Six Hundred Catholic School Girls with Mass Hysteria: A Look at the School

In Chalco, Mexico there are half a million people and a lot of these people live in poverty. Chalco is considered to be a vast working-class suburb of Mexico City. At the edge of this city sits a catholic school. The school was founded in 1990 and is run by nuns from the Sisters of Mary. The school is one of ten in Latin America and Asia operated by the charity World Villages for Children. The Sister of Mary is an order that was founded in 1964 in South Korea by an American priest named Monsignor Aloysius Schwartz.

The school is open to girls from ages twelve to eighteen for free. It is known to have very strict rules and only allows students to see their family less than the time of a month. With two weeks in July, ten days during Christmas break and one day usually in May the girls do not have a lot of time with their family.

"Yes, the girls miss their families," addressing this topic, Headmistress Margie Cheong said. "But here we form character. A girl here is no longer an Indian girl from the mountains. She knows how to express herself, she knows how to smile. They have confidence." A lot of the students are from Indian families.

From the outside of the campus you can see metal gates that enclose trimmed hedges, healthy lawns, a swimming pool, sports fields and a gymnasium. An ostrich, the school mascot, walks through the garden.

Inside the school you will find spotless dorms, that sometimes house as many as 40 girls in three story bunk beds. There are donated toys in the rooms but they are untouched. The classes that the students have include choir rehearsal and computer classes.

The parents are happy that their child can have a great education but find the schools rules to be harsh.

"Maybe if we could talk on the phone once a month," said parent Efren Contreras Garcia who is a peasant farmer.