Growing Good Catholic Girls: Education and Convent Life in Australia

by Trimingham Jack Christine

"Based on interviews with young Australian girls who lived in Sacred Heart convent boarding schools between 1940 and 1965, this illuminating study provides insight into the Catholic model of education before Vatican II, when obedience, conformity, and repression were used to teach young girls how to be ladies and become “good.” The school’s social order and the ways that students responded to the regimen of study and religion are explored. The narratives of one particular school provide a critique of gender fashioning, traditional Catholic symbols and myths, and effective methods of education."

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003