's such an academic school.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, good for y'all. But what I'm saying is there
are a bunch of quote church schools, there are a
bunch of parochial schools, and there are a bunch of
college schools who do that very thing under the guise
of aren't we doing a good thing for poor folks?
But when you look at who they're helping out, what
are they trading that hope for?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So? Ours was so bad?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Like when we were losing in a basketball game, the
students would charts cheering, you're gonna work for us.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Okay, that's not a cheer illustrates exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
What not at all.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
But I'm saying like we were so good about bringing
students in. Not for athletic reasons that our team was bad.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But consider the cheer. I just consider the cheer. Yeah,
oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
We should just end this episode before I get more inappropriate, y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
The whole idea behind this shop Talk is not to
make anybody feel guilty about where they send their kids
to school. It's to give you perspective and why there
is perspective about the segregation in our school systems that
is no longer segregation among districts, and is segregation among
(14:07):
public and private and parochial schools. And I think it's
important to understand what others think about what we're doing
and the history about their perspective where it comes from,
because that helps us to understand how to bridge gaps.
And that's the whole point bind church schools.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
There you go, Thanks for bringing us back home. Bill.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's it. So Shop Talk number fifty three, let's try
to eradicate the mentality of church schools by being honest
with ourselves and recognizing maybe the sins of the past.
If you like this episode, please rate and review it.
If you have any ideas for shop Talk, you can
(14:50):
email me any time at Bill at normal Folks dot us.
I'll respond and if you have an idea for guests,
send them to us. Alex will talk to them and
hopefully get them on.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
What else. Joined the Something, I don't know, I feel tired.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I think we're good to wrap it up. Join something, Yeah,
Join the army and normal folks out of us. Subscribe, Yeah,
become a premium member.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
All those things, yeah, any and all of these things
will help us grow. Shop Talk and army and normal folks,
and army and normal dead folks, an army of teenagers.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Army of normal teenagers that normal. That episode isn't out either.
You're talking about all these all right?
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Shop Talk number fifty three. We'll see you guys next
week
Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army and normal folks.
Shop Talk number fifty three. Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's a little aggressive, but I like it. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
If George was here, I wouldn't have to do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You can't mention him every shop talk. It's gonna get weird.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't care. I love George. He's hilarious, he's cute
as it could be. I don't know where he came from.
So anyway, this shop talk is church schools? What church schools?
It's a term I learned my second, first or second
year at Manassas, and the phrase itself taught me a
(00:44):
massive lesson that I quickly want to share with you
on shop Talk number fifty three, which we'll get into
right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Welcome back, everybody.
(01:06):
Shop Talk number fifty three. Church schools? What is that?
So my second year of Nassas, we put together a
new schedule for the coming fall, and Manassas typically played
a lot of schools from the urban area inside the city,
(01:26):
and I wanted the kids to get exposure to other
kind of kids and other kind of programs, and so
I scheduled on our schedule a couple of private schools
out east. And when the schedule came out, one of
my players came to me and he said, coach, we're
playing church schools. And I looked at him and I'm like,
(01:49):
what on earth are you talking about a church school?
What is that? And he said, I don't want to
be disparaging to the school. So I was just say,
I'll make up. Let's call it First Baptist Academy. We're
playing First Baptist Academy FBA. They're church school The other
(02:10):
ones are like private Christian schools or college prep schools,
private schools, non public schools, day schools, day schools another
good example. But my inner city kids call them church schools.
