So, where exactly am I coming from?

As a parent, we hope for our children to be a certain something which is an amalgamation of the bits we love about ourselves, the parts we like about others and the ideals of the world around us. As a decent human being, we know we can't expect that to happen, no matter how much we try to influence the conditions. Thea is still very imaginative and occupies herself for hours 'doing things with her hands'. She's still behaving like a kid in Montessori playschool. She would play with dough or plasticine, enjoy mixing colours either paint or pencils and dressing up. She isn't vocal about her feelings and opinions. She's not a pushover, just not someone who would really make a stand. But I'm secretly glad we both agree that school sucks. 

Of course it's true that I wasn't a star student. I was a very clever student - what's that they always use for children like me........"Shows great potential". In other words, it means someone who's not willing to achieve (standards set by the school). I was a rebel and was made to feel guilty and bad about it. I don't think rebels are made, they are born. And I shouldn't be made to feel guilty for being born the way I was. If God and the Universe allowed me to Be, then Be I should be. 

I could not have been a star student even if I had 'great potential' to be one. I could not because I would not. Being one would be ratifying the whole idea of schooling. Being a star-student would be subscribing to all the customs, traditions and definitions schools impose on people. It would mean believing that academic competence (3Rs) is superior to other forms of intelligence, it would mean agreeing that people should be classified according to 'First Class, Second Class...last class' and that ranking people by scores is a legitimate way of valuing individuals. It would mean subscribing to the idea that to be 'useful in society' is to have a job. A JOB! Why on earth would our ultimate goal in life be to WORK!!! Our ultimate goal should be the emancipation FROM labour so that we could pursue intellectual, spiritual,  artistic and other talents to make this world more beautiful and life more purposeful!

Conformity would also mean honoring the status quo : that schools validate or invalidate you as a person. 'Contributing to society' does not mean to change what is not right, but to uphold the authority of the given circumstances. There is a feigned attempt at developing criticial thinking and glorifying the masters of history. Reality keeps you in check by thumping its nose on those who want to challenge the status quo or defend one's own individual opinion. Essays must be kept to a certain length - essays are not exercises to develop 'critical thinking', they are a false attempt at thinking, a real exercise of wasting pen and paper and a check to see if your ideas are not too radical. Just so you realize it's not really an exercise to get you thinking critically, submitting a 350 word essay would do. How much thought development can happen in 350 words defeats me. I usually don't hand up my essays to teachers who cannot read at least 3,500 words and comment intelligently on it. 

School bored me to death. Lessons were so slow they induced ADHD in me. If only I was told that we can't move at individual pace, I would go to school once a month to catch up and spend the rest of my time reading books outside the scope of school. I define myself as a good student. I asked questions, I challenge my notions of right and wrong, I am a keen observer and I never stole, cheated, lied, cut queues or did anything just to save my skin some trouble. Most importantly, I never lied about who I was. 

But I knew that the school was not about me and I am not all only about the school. One day I'm not going to have to belong to the school and I can be me. Eventhough it seemed like it was a really bad thing that I wasn't a star student, it actually wasn't. I was a witness to all that is not right with a very significant machinery weaving this society. The schools can blame my character and my upbringing on my lacklustre performance - but they cannot blame themselves for the suicides and depression and general sense of lacking in the lives of the people in their society.  The only people left as individual witnesses to this mass illussion of 'schooling makes purposeful living' are the ones who never subscribed wholesale to it. 

A lot of people who are insulted by my non-acceptance of the schooling institution would brush it off as, 'Ahh, she was a lousy student! If she were a good student, she'd glorify school instead!'. But you have to analyse the definition of 'good student' - it really actually means submissive, pliable, mediocre individual. It does not mean one who can perform excellently academically or otherwise with minimal effort and produce high quantities of novel ideas, thoughts, solutions and beauty or one who has a high level of critical thinking. Those are usually considered an extension of an individual IF after they conform to the school standard of excellence. Those qualities are never taken on their own by schools to value an individual. A survey of 100 teachers would tell you that the top 3 qualities a majority of teachers see as that of a good student translates to "submissive, receptive, hardworking". Those are very different from "critical-mind, mental dexterity and highly-motivated".  We work hard because we have to, we're motivated because we believe in. "Hardworking" has never been a highly regarded word in my vocab. There is a difference. 

