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wyld_dandelyonI read Shweta Narayan's post at http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/95168.html, and it woke uncomfortable childhood memories.
I had a pretty normal childhood, from what I remember, up through first grade. I went to the school my parents picked for me, and made friends, and, so far as I can remember, was just one of the students, neither special nor pariah.
Then, I switched schools between first and second grade. Unlike when my daughter switched school at third grade, and went to a school that had no first and second grade, so everybody was new, this meant I was coming in to the school as an outsider.
Worse, I admitted I liked school. I scored well on tests. I read all the time. I didn't bitch about my mother not hemming my uniform skirt to exactly the popular length. Oh--and my first teacher at that school was a woman who harassed me because I already knew cursive handwriting, who thought I was arrogant or something for using a skill my first grade teacher had given me--required of me--and punished me for it.
The kids took their cues from the teacher. I was harassed and teased and ostracized. I remember hiding behind a couch, crying, wishing I'd never been born, or would die (soon) of some deadly disease. Later teachers were more friendly, but that didn't help me get along with the other kids--quite the opposite.
Eventually, my family moved. Just across town, but a new school. A new start. I hoped, maybe, things would be different. But they weren't. Once again I was a new kid coming into an established system, but this time I started with a handicap--the me who existed then was afraid that any kid my age who deigned to speak with me was planning to harass me. I also lacked social skills due to being ostracized at the previous school. And I suspect there were other factors--as an adult I've come to realize that most people recognize and remember faces much, much better than I do. And it really doesn't help if you can't remember the person you met yesterday.
I became "Martian Murphy Beep Beep".
Happily, I don't spend a lot of time reliving my childhood. I don't talk about it much. I'm much happier as an adult.
So why am I telling you about it now?
I think I'm talking about this because the kids in my childhood didn't need me to have a different skin color or a different religion or a foreign accent to decide to make my life miserable. Simply having gone to a different school and having learned things the kids at the new school didn't know yet was enough to start a cascade that ended in me being identified as alien, and given an imagined ethnicity.
I'm not sure how much of what I suffered was due to human nature, and how much was due to American (or perhaps western) culture. But I do know you can't blame institutionalized racism for it.
And I wish I knew how to go from the knowledge of what happened to me, and what happened to people like Shweta Narayan, and create a world where no grade school kid is ever again hounded into wishing she (or he) had never been born.
I had a pretty normal childhood, from what I remember, up through first grade. I went to the school my parents picked for me, and made friends, and, so far as I can remember, was just one of the students, neither special nor pariah.
Then, I switched schools between first and second grade. Unlike when my daughter switched school at third grade, and went to a school that had no first and second grade, so everybody was new, this meant I was coming in to the school as an outsider.
Worse, I admitted I liked school. I scored well on tests. I read all the time. I didn't bitch about my mother not hemming my uniform skirt to exactly the popular length. Oh--and my first teacher at that school was a woman who harassed me because I already knew cursive handwriting, who thought I was arrogant or something for using a skill my first grade teacher had given me--required of me--and punished me for it.
The kids took their cues from the teacher. I was harassed and teased and ostracized. I remember hiding behind a couch, crying, wishing I'd never been born, or would die (soon) of some deadly disease. Later teachers were more friendly, but that didn't help me get along with the other kids--quite the opposite.
Eventually, my family moved. Just across town, but a new school. A new start. I hoped, maybe, things would be different. But they weren't. Once again I was a new kid coming into an established system, but this time I started with a handicap--the me who existed then was afraid that any kid my age who deigned to speak with me was planning to harass me. I also lacked social skills due to being ostracized at the previous school. And I suspect there were other factors--as an adult I've come to realize that most people recognize and remember faces much, much better than I do. And it really doesn't help if you can't remember the person you met yesterday.
I became "Martian Murphy Beep Beep".
Happily, I don't spend a lot of time reliving my childhood. I don't talk about it much. I'm much happier as an adult.
So why am I telling you about it now?
I think I'm talking about this because the kids in my childhood didn't need me to have a different skin color or a different religion or a foreign accent to decide to make my life miserable. Simply having gone to a different school and having learned things the kids at the new school didn't know yet was enough to start a cascade that ended in me being identified as alien, and given an imagined ethnicity.
I'm not sure how much of what I suffered was due to human nature, and how much was due to American (or perhaps western) culture. But I do know you can't blame institutionalized racism for it.
And I wish I knew how to go from the knowledge of what happened to me, and what happened to people like Shweta Narayan, and create a world where no grade school kid is ever again hounded into wishing she (or he) had never been born.
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Date: 2010-09-23 01:18 am (UTC)When my daughter was miserable in second grade, we talked about home-schooling her, though I was working full time and she didn't have enough reading skills yet to really be able to study on her own. She didn't want to give up her time socializing with other kids every day.
Happily, we got her into a school that suited her MUCH better the next year. And that school was able to give her opportunities and lessons I never could have alone.