And I said, church schools. What a weird thing to
call schools church schools.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I had never heard it until you told me this story.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I've never heard of it. So I started kind of
asking around adults. Here's what I found out, and I
looked it up. In Memphis at that time, there were
forty nine private schools, some K through six, some pre
K through eighth, some high school only, some pre k
(02:55):
through twelve, some parochial, some small private Christian schools, some
really non denominational school some college preparatory schools. But anyway,
there was fifty call it fifty five. It was in
the fifties, and I looked up their charter dates and
(03:17):
all but six, so call it, you know, fifty out
of fifty six, all but six they're charters were nineteen
sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine. Bussing. So what happened in
the urban areas is when bussing started and kids started
(03:38):
getting bussed to different community public schools, the largely white
population from these urban areas didn't like that, and so
they needed, they wanted a place to go to school
(03:59):
outside of the pub book school system. And at that time,
back in those days, there were certainly parochial schools, and
there were some really expensive college prep schools. But the
average person who wasn't Catholic or couldn't afford the really
expensive schools but didn't want to do with bussing, was
(04:23):
faced with an issue. And so what happened was churches
all of the city set up schools, and they were
basically white flight schools, largely outside of the inner city area,
sometimes in the suburbs. And so these churches set up
(04:47):
schools so their children didn't have to be bussed. So
began what I believe to be the disintegration of many
urban school districts in some of our larger cities. Because
along with that exodus to the church schools left the money,
(05:11):
the booster club, the parents who could be active supporting
the schools, the support, and the diversity. And here we are,
some fifty years later, and what's left is once again
largely segregated by race and socioeconomics and class, urban schools
(05:36):
against the backdrop of many private what the inner city
people might call church schools. The thing that bothers me
the most about it is one of my friends once said,
he repeated this, I think, I'm sure he's not the
author of it, but the most segregated day in the
(05:57):
United States is Sunday, and it should be the least
segregated day. If we are called to engage in our community,
help our fellow man, serve those less blessed than us.
How is it that Sunday is when we're most segregated?
(06:19):
But maybe a bigger question is how is it that
there's a population of people all over the urban areas
in our cities that refer to the schools that our
children go to as church schools. Church schools, the very
place where everybody, regardless of race or saysioeconomic status, should
(06:42):
feel safe and included, ends up being the nomenclature for
the very segregation that has crippled the public education inside
many of urban areas. Church schools. I almost wish I'd
(07:04):
never heard the phrase, because as I look deeper and
deeper into it, it is wrought with segregation, disenfranchisement and
loss for kids in our city, and white flight, and
(07:26):
it has developed into what I think is destructive for
our society, that we have a largely less fortunate public
going to large urban city districts, and anybody else who
(07:48):
could afford something different out in the outlining areas of
suburbs going to church schools. Look up the charters of
the schools in your town in the city, and ask
yourself what was the beginning of that? And certainly here
(08:11):
fifty years later, I don't think there's nearly the racial
component to it that there was at the beginning. I
think we've evolved as a culture a little bit, but
it doesn't mean that folks that are still in urban
school districts when they hear the name of your school,
(08:33):
or they think of the place that your kids go
to school that they don't think of them as church schools,
and the work we need to do to fix that.
What do you think, Alex?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
A couple of things that reminds me of Bob Mazakowski.
If you remember he said, Bob.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
He's I want to hang out with Bob. He's one
of the funniest guys in the world.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
We can make that happen.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
But here he's like, you see the you know, the
brochures for these private schools, and they always got the
black cat on there, and it's like you going to
the school and you can't find them, and maybe maybe
like Jamal's in there, like they got one Jamal and
the basketball team.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
But like, Bob is hilarious, but that is so true.
You see the brochures and it's got an Asian kid
or a Hispanic kid or a black kid and a
couple of white kids, and they're nice little church school shirts.
