I can confidently say that De la Salle was the worst experience of my life. I will be giving you my truthful, first hand experience as a former student, attending this institution from grades 7 - 10. I left as soon as I realized how toxic the environment was for me. I am writing this solely for informing potential future students and enlightening staff who are unaware of the effects of their words and actions.
Firstly, calling Del a religious school is an understatement. The religious curriculum covers very controversial topics including the disapproval of homosexuality, abortion, and premarital sex. I use the word "disapproval" with complete confidence and certainty, and will explain my reasoning. In grade 10, at 14 years old, my class was required to watch an anti-abortion video, with explicit graphics and messages. There was (and maybe still is) an anti-abortion poster on the outside of a teacher's door. Recently, when discussing sexual health, my friend asked me, "didn't you learn that in health class?" to which I replied, "No, I received a catholic sex education." I remember vividly, a health class exercise was having to rearrange little cut-out labels, such as "sex," "marriage," "dating," "kissing," etc. in the acceptable order. I understand that this aligns with religious beliefs, however, I wanted to emphasize the lack of important sexual health awareness in this class and school. The school had very strict rules about the dress code, to the extent that my friends and I felt very uncomfortable. Understandably, our ties had to be tight and socks had to be pulled up. However, the the fixation that the majority of teachers had with the length of our skirts was absurd. The shortest length permissible was precisely 2 inches above the knee and on multiple occasions, teachers, including male teachers, would measure my skirt with a ruler. This is extremely inappropriate in my opinion. A couple skirt slips resulted in detention and a requirement to wear pants for a week, which was humiliating when every other girl wore skirts and gave the opportunity for ignorant boys to call me "lesbian."
This leads me to discuss briefly the social aspect of De la Salle. The school is not very diverse seeing as the majority of students are Catholic and Caucasian. I can't speak for other grades, but my own class of 2021 consisted of people, specifically boys, who were racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. The N-word and F-slur came out of straight, white boys' mouths more times than I can count. This may be due to the fact that, similar to other private institutions, students are sheltered from the real world. A lot of the exposure and cultural awareness that one would receive in a public school, is missing because of the demographic of Del.
I thought it was important to mention the negative experience I had with one of my religion teachers. He knew me for my whole time at Del and would joke around with me, call me nicknames and was lenient with my tardiness. Then, out of nowhere, he would become aggressive and rude and usually look for something wrong with my uniform and send me for a slip. Half the time our interactions were lighthearted, but I was constantly taken by surprise when he would raise his voice and seem to be angry, immediately after making a joke. I felt that I was disproportionately targeted for my uniform by this specific teacher.
The "tipping point" of my time at this school took place in 2019 when I was in grade 10. In religion class, a student asked why homosexual people can't get married in a catholic church. The religion teacher jokingly replied, "Well I mean, you wouldn't bring a dog into a university would you?" This atrocious comparison left the class, which also consisted of a couple queer students, speechless. I am unaware if this teachers' words were ever reported.
One of my biggest regrets to this day is not speaking out when I was attending this school. I was shy, insecure, and constantly second-guessing if it was really as awful as I perceived. After receiving a public education for the last two years of high school, my eyes were opened to what I had missed out on.
For anyone who believes in self expression, anyone who has a creative mind, who is looking for an open, progressive, welcoming environment, anyone who wants a fun, socially normal high school experience, run as fast as you can, as far as you can, from 131 Farnham Avenue. read more
