Читать книгу Dared To Survive - Olya Mancuso - Страница 10

For some children, school might have seemed like a kingdom of joy and heaven where they played and socialized. But, not for me. My home life made me feel insecure, vulnerable, and anxious. This made me an easy target for bullies. They quickly smelled out my fears and my vulnerability. Bullies have radar for the weak link in any pack and I was it.

The first day I entered the school, I knew I would not fit in. The teachers saw me as a child from a dysfunctional family and quickly picked on me for all sort of things. In no time, I became unruly at school because I was unable to stay calm and tolerate the bullying and abuse from teachers and peers. They bullied me for all kind of different things, for anything they could find «odd» about me. They picked on the shabby, dishevelled way I looked. They picked on me because my mother sent me to school dirty. My parents could not afford «appropriate» clothes – or my mother chose to spend the money on my brother’s fine clothes. Everyone laughed at me and stated that I looked horrible and that my clothes looked too old, worn out and too «Soviet».

The «trendy» and «popular» girls wore clothes that were imported from other countries. «Olya, you look like a fucking shit,» my peers sneered, giggling at my embarrassment. «Your parents can’t afford to buy you „imported“ normal dresses,» they accused.

I would often see other girls in my class playing in our neighbourhood with others wearing pretty tops, real girly shoes, or nice trendy girly little dresses. I had nothing like this this. My mother and Dad and the whole family was always and forever focusing on paying my brother’s debts, the money he owed to people whom he was ripping off.

My mother insisted that I was entitled to nothing due to endless «hardships» and sorrows caused by my brother’s lifestyle. I always felt that I didn’t have the right to demand anything because my family’s life revolved around my brother’s life and problems.

I never felt like I fit in school. I was singled out. I attended school but did not listen and I behaved in an unruly fashion. It was a vicious circle. The teachers made me feel bad and inadequate because I was the «odd one» in class, the one who rebel1ed at everything. My behaviour was getting out of control. I rebelled against a system where I did not fit on.

Because I did not fit in and because I rebelled, I was treated badly by my peers and my teachers. This only accelerated my rebellious behaviour.

Mother was often invited to the school to discuss my «bad» behaviour. This infuriated her. At home, I was beaten and punished for this. But nothing helped. I continued to be unruly and the most terrible kid at school.

Public humiliation as a punishment was legal in Soviet Union schools and during the time I was raised. «Humiliation» involved being picked on and mocked and publicly shamed in the presence of our teenaged peers.

Also, teachers encouraged «good students» to publicly ridicule badly behaved students or academically weak students. Teachers encouraged good students to avoid playing with bad ones. The bad or weak ones were condemned to be outcasts, so they could feel it and suffer it. The moral point they tried to instil in me and those like me was that, if we want to be accepted by «normal» society, we must be like the «good» students.

The Soviet Union system of education believed that public humiliation would make unruly or weak children behave and study well. Their punishments had no positive permanent effects that we know of. Their punishments had many negative effects. It teaches violence, disrespect and degrading as an appropriate solution to problem solving. It teaches this lesson to the child being beaten or humiliated and to his or her peers even when the beating or humiliations takes place outside their presence. They feel it in the next room or down the hall. Cruelty is not mitigated by distance; the psychological harm is done to everyone in the class. Those lessons of violence are unfortunately well learned.

This kind of attitude adjustment – spare the rod and spoil the child—does not achieve the stated purpose of maintaining discipline. It treats the symptoms, not the underlying causes, of unruly behaviour.

This was a vicious circle with me. Each time I was humiliated publicly by teachers at school, the next day the form of my rebellion and protest was increased. As punishment escalated, so did my degree of acting out. It was always endless process of increased violence with no end and no beginning.

My behaviour was a cry for help. I wanted to scream out a message to the system I tried to fight. I just simply wanted to bring the point, so the teachers would come to realize that the use of corporal punishment, humiliations emotional ad verbal punishment was a failing practice.

The child displaying unruly behaviour is a child crying out, «Help me! Help me!» He or she may be ill, hungry, or physically or emotionally abused at home. This is exactly what was happening in my life. I just simply could not bring myself to behave better at school. I was never given any motivation to do so. What was the point?

Nobody believed in me. Nobody wanted to hang around me at school. Teachers and students practised abuse. The whole point was to make me feel unwanted and rejected for my bad behaviour. I simply had no logical reason to behave better.

The child like me comes to school and we ask him or her to be quiet, curious, and excited about learning. Unfortunately, such behaviours are foreign to the abused child’s. Unruly behaviour is a cry for help. My cry was never answered or understood by teachers. The law supported their psychological abuse inflicted on «bad» children.

As a teacher or parent, you cannot whip the hurt out of this child. His or her behaviour continues and worsens and leads to failure after failure. He or she grows to adulthood and becomes another of our modern and enlightened society’s losers – miserable, often criminal, and a burden to society.

I always knew that the teachers of Soviet Union schools – particularly the ones in my life – failed to control classroom behaviour.

