From my birth until I was 14 I was home schooled.
Both my parents are teachers, but they didn't like the
way the school system was, and they thought that schools were basically fucked. So they kept me out of it. The only images I really had of schools were what I saw on TV shows like "Saved By the Bell" or What I saw in movies. I guess I sort of had a distorted image of what schools were really like.
When I was little, I didn't have any homeschooled
friends, so I used to actually feel really left out
when my friends would talk about getting homework and
stuff like that. I actually used to make my parents
play pretend school with me and give me homework and
due dates and such. My friends on the other hand, they
were jealous of me because I got to stay home all the
time.
Once I became closer to the high school age, I had
this desire to want to actually go to a real high
school. Get to go to dances and parties, be with friends all day, and take part in all the other fun things that I saw in the schools portrayed on the shows I watched. So my parents decided to let me.
For year nine I was accepted into the Chicago Academy for the Arts. I had visited that school the year before and I really liked what I had seen. The kids all seemed really nice, and they got to take classes in one of the arts majors that we had to choose from. I'd always loved and been involved in the arts. I used to take ballet, acting, jazz, tap, visual art, guitar, piano, and various other lessons before I went to real school. So I felt this would be the perfect place for me to be. I was wrong.
Freshman year started out alright. I made some friends right away, I had people to go out to lunch with, and my teachers were alright. The one thing that caught me off guard was that we got so much homework! Everything I used to do at home I had to give up. That meant things like playing my guitar, spending a lot of time online. Not to mention I had to quit my ballet lessons after 12 years. But after only 2 months at the Academy, I got shown a whole different side of school: What it was like to be the outcast.
See this girl who I thought was my new closest friend at that school, she completely turned on me. She spread nasty rumours about me, and being that my school is very small, they spread very quickly. Suddenly no one would sit by me. People thought that I was a lesbian Satan worshiper! They wrote things like "Go to Hell" on my notebooks. I lost almost all of my friends there. I became very depressed.
Thankfully the second semester started off a lot better. There were a lot of new students, and I started to make friends again. But besides the social aspect of school, I saw it of a waste of time. All the teachers (with the exception of the ones
in the theatre department and 2 of my academic teachers) were really stupid. They'd say things that made no sense and my parents informed me were not true. So then thanks to this guy I started hanging around with I discovered the world of cutting
classes. I ditched the last two weeks of my Spanish class, and I still managed to get a B.
But towards the end of second semester things took a turn for the worst again as one of my friends commited suicide in the building, right before a show we were both supposed to be in. Shortly after that night, a lot of the teachers quit working there, and a few of the very good ones got fired(for no reason).
Sophomore year started off very strange for me. There were the new teachers to deal with, the new students, new classes, and the whole building just seemed to be very different and very cold. I had a lot of friends I guess..but no one that I'd actually hang out with out side of school or anything like that. Infact, I had more of a social life before I
started going to school at all!
As far as the classes went, they were far worse then the past year. We had one teacher who was a pervert and would constantly be touching us girls and staring at us very inappropriately. Then we had the teacher who would yell and scream at us if we made any comment in class that contradicted his, and would only say that we "Had a very good discussion today" when he had been the only one talking. Some of our teachers didn't even bother to show up to class! My English teacher never even bothered to returned any of my
(and only my) assignments!
Second semester found me in the theatre part of the day having nothing to do. Seriously. The teachers didn't cast me in any of the six plays we were doing, and I was the only one who wasn't cast. I'd hear them talking to one another saying things such as "Well, I can't use her for anything.. can you?" and Looking at me. So for the last four hours of our extremely long (8:30-4:30) day, I would get to sit by my self in the empty theatre and do my homework. Either that or I'd get to watch other people rehearse things that I had wanted to be a part of.
By the end of the third quarter I couldn't take it
any longer. I'd come home crying every day after school, and I found my self a lot more depressed, and emotionally unstable.
Over our spring break, my parents received a letter from our assistant head master. It said that I had missed entirely too much school (all excused though..) and that if I was thinking about coming back to the school next year, I would be put on attendance probation. That meant that I could only have 5 sick days the entire year of school. I couldn't believe that they would have the nerve to do that to me,
when I knew for a fact that there were people at my
school who had missed far more days (unexcused or for stupid reasons like parties and trips to Mexico. While my sick days were actually because I was sick!) and they weren't getting these letters! They were also the ones with the lead parts in the plays.
After having several panic attacks, I consulted my doctor, and she told me that I shouldn't return to that school ever again. I completely agreed. At that point, I felt that if I was to return after Spring Break was over that I would just crack! I couldn't
emotionally handle that horrible school at all. So I didn't return, and personally I think that no one knows that I'm gone. People still call my parents to tell them about Parent - Teacher meetings. They
called to let us know when the school was closed for bomb threats, and none of the people whom I though were my friends called to see what had happened to me.
The other day my mom asked me what I learned from my school experience.I told her that I learned about hatred and close-mindedness, that since I had gone to school I had become very bitter, my self esteem had lowered, I have huge problems learning to trust people, and I've basically lost hope for ever expecting something good to happen again.
The Smiths have a song called "The Headmasters Ritual" which describes very well how I feel about my ex-school. In the song Morrissey sings about a horible school setting where the headmaster was abusive among other things, and while I was never psyicaly harmed by anyone at the school the amount of mental and emotional damage it did to me is just incredible. The chorus puts it very well: "I want to go home,
I don't want to stay. Give up education as a bad mistake".
