February 23, 2017 - 21:48
I've been thinking today about our discussion of how discipline is approached in school. In particular, I was thinking of the amount of times I was sent out of the classroom, without even a second given to figuring out what was really going on. In High School, I struggled with depression. It wasn't caused by the bullying, but it didn't help either. Of course, bringing up such things (especially to teachers who didn't understand) simply resulted in fake sounding sympathy and a trip to the counselor. The counselor, with her stupid desk toys, leering one eyed teddy bear, and general lack of caring- or should I say over the top, over kill "I care about you" caring which read the opposite- did not try to understand. She tried, instead, with big words and strategies, to change me.
Emotional literacy, being able to understand others and make rational decisions based on this understanding, seems like something schools are afraid of. Numbers and facts and cold hard statistics don't leave room with tears and stories and emotions. School with it's test scores and state rankings doesn't have space for anger or confusion. Even where it is allowed, cold offices with sterile environments, are not about understanding. They're about changing. About molding.
And in some way, they achieved their goal. I stopped showing any emotion at all. I never said that I was upset anymore. I kept it to myself. I didn't fight back. I blended in. And eventually, the bullying stopped because I had become so invisible that I wasn't even interesting enough to pick on. My emotional literacy; what I was taught to do, was to sacrifice my feelings for a feeling of assymilation. We are taught to give up what we are in the hopes that what we will become will be even more amazing. I believe that it rarely is.