Their use of abuse upon children was protected by the system. As the protest to their poor teaching methods and poor discipline strategies, I made myself a promise. One day I would become a teacher. I would take a stand against their primitive ways and prove them wrong by showing them that there are alternatives to the use of corporal punishment – alternatives that maintain classroom discipline and provide an environment for learning, a place for effective and rewarding teaching.

I grew up abused by my mother and in the unhealthy climate at home. I suffered non-stop violence. The next day I would come to school unruly. Instead of paddling unruly child like me into temporary submission, why could Soviet Union teachers not be trained to recognize a child with problems and have at their disposal the referral sources for psychological help or family counselling? Why couldn’t teachers be trained to recognize the withdrawn child as a young human being in need and have at his or her disposal the resources for saving that child’s life?

For over seventy years, corporal punishment has been forbidden in Soviet schools. Though they don’t use physical punishments any more, they will never stop abusing children psychologically.

Consider the child who is abused by parents. They are a small number, you say? Statistics indicate that almost two million children are abused in America each year. The statistic of the former Soviet Union is much higher.

As well I, personally, consider that figure to be low, low because it is virtually impossible to measure fully the emotional abuse of children. For many parents, just like for my mom, emotional abuse is a style of parenting, one probably passed on by their parents. «Oh, you are such a dumb kid. A «B»! I’m ashamed of you. Do me a favour. Get out of my sight. I don’t like you. You are a fuck dumb idiot.

You had ruined my life. I wish you never born. You are trouble. You are not normal. Look at other kids. They make their parents proud. I am ashamed to be your mother. You are more trouble than you are worth. To think of all the trouble you have put us to. Go away. I don’t like you.»

Just like I did, many of our children hear those words again and again, from toddlers until they leave home.

By the time such a child reaches kindergarten, any self-esteem has been destroyed. The most important person in this world – the parent – has told that the child that he/she is of no value. Such a child can have a significant intelligence but will be unable to learn.

A teacher is faced with an impossible task in trying to educate such a child. How can they hope to undo the emotional damage inflicted by the parent?

This is exactly what happened to me. I wasted all my years at school, learning nothing, simply because I did not want to. There was not one single motivation for me to learn. I felt bad about myself inside and out. I never believed I was of a VALUE………I behaved badly at school and drove everyone mad around. I simply wanted to bring the message to the world: I am of no value. I AM BAD. The message mother had instilled in my whole life. I had no reason at all to expend any effort.

I was convinced I was an EVIL EGG…

I simply hated myself all my life – just the way mother hated all m. Never, in all my years in school, did anyone attempt to find out what was bugging ME. What were the underlying causes of my misbehaviour?

Emotional abuse of children is but one of many conditions which inhibit the ability of a child to learn, the ability of a teacher to educate.

Former Soviet schools had proven their poor, pedagogical ways of dealing with problems student behaviour. Still, today, they believe in public humiliation as a punishment. Still, today, they are not aware that there are better ways, methods – ones that work.

Being an obedient child is not enough. It’s too temporary. A child must be taught to be responsible, to respect others, to respect herself. A child must not merely have values forced upon him/her only to abandon them a few years later.

A child must understand and respect our values. The child must internalize society’s values so they become his/her values. A child must learn that the future lies in her/his actions. We must develop high self-esteem in our children. We must give them the hope that they can accomplish, that they can succeed.

All this and much more can be achieved through positive discipline, love, and respect. Children learn what they live – at home and at school.

In public schools today in Ukraine, Russia and other countries of former Soviet Union, students are still obligated to work up to the level of the class standard in all subjects. This underlined the importance of the collective over individual achievement and abilities. Public humiliation, rather than positive reinforcement, is still considered the prime motivator and means of disciplining lazy or weak students who do not meet the class standard. No thought is given to challenging those with intelligence or nurturing those with talents in special areas. It’s all about everyone in the class meeting that standard. The collective is once again reinforced by the practice of forming a class (regardless of ability and harmony) which remains together not only day after day as the students move from course to course but year after year until graduation eleven years later.

Under the Soviet system, all students wore uniforms, suit-like jackets and pants for boys and short brown dresses topped with a white or black apron for girls. Make-up, jewellery, and fancy hairstyling were strictly forbidden. Today, most of the students, freed of their uniforms, try to make a fashion statement by the way they dress. The cult of materialism flourishes as each item of clothing or accessory indicates the type of connections one’s parents have, whether they have access to hard currency, and the ability to travel abroad.

Even during this period of extreme economic hardship, paying for an item is often the easy part. Working one’s «canals» to locate it and then create the possibility to actually purchase it can be infinitely more difficult. Hence, the acquisition of consumer goods reveals one’s station in society and consumes the attention of status-conscious teenagers.

Most striking to Western eyes is the double duty that all students, parents, teachers and administrators are called upon to perform. This «double burden» has plagued all schools, Soviet and post-Soviet, public and private, elite and ordinary. It is the ultimate mixing of manual and intellectual labour. The children are more than just students. They are the school’s janitors and gardeners. They wash walls, scrub floors, and prune bushes. Every day, two students from each class are «on duty». This means that they are responsible for cleaning the classroom, washing the blackboard, and running errands. On any given day, little girls with pompom pigtails in white aprons and boys with their sleeves carefully rolled up can be seen dipping a tattered rag in a steel bucket to scrub down the stairwell.

