So you are from Cincinnati (not unusual in attendance at NDA) and your parents have seen the ad
in the Catholic Telegraph Register for Notre Dame Academy, right across
the river on Fifth Street. The ad looks
good, just what their daughter needs!
The selling points are expressed in the Notre Dame Academy Bulletin
which, upon request, your parents received in the mail. They read in the Foreward the following:
The object of Notre Dame Academy is
to train its students to realize that the end of man (sic) is the “pursuit of
perfection through communion with God, his (sic) fellow-creatures and nature,
by means of knowledge and conduct, of faith, hope, admiration and love.” Its curriculum is adapted to combine breadth
and training with free development of individuality in order to make its
students serious, purposeful, courageous, strong Catholic women. Religious influences are brought to bear upon
the students to aid in solving the educational problems of the day.
All the needs of the
students—physical, intellectual, moral—receive the attention that circumstances
require.
The Course of Instruction embraces
the Primary, the Intermediate, the Grammar, the Junior High, the Commercial,
and the Academic Departments.
Fast forward to 2014, just 84 years later. Much of the Foreward still rings true—that’s
still what we are all about. The last
paragraph really is the only thing that places this piece in the distant past
. The Commercial school discontinued in
1934 and all sections of the grade school in 1937. By that time the high school, the “Academic
Department,” needed much more space and the surrounding Catholic grade schools
welcomed NDA’s former “pupils”.
As a sort of post script, note the elaborate ND on this
cover of the bulletin—very typical of the identifications used in the
period. Lovely and elegant.
