Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (Sion, Mumbai, India)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article does not satisfy the notability guideline for Biographies.

If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. (See also Wikipedia:Notability)
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. After links have been created, remove this message.
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.
You can assist by editing it now. A how-to guide is available, as is general documentation.
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

This article is about the High School in Sion. For other high schools with this name, see Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. For the painting, see Our Lady of Good Counsel.

Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (located in Sion, Mumbai, India) is one of the oldest Catholic, coeducational schools in Mumbai. The school was founded as a primary school in 1939, and became a high school in 1958. Although run by the Archdiocese of Mumbai, a majority of students at the school have been non-Christians, chiefly Hindus. The school had a tradition of beginning each day with a spiritual value class, called Moral Science for non-Christians, and Religion for chrisitians.

In the fifties and sixties the school was a famous landmark in Sion, being located atop a hill, and shielded from the road by a massive black stone wall. Students had to climb fifty steps each day, in five flights of ten steps each, to reach the main square where the church is located, before moving on to the assembly hall. Half way up, on the side of the steps, was a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary, set inside a grotto, where you could light a candle. Probably, that statue in the cave still exists.

Our Lady of Good Counsel High School's first headmaster was Mr.William Dias, whose younger brother, Father Sylvester Dias, served as Principal. The duo served the school for nearly three decades since its inception. The school built up a formidable reputation for having one of the best basketball teams in the country in its heyday. To strengthen character-building, and instil elementary emergency and first-aid education, the school also encouraged students to participate in the boy-scout/girl-guide and Red Cross movements. The school also built up an Interact movement (under the Rotaract club) to spread social and community consciousness, besides holding regular sports and cultural classes that provided an outlet for the extra-curricular talents, including music and dance, of its students.

Sometime in the sixties, the school instituted a system under which four competitive "houses" were set up. Students in all secondary classes were divided into these four houses, named after famous Indian literary and scientific figures : Bhabha (identified by a yellow badge), Naidu (red badge), Raman (green badge) and Tagore (blue badge). These "houses" served to foster a competitive spirit among students across academic, sports and cultural activities. It is not known if these systems still continue or whether they have undergone change.