It is not any easier for parents. They work a second shift as repairmen, renovators, and contractors. They often provide with their own money the supplies needed to maintain the building and grounds and furnish and decorate the classrooms. Each summer before the new school year begins, teams of parents flood the schools to give it a new coat of paint, put up wallpaper, make repairs, and hang posters and plants.

A teacher’s job is never-ending as well. Teachers often double as the director’s secretary, messenger, or errand runner. They spend hours not only writing but also typing worksheets, and texts, page-by-page using carbons. In each instance, those associated with the educational system are frequently called upon to do unwanted, menial tasks well below their training and job description simply to keep the schools functioning.

Schools are operating today amidst vestiges of Soviet structures, ideologies, and habits. The new values are «cowboy capitalism». With all schools running on dwindling state support, the responsibility for basic maintenance falls increasingly to parents, teachers, and administrators. This burden, of course, fuels the system of bribes at all levels of public and private education. When a student wants to enter a particular school, one of the first questions asked of his or her parents is, «What can you help us get?»

The vast shortage of goods has chased the very word «buy» from education speech. It has been replaced with «get» or «obtain,» suggesting the «canals» and contacts one must tap into and the Herculean effort one must make to procure goods. Parents must state their occupation or position. Most administrators are savvy enough to evaluate the likelihood of a parent’s access to hard currency, deficit goods, or officials in positions of power based on their profession. Parents have the right to choose a school for their children. Technically, a school is obliged to accept all students in its district. But, legal obligation and ability are de facto no longer sufficient criteria for admission to any school. In some instances, the greed of directors or teachers drives the process of negotiating admission. Often enough directors are simply trying to get basic supplies to keep the school functioning. The rule forbidding bribes is turning to utter fiction as fear of reprisal evaporates. Bribes and influence peddling increase in proportion to decreasing state support. Likewise, the practice of having inspectors charged with investigating and punishing greedy administrators who blatantly demand outlandish bribes has equally succumbed to corruption.

Public school in the former Soviet Union still today operate on the system that is notorious for inflicting psychological bruises and damage to self-esteem on young minds.

When I was about seven or eight, mother decided to cast the «evil» spirit out of my soul so it would not possess me anymore and so I could start to behave at school like «every other «normal» child. I came home from school to find the only few decent clothes in the world I had being burned on the balcony. I stood with my tears rolling down in disbelief looking over the pile of ashes and remains of the only few good clothes that Dad bought me. In that pile of ashes was my doll. The only doll I had in my whole childhood. It had been burned with hate like the clothes.

My heart sank. I knelt to pick up the legs and arms of the dolly, trying to find some more parts in the hope of gluing it together. My mother kicked the pile of ashes so hard that the remains fell down the balcony. The last pieces of my only dolly were gone too. For a moment, I stood in stunned silence, remembering the day when Dad bought me that doll out of the three months’ wages he saved… This was the only ever doll I had.

You want this doll?? Dad used to ask me each time we passed the colourful kiosk. The beautiful doll was looking at me from the display, charming and so elegant, like a real lady. To me it was a real treasure. When Dad bought this for me I would not dare to play with it. I did not know what to do and how to play with it. I put her on my bed and stared at her moving her from side to side, staring intently.

I was overwhelmed with grief at the loss of my beloved toy. Wiping my tears, I walked to my room, but mother ordered to come back to the scene and observe the remains of the devil’s child’s items.

«From now on, everything you love will be burned,» mother said. «It is all possessed by your evil spirit.»

The bell rang suddenly. It was Dad coming home from work. He had stood behind the door for few minutes to eavesdrop and heard part of the conversation. Dad looked at my mother in disbelief just like I had.

Then, he grabbed her by the arm and began shaking her and yelling, «You are a wicked bitch! What the hell do you think you are doing? What the fuck are you doing, mad bitch?? Ah??»

Then they fought for hours while I, as usual, hid under my bed, wetting my pants unable to control my bladder. Mother was out of control swearing and blaming me for the fight I had caused between her and Dad. My mother was yelling so loud that I had to block my ears with my fingers though I still could hear everything.

«I will kill you, you scum. I will kill you myself or your satanic daughter will kill you,» mother threatened Dad. «One of us has to die to let the others leave in harmony. She must be punished,» mother said. «I will get rid of your evil kid to bring the peace into this family».

Mother’s anger knew no bounds. She raged on while I hunkered under the bed, plugging my ears. «How long will she get away with this evil and make the parents fight?» she shouted at my father. How much longer will she enjoy our misery?» mother yelled. «Other children love their parents! Your scum of a daughter makes our live a living hell. She constantly pits us against each other.»

When nothing else worked and mother could see that the «support» from Dad did not come, she changed her tactic and threatened Dad with the Communist party, promising to expose his wrongdoings.

Tomorrow, I will write to your boss to plead him for help!» mother screamed. «I will ask him to put an end to your physical abuse and alcoholism. Your workmates will exclude you from the party for inappropriate behaviour,» she threatened. «I will make sure this will cost you, scumbag. I will tell them how sadistically you are torturing the whole family and