And then you go to the school and you're like,
where are these guys. It's funny. Bob said that, yeah,
(09:34):
and he said also did say and people need to
hear this in the right Vein. You know, you got
a Jamal on the basketball team, and you gotta and
and you got to Albert Washington on the football team,
and they're on the brochures. But when you go to
the school assembly doesn't look like that.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Two other thoughts too. I mean, when you.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Have this happen, you've also to all these schools of power,
a lot of the political power, the.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Money, the power, the support.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Also, just like we've talked about with like I think
about it with the rescue dogs, with the All Fours
Rescue League. You know here in Memphis, it's like you
wouldn't have this happen in your neighborhood, or it wouldn't
happen in Germantown to have all these stray dogs running
around terrorizing, right, and these you know, frankly white people
with political power. You know, nobody cares that this is
(10:28):
happening in the inner city. And nobody cares that some
of these schools are terrible and it's really not supposed
to be a white black you know thing, and it
shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I bet they care where the church schools are located. Yeah,
we've got to fix this. It's so messed up. We
have to look in the mirror and be honest about
ourselves about where a lot of this stuff started. And
although you know, you can't repent for another man's sins,
(11:01):
and likewise, you know, in twenty twenty five, if you're
going to a quote church school that was started in
sixty eight, you know why and how that church that
church school was founded, doesn't That doesn't mean you share
that same viewpoint from sixty years before. However, we do
(11:25):
have to be honest enough with ourselves about the perception
that was left behind that still exists. And if we
are honest with ourselves and we'll understand that a little bit,
we might understand why there is fear, distrust, disenfranchisement, and
(11:49):
all the rest in many of our inner cities.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It was interesting, is actually my high school Santy Nasius
in Chicago, Sant Nacia Church School. But I don't know
what you're as started, but they they would intentionally ask,
I mean, it's an affluent school, like the families who
are going to afford it to pay more like four
to five thousand dollars a year more to help other
kids go. It's literally like twenty five percent of the
(12:14):
kids that are Natius or based on a full ride
you know from that. So it's I mean, there are
things you can do now to rectify this problem with
church schools, and it's especially incumbent on those who are
more affluent to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, and that aid does not need to be requisite
on how well you shoot a basketball or how fast
you run a football, And unfortunately many schools use that
aid for their own benefit or.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ours is purely academic.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Was funny, is like we weren't that good at sports
because it's such an academic school.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, good for y'all. But what I'm saying is there
are a bunch of quote church schools, there are a
bunch of parochial schools, and there are a bunch of
college schools who do that very thing under the guise
of aren't we doing a good thing for poor folks?
But when you look at who they're helping out, what
are they trading that hope for?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So? Ours was so bad?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Like when we were losing in a basketball game, the
students would charts cheering, you're gonna work for us.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Okay, that's not a cheer illustrates exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
What not at all.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
But I'm saying like we were so good about bringing
students in. Not for athletic reasons that our team was bad.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But consider the cheer. I just consider the cheer. Yeah,
oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
We should just end this episode before I get more inappropriate, y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
The whole idea behind this shop Talk is not to
make anybody feel guilty about where they send their kids
to school. It's to give you perspective and why there
is perspective about the segregation in our school systems that
is no longer segregation among districts, and is segregation among
(14:07):
public and private and parochial schools. And I think it's
important to understand what others think about what we're doing
and the history about their perspective where it comes from,
because that helps us to understand how to bridge gaps.
And that's the whole point bind church schools.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
There you go, Thanks for bringing us back home. Bill.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's it. So Shop Talk number fifty three, let's try
to eradicate the mentality of church schools by being honest
with ourselves and recognizing maybe the sins of the past.
If you like this episode, please rate and review it.
If you have any ideas for shop Talk, you can
(14:50):
email me any time at Bill at normal Folks dot us.
I'll respond and if you have an idea for guests,
send them to us. Alex will talk to them and
hopefully get them on.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
What else. Joined the Something, I don't know, I feel tired.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I think we're good to wrap it up. Join something, Yeah,
Join the army and normal folks out of us. Subscribe, Yeah,
become a premium member.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
All those things, yeah, any and all of these things
will help us grow. Shop Talk and army and normal folks,
and army and normal dead folks, an army of teenagers.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Army of normal teenagers that normal. That episode isn't out either.
You're talking about all these all right?
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Shop Talk number fifty three. We'll see you guys next
week
Host
Bill Courtney
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