Rome was not built in a day but the Universe made Me and Being Me is legitimate, according to the Universe. Kun faya Kun. And that's all that really matters. And there are more like Me. Thea seems to be continuing this 'Fight Away From School' and I am very glad for that, eventhough I would not be able to hold it against her if she were a happy camper for school. 

Is it worth dying for?

I suppose I'm partly, if not completely,responsible in educating Thea about the dangers of school. I share with her news report of schoolchildren murdering one another, the bullying and gangsterism problems in school, and the gruesome incident where a Japanese school boy decapitated a younger schoolmate and left the head at the schoolgate with a note, "That's what you get for making me go to school" in the mouth. I'm also completely responsible for teaching her to read and think from a very early age, so that she is not blind to the many suicides, self-mutilations and depression among students that come out in the papers. I suppose I created all this rebellion because I don't believe in school myself. I've never had and I never will believe in it and I can say this with credibility because it's not like I've never tried being a school teacher. But is it just me? If Thea being Thea, and she had a more sedated parent, would she be an eager, happy camper for school?

According to Thea, she would kill herself. Over lunch last week, she said she felt very grateful that she had a mom like me who allowed her to express how she really felt about school and her friends, a mom who would listen to her and support her and not judge her from feeling differently than the norm. She said she imagined herself having those moms that push their kids to get perfect scores or measured their kids against very narrow social perceptions of achievements - she would find herself swimming in depression and rejecting herself and whirling in an endless vortex of frustration and anger. 

I suspect she's not bluffing. I'm a highly charged person.I wanted to be a man so I could be Che Guevera or any such militant/activist; I wanted to be a mother because I read that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. There is no middle-ground for me, only extremes. I believe this trait could be hereditary, especially if I was still a highly-charged individual throughout my pregnancy.

I didn't want Thea to be like the many damaged children I have met, children who have become damaged or broken. The most fortunate thing for me in becoming a school-teacher was to see schooling problems first-hand and not merely stay skeptical when reading 2nd-hand info or hearing things from a third party. If I pretended that nothing was wrong except my own 'permissive parenting' then all her miseries would be dismissed. But what if the hundreds of broken and damaged teens I've met were not wrong? How can I bring a child into this world only to surrender her to a faceless, elected, public-funded authority which understands nothing but to mine the minds of children the way politicians mine the Earth and depletes Mother Nature of her resources?

I didn't quite pay attention to Thea when she first told me this : "Did you know, if they didn't have such a thing called schooling, children would not be made to feel like they're not good enough. Each person would grow up discovering what they were good at and then they will find a way, their own way, to make this world a better place. But when you go to school, all they do is make you feel like you're never going to be good enough and they don't teach you things which are really useful to you and your life. They have tests that set you up to not get 100 all the time and people that keep reminding you of how many mistakes you make and how you might not be good enough. No one is ever good enough in a school - and even if you believe you are, you'll  find out all that doesn't really matter in real life."

It took awhile for the profoundness of what she'd said to sink in. It wasn't just a ranting. It was a very personal and insightful observation by a participant of this mass machinery called schooling. I wonder how many more feel the way she does - that schools implant in you how inadequate you are. And I think very few among those realize that what a school makes them feel about themselves has nothing to do with their actual self-worth as a Life Force. 

