Race, introversion,  gender… 

Inspired by a brilliant share by Susan Cain, Article by Kelly Wickham Hurst

Link to article below.

Here are my views on the article.

I can identify a lot with the article because of the similar shared practises that I believe cross over to any ‘minority’  race in a given demographic.

Pretty much my whole childhood and teen youth.

Dux of the school every year,  straight A’s,  middle eastern background male, born and raised in sandy hair, blue eyed Australia, no attention needed, I slotted himself into the mould of inattention by being obedient. No enhancement needed. Don’t need to nurture my skill, refine my abilities, push me harder,  to achieve more,  to be more, to give more of myself.

No, I had to sever from the education system to find myself and it’s taken me twenty years after leaving school, (fourteen after leaving university) out of my life to come to realise what I want to be ‘when I grow up’.

Because the guy sitting in the front row every class doesn’t need as much attention as the trouble maker in the back. Introversion becomes the codeine for a teachers attention as it numbs her/him from seeing you. Even at university level, especially at university level, because young adults paying big dollar need even less attention from older adults, earning enough dollar who also got no attention, vicious cycle.

That is until your art and music  teachers see you differently,  because God just built artists that way, they’re feelers,  they’re knowers, not prattlers, oh and my fifth grade teacher, who all woke me up to the idea I could do something. Still though, they’re just little nudges, not follow through pushing, encouragement enough to steer you or to set you on your course

Are teachers afraid to? Are they under too much pressure by schools, boards, govt to stay out of the business of people and just lambaste material into peoples brains emotionally detached from caring and loving the humans that are struggling to develop in front of them?

What could I have been if I was honed much earlier and didn’t have to wait for the hand of time, which often comes as the bloodied fist, to teach me? Why did time have to refine me all these years later when we offer so much respect and expect our pedagogy to bring out the best of our children?

Why are we fed this lie of education at government funded centres being so important if importance of each child is overlooked?

I don’t have anyone’s answers but my own which is why I decided to stop this downward spiral of events. I won’t let my children be relegated to the back of a classroom as a problem child that needs constant attention, albeit for the wrong reasons, possibly stigmatising them, turning them into self fulfilling prophecies of problems, just because they question everything and won’t take black and white answers, nor will I have them neglected because they’re mediocre and don’t rock the boat (because they are damned behaved), nor will I have them overlooked and not honed and pruned to grow as far up as possible, because they are complicit and do their work.

I’ve tasted it all and my introversion had me questioning these things from a very young age. I was quite aware of what gets attention in class, who gets the extra help during, before and after class. Who’s parents are the ones that are conversed to, what a gurgler of a system we have, so many children lost down it, never reaching the true brilliance they have inside them lurking  because a teacher, for whatever reason doesn’t have the time to devote to each and every child. But, I knew my place, shut my mouth and stayed away from frolicking the feathers of an over caffeinated, underpaid employee of the state.

This is not to blame the teachers wholly, but it is to blame them partially, because that bias, if they search deep within themselves, does exist, I know it does, I’ve experienced it growing up and as a parent, as a homeschooler who has five children. As someone who knows some of his kids just get on with what they’re meant to do and others don’t. I came to this realisation a while ago and spread my attention to them accordingly.

Anyway, rant over, check out Susan Cain’s post in the link below. Do any of you identify with this?

-W.E.