One of the things school taught me was to be competitive. All of this was to secure top marks in class. This meant I had to see all my peers as competition and constantly find ways to defeat them. Concepts such as finding love, compassion, community, or sisterhood among peers was almost unheard of. The emphasis was to be good at studies and to win the love of the teachers, and most often winning the heart of a teacher meant that you had to give them unquestioning respect. They were seen as the ultimate authority.
As a student, none of my teachers in school ever told me that I could ask questions when I had a doubt during a lesson, or when something didn’t make sense to me. The questions were always asked by the teachers and the answers were always found in the pages of a textbook. The authorities made the rule and the students were supposed to follow them.
As we grew older and reached high school, the rules grew more ridiculous and more stringent. Since it was an all-girls convent school, we were told that we were being trained to become moral and holy children in front of “God”. Never questioning authority, when combined with competitive zeal. meant that everyone competed to be “holier than thou”, like, literally. And since all is fair in love and competition, you become holier than the another by pointing out how unholy they are.
The rules of how to be a “good girl” were decided by the authorities who enjoyed unquestioning respect. Everyone who did not fit into the norm was “unholy” and had to be called out. Thus, slut shaming, name-calling, and vicious gossipping was commonplace. Anyone who broke any rule and displayed any signs of “immorality” was subjected to bullying, first by the teachers, and then carried forward by us, the students. While some of us were called “prostitutes” for wearing short short, some others were called “lesbos” for not matching the standards of girlhood, and still others were called “dirty” for being dark-skinned and or not being able to afford new uniforms. These were all words our teachers taught us. And we were, of course, never told off for calling each other such names.
Thus all of us, teachers and students, became perpetrators of violence. The teachers, who were perhaps subjected to similar behaviour when they were younger, also carried forward the practice. Who knows, maybe the larger schooling system created a similar mechanism of policing for the teachers as well. I remember there was a very butch-presenting, unmarried female teacher in our school about whom there was a lot of gossip. She never even sat in the same common-room with the other teachers. In the same way she was isolated, we too were constantly “disciplined” to become more conforming individuals, not using our own critical thinking, and, in doing so, we became more and more unempathetic.
Today, as I think back, I realise how this process made us lose out on our individuality. Our contexts, our differences, and our individuality, each was being erased, and eventually crushed. We could not form any affinity towards each other and we saw each other as our enemies. And as each one of us suffered as a result of the system, each of us also became part of the problem. After a point we did not need the authority. We made sure we punished each other in the attempt to be ‘the best’. This was perhaps an attitude that we continued to foster well into adulthood. Perhaps that was the reason our female teachers also could never be compassionate towards us.
It has taken me over a decade of feminist education to be able to think critically and become aware of what school has done to me. As an all girls’ convent school it was making us the perfect products suited for a capitalist patriarchal society while whitewashing all of our locational backgrounds. It is with this awareness I realise how important a role schools can play in our lives, and therefore through out life.
As a gender non-conforming child, my discomfort with trying super hard to fit in and failing each time probably made me go in search for places where I could find some comfort. It was my conflict with the school environment, being a constant misfit, and being bullied which perhaps turned out to be a good thing in a way. But that is not how it is supposed to be. Schools need to be sensitive to the fact that we already live in a patriarchal world which makes the survival of individuals assigned female much more difficult. Instead of pitting young “girls” (how they are perceived, rather than the gender they identify with) against each other in the name of competition I wish we were taught to be more supportive and compassionate towards each other.
Our school education lays the foundation of our lives. Life skills like critical thinking, kindness, empathy, and community building become essential to navigate a patriarchal system. And these skills we should be equipped with. This makes it important that we dismantle rigid structures of the school and family so that we can have a more fulfilling life as adults.