Thea has a lot against school. A lot more than what I could possibly have an effect on. I've been trying to teach her a lot of things, none of which she has internalised and produced  new or novel insights into. Things like Math or Spelling.  Or typing. Or doing the laundry / dishes. I suppose she needs to arrive or be at a point where the situation is so pressing that she needs to think and act upon it. Until the day she has to write blogs or emails, and realizes how touch-typing can save her hours and permit her to have massive fluency in putting thoughts to words - she wouldn't find the motivation to. 

She must also be quite depressed now. I think hormonal changes have a way of transforming the once docile toddler into something else through the onset of a stage called adolescence. She's finally reading "Being Happy". You must be quite sad or have started appreciating the value of being able to feel happy to start reading that book. She's also asked if she can read, "HELP! My teacher hates me," to learn how to deal with classmates and ........teachers. 

As a society at large, we tend to express shock when children kill or hurt themselves and others because of reasons related to school and schooling. But society at large are the perpetrators of the conditions children have to live in. We glorify the results of an institution that sets children up to fail! We glorify academics as if it is the only measure of a person. We sanctify an institution that takes the child away from the home and rehabilitates them to become little more than fuel for the labour market and hungry ghost consumers for the goods they laboured to produce. We surrender our parental and individual authority over to that Institution, with heads bowed and arms outstretched - and then we claim we can't do anything about it. If you don't believe you  have surrendered your authority, raise your hands if you don't worry when your child wants to play truant, when the school calls you up to 'talk about your child'. You believe the school has the authority to make you subject yourself to its rules and expectations. Then ask yourself - WHO gave the schools the authority? You did. YOU did. 

A mom like me is rare and far in between because a person like me is rare and far in between so if you relate to any of this, you're also part of a niche tribe. I've been called, 'The last of my kind' ad I hope the internet magnetizes like-minded people to me. I'm not very hopeful that there would be more parents out there who are willing to listen to their children and not allow this mind-numbing institution called a School to make them feel generic, inferior, lacking, inadequate, unspecial.

A school is not worth dying for. Academic results dictated by the institution of schools is not worth dying for. School is not worth lying, cheating, being bullied or being killed for. School is not worth getting angry over, killing another for or getting even with. School is just school. Stop surrendering your authority to it and you stop subjecting your child's sense of worth to it.

An entire chain reaction -  from killing oneself or another as a direct or indirect result of, mental imbalance, emotional damage, psychological dissonance - bas sekolah fees and the time and energy required to pick up and send kids to school goes away. Schools should serve our needs. We go there when there's something that serves our needs to learn. Schools must be of service to US!!! We do not have to serve the school's needs by giving it a show of attendance to signify its false idea of relevance. 

Schools are worth building, to facilitate learning, to serve our quest for knowledge and positive experiences. But they are not worth dying for. Not a single thing about school is worth dying for. Not a single thing about school is worth the frustration and trauma that could lead to adult feelings of inadequacy, guilt, underachievement and disillussionment. 

Postponing a pullout

My 10-year-old Thea has braved through half a school year and is asking me when I can pull her out of school. We were very close to pulling out of school at the beginning of Std.4 but was persuaded by a well-intentioned school counsellor to give Thea a try, as this year she would be in a better class where lessons would be moving at a faster pace. Perhaps that had been the problem last year; school seemed pointless and boring because the teachers had to move at a slower pace to accomodate students from the 2nd class. Thea was optimistic, until she realized that the students in the first class were not that much brighter, just doing better academically. The attitude of mediocre people having been given the impression they are first class compounds the sobering and depressing idea of getting up to face a miserable imprisonment every day. 

