St. Bartholomew Interparochial School would better be titled "St. Bartholomew Interparochial Rip-Off." I attended this ungodly, abusive Catholic school and was appalled by it at the time, and am appalled by it when I think of it yet. St. Bart's is academically inferior to the area's public schools and is behind in almost every single subject - by a few grade levels.
Let me repeat that. St. Bart's is behind other area schools by a few grade levels. Not by one grade level. Not by two.By a few. I remember doing math and history in St. Bart's that I had already had three YEARS earlier in public school. St. Bart's was behind by three grade levels. Some of my St. Bart's classmates were put into remedial classes once they graduated and went to public school because they could not pass basic skills tests.
Keep in mind: St. Bart's charges parents TUITION for their children to attend this school... And then the children graduate and end up in remedial classes to catch up to their better-educated public-school peers??!!!
Then there is the regime that runs the place, a group of sadistic nuns that could have trained the Gestapo called the Religious Teachers Filippini. Do not let the "Filippini" part of their name fool you - they are an Italian order, not one from the genteel Philippines. The Filippini Nuns are an off-the-wall, smolderingly angry Italian order that plays favorites with Italian students, even the most barbaric and ill-behaved Italian brats, and discriminates relentlessly against children who are of Northern European ancestry. Apparently these nuns - somehow - believe that the children of non-Italians were born to be human scapegoats. And scapegoat us they did. Children in this school are subjected to corporal punishment that is like something out of the Inquisition - punched, hit, beaten, berated, yelled at, screamed at, put down, ridiculed, even made to kneel on the floor for an hour at a time as a punishment for some infraction, especially if your name is O'Malley or Dietrich or Lindstrom. I am surprised, in retrospect, not to have witnessed an auto-da-fe perpetrated by the nuns there too, but it wouldn't shock me to hear that was on the Religious Teachers Filippini's agenda if some blonde, blue-eyed, non-Italian child ever blinked the wrong way. I saw one Nordic-looking lad beaten just for smiling once - that was all it took to set the nun off and get her to go ape-s* ballistic on the poor boy. She beat him until he was flat onto the floor. Had he been dark-haired and borne an Italian surname, this probably would never have happened.
It makes you wonder, doesn't it, just what goes on in this bizarre order of nuns' mother house, that they come out of their convent with the kind of training that makes them think it's "okay" to physically and emotionally torture the children of their own parishioners. What do these nuns think Jesus would do if he were in their shoes - do they think he would have beaten children over nothing, too? As examples go, the ones THESE nuns set for kids were an abomination. Additionally, a lawsuit was brought against a Filippini nun in another New Jersey school who was mistreating a student, but somehow those charges were dropped.in light of the fact that so many victims of Catholic cruelties are paid off, all hearing that those charges were dropped did for me was make me wonder if that student's parents were bribed.
I know that people have tried to approach the Archdiocese of Newark about this awful school. They have tried to approach the archbishop. I even tried, at one point, to contact the Vatican to request that something be done, that at least they investigate this order of nuns to see what has made them the way they are, but all to no avail. NOBODY in the Catholic hierarchy will address the issue of how badly children were, and no doubt still are, treated at St. Bartholomew Interparochial School in Scotch Plains, NJ. Nobody in the Catholic hierarchy will even respond to email about this school. Typical of the Catholics, they just can't get off their pathetic a*es and CONFRONT THEMSELVES about it, let alone face the fact that they screwed up in the way they treated children - yet again - this time at St. Bart's. If any Catholic school is forced to go out of business, I sincerely hope that it's this one. St. Bartholomew Interparochial School's reign of terror has got to end sometime, so I hope the fools in the archdiocese wake up and close the complete and total mess of a place down SOON.
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