Individual Interview 2 – Danny Cohen
Date: 2/22/2017
Type: Individual Interview with former St. Joe student currently at Notre Dame
User: Sean O’Brien is a junior at Notre Dame studying Accounting, originally from South Bend, IN. He attended St. Joe High School, a private school in South Bend. Young Jae and I conducted an interview in North Dining Hall, where we asked him some questions about his reasons for choosing St. Joe, and his perception of Clay High School.
Summary of Interview:
Entice:
What enticed him to attend St. Joe versus the other options?
- Religion: Catholic education was important to him
- Best academic high school in the area
- College Preparedness: 20+ kids to Notre Dame every year
- Family ties; multiple relatives went to St. Joe, including mom
- Determined from very early on that he was going to St. Joe
- Only one of two private schools in South Bend
It was clear from early on that Sean was going to St. Joe. With the family ties, Catholic education, and strong academics, it was the clear choice for him. In both the two interviews I conducted about high schools, family ties played a major role in determining where the student would go to school.
Enter:
Sean didn’t describe specifically how he began his high school experience, other talking a little bit about the feeder nature of education, where he went to an elementary and middle school that led into St. Joe. He is originally from Clay Township, and lived across from an elementary school that fed into Clay, so he had a lot of friends at Clay.
Engage:
Sean played football in high school, and took 5 AP classes in his time at St. Joe.
We didn’t speak much about his exit and extension after high school, but he went to Notre Dame and would very likely send his kid to a high school similar to St Joe in the future.
One of the interesting points that Sean touched on was the voucher program, which is a program that allows parents to send their kids to Catholic Schools for a greatly reduced price. He suggested that this might lead to some students who would normally attend a public school instead going to a private Catholic School, for the perceived superior education.
Sean also described the public school system in South Bend as being poorly run and managed, although he wasn’t able to go into a lot of details about that. It seems to be more of a talking point that public high schools in South Bend are bad, rather than actually one supported by hard facts.
Sean also discussed the issue of IB and AP, and why IB was perceived as being superior. He described the way in which IB candidates are separated from the rest of the school, and pursuing the honors track. However, he also conceded that the idea of an IB program is actually a farce in South Bend, since so few kids actually get the diploma. He called the IB program “a joke”, since the classes weren’t any more difficult than other classes.
Sean also talked about how sports were such a significant factor for parents when choosing where to send their kids. For parents of athletes, a major consideration for them is the quality of the sports team at the school, which I didn’t consider a potentially major factor until our interview with Sean.
There are definitely issues of race with regard to Clay’s enrollment, and Sean addressed how the school went from being predominantly white to much more diverse. He didn’t specify why this could have an effect on enrollment numbers, but this is definitely something we will look more into.
Significant Quotes:
“My friends chose Clay because it’s right by their house”
“A lot of professors send their kids to Adams, since it’s in the ‘Old Money Neighborhood’”
“I don’t think Clay has the thug culture that the others do. It’s probably one of the safer ones”
“Adams sends kids to Ivy League schools”
“Public education in South Bend is… very poorly run, and there are a lot of issues there”
“The schools are not managed well, some have problems with gangs and violence. That’s the perception, that they’re not great”
“The best public school around is Adams, because they have the IB program. They’re the best off of the four public high schools.”
“Back when you couldn’t go to every school, Clay was the best public school”