Her Math teacher had asked to see me regarding a note I'd written in response to the teacher's note in Thea's many pages of uncompleted work. I'm asked to go to school an average of 3-4 times a year by well-meaning teachers. But what do I tell them, where do I start? Last year, no amount of explaining to her native Kelantan class-teacher that completing schooling is not the ultimate objective I have for Thea nor her for herself could make her see the idea that there is life and purpose outside of the brainwashing sequence of being schooled. Talking to the HM made it seem like such a shocking and surprising thing if Thea decides not to be schooled. There is only one definition for that : a school dropout. It comes with all the negative connotations of socially unacceptable norms. I find it a little amusing despite understanding the fact that the school institution is an unevolving relic of a colonial past - A child who chooses not to go to school is nothing more than a dropout. Period. They do not seem to have any insight or knowledge about the history of schooling or a critical mind to assess why children are finding schools more and more irrelevant as an absolute institution. But then again, those are the only people who can retain a rose-tinted perception of school. If one knows the truth, one would become jaded, disillussioned, and short of quitting altogether, would neither be a champion of this highly bureaucratic, highly irrelevant, intellectual liability known as schooling. 

There seems to be 2 school of thoughts within the school admin themselves regarding absenteeism. The lesser schools use the punitive approach, shaming and then expelling those who 'play truant'. It's like the Boss who takes one to be an example for others to toe the line -taking away the privilege of allowing a person to be a worker in the company. The schools who seem more sincere but equally as ignorant about the wave of change, seem to go all out to 'save a child'.  Both thoughts are highly misguided. The sort of students they expel are exactly the type that should have a school to go to. It is a cry for attention and an act of rebellion against the sense of neglect they feel at home. The sort that do not want to go to school despite all persuasion, are exactly the ones you need to let go of, for schools are inadequate in fulfilling their intellectual and emotional needs. 

I wonder if the lack of action by schools to expel Thea for truancy has anything to do with the perception of her social-intellectual standing. Schools, being not too different from factories, are quick to take out products that will not fetch a price in the market. Those labelled 'damaged' and 'rejected' go through a different conveyer belt and exit the assembly line, the sooner, the more cost effective.  Would this enthusiasm, care and concern be extended to Thea if she was completely inept and had 'behavioural problems', i.e. fleshed out ADHD symptoms? We hear of so many school administratives who are very quick in telling parents to withdraw their children from school. And here I am, being faced with an equally difficult task in getting the school authorities to issue the ultimatum : buck up or get expelled. Is it because Thea shows great potential, is well-behaved and pleasant looking? Can our schools be that discriminatory? Or Thea is just fortunate to have been in less competitive schools which are hoping to overlook Thea's lack of enthusiasm?

To have concerned and sincere people deal with the schooling of our children is definitely a more positive thing than to have overzealous, insensitive people at the helm. Perhaps that was why I chose these two schools in the beginning : for their sensitivity and sincerity in educating, even if they've got it all wrong from the get-go. The attitudes and values of the people that makes up one's environment takes precedence over any superficial yardstick of academic competence. 

I find it inappropriate to go into a school and give my lectures on my philosophies about education and schools. Yet I feel I lack the wisdom, eloquence and performance skills to deliver a profound, succinct summary which would do justice to our philosophies about school. It seems that the only other alternative to delivering many-part monologues on my philosophies is to take the stand of the ignorant, defensive, single-parent who should be 'helped' in dealing with a child with a knack for truancy. I've never known how not to be completely honest, often confrontational and absolutely sincere and passionate when making a stand. Sometimes I wonder if not being able to stand up for any beliefs is a  blessing, or at least, to stand up simply as a mute pillar instead of a preaching activist. 

I've had several false starts in wanting to pull Thea out of school. I end up feeling guilty for being grateful to still be in a comfort zone each time I don't fall through in pulling her out. I suppose the answer is really within me : why have I not pulled her out yet? It's probably the lack of readiness to take on the full responsibility for her life and her education. Leaving something that needs to get done doesn't always make it more convenient to do later on, does it? I gave Thea a line from T.Harv Ecker, "If it doesn't kill you (going to school), just do it." Thea's response, "I'm going to jump off a building one day from all that stress of going to school. Why do you think so many children kill themselves?". I suppose she has a point. And if I were to put T.Harv's question to myself - pulling Thea out of school and being completely responsible for her is not likely to kill me. 

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