School and its effects- real or imagined?

Someone recently expressed surprise that she managed to come out of the school system unscarred. I immediately replied to her that everyone who goes to school comes out scarred in some way- no one escapes it. We all manifest it or display it in different ways.
So I thought I would share some of the ways that we get hurt in schools and the effects of it. This is by no means an exhaustive list for two main reasons- I do not think that we could ever know all the ways that young people are affected by school since they are not always able to talk about it , and secondly the effects are changing due to changing tides and times.

Therein lies the first item on the list, it is hard to express ourselves and our feelings -young people are not allowed to voice their opinions and ideas in school. How many of us had great ideas about a myriad of things- how things worked, how to solve problems, what we wanted to really learn about, how to make things better and more fun in the classroom, how to befriend anyone in the school, etc, etc. Yet there was little room for us to speak up. Sometimes it was because we should not threaten the teacher's authority and knowledge; or we shouldn't "buck the system"; or children are seen and not heard; or there just wasn't time for exploring and figuring out and having fun while we learned lest we do not finish the syllabus on time to pass the required exam.
How does that affect us now? Do we always speak up when we should or do we squash our thoughts and words before we even finish the thought because that old recording in our minds still tells us it is not safe to speak up. Or do we shrug our shoulders with that old feeling of 'what's the use saying anything'.?

Few of us are fully aware of how smart we really are, or could acknowledge and act on the potential we have to be brilliant. Sure, we seem to be doing well. We have good jobs, we get along in society, we have friends and families. Occasionally we may have the opportunity to do something outstanding that makes us feel really good about ourselves and remind us of our capabilities. But instead of holding on to the reality that we can reach much further than we are at this present moment, we admire those who seem to be achieving way beyond what appeared to be their potential and silently wish that we could do the same. So many people say to me I wish I had the courage to do what you do. Or they express such admiration for my preserve and determination and success. And my response is always -anything I can do you can do too.

I notice how our young people's spirits are broken with each day that they attend school. They start off at the pre-school age anxious to go to school to learn and play with their friends and think that it is going to be fun. And by the time they are ready to leave primary school it is a struggle to get them out of bed in the morning, except on holidays. I call it emotional dulling of our children. They are disillusioned with learning . The hopelessness grows with each time they are cut down in school. The despair deepens with every experience of failure they are exposed to, even the subtle and indirect mechanisms by which that sense of being a failure is relayed to them. And with the dying joy of life and learning comes the cynicism.

Have you ever noticed how confused you feel in what should be a simple situation? Oh wait , no!! That is part of the problem. You are not allowed to notice how you feel. That would be too much to deal with. It is easier to push it aside and carry on as if you are over that already, as if it doesn't exist. No teacher in a class has the time nor attention at any given moment to support 20+ children to notice how they feel and cope with those feelings effectively. Heck, the teacher cannot afford to notice how he or she feels, let alone try to cope with it.

Consequently we have developed a school system that has developed all kinds of ways to squash, put aside, ignore, make fun of, any feelings that may dare to rear its ugly head in the classroom. Fortunately or unfortunatley, we are now learning so much more about how these feelings interfere with our good thinking and how the patterns of behaviour we have had to adopt to keep those feelings under wraps are not really in our best interest at the least. At the most those patterns are major deterrents to our progress in thinking well in our everyday life, making good decisions about every thing that affects our life, building and maintaining good relationships with all kinds of people, basically making the world more hopeful and safer for our young people.

Because the experiences happened in school , and we managed to get out of school in one piece, we tend to think that school experiences no longer have an effect on our lives. It is hard to understand the indirect effects. Suffice it to say at this point that every little piece of my mind that was taken up with feeling bad from day one of my life, is one little piece that is not available for good use today.
Think of how many 'little pieces' have been taken up by twelve years of sitting in a classroom and trying to learn.

Co-operation or competition?

Such an unusual event took place this morning that I am still mulling over it and what it actually means. My daughter is doing an art exam , her first "big" exams as a secondary school student. She enrolled in this exam as an independent student, not with the school. This means that she had to find her way to the exam Centre this morning. Her teacher signed up 2 other students with her. When the three of them got to the venue there was a lot of confusion about the conducting of the exam, and there was no official from the examining body to assist them.

One student was accompanied by her art teacher who was able to make some phone calls. According to my daughter in her phone call to me, the art teacher came running back to them , told them that they were at the wrong venue, took her student and left. My daughter and her 2 peers were left to figure out how to get themselves to the new venue and how to represent themselves well enough so that they will not lose the hour of the exam time that had already passed.

Many questions remained in my mind-
Did the teacher not spare a thought about the other students' predicament?

How does a teacher function as a teacher without caring about all students in general? How do we interrupt the pattern of single-mindedness in a profession that is supposed to be concerned about young people in general?

Is the sense of competition so deeply embedded in us, especially in those who are entrusted with the task of seeing that all children learn well? If so, how do we end that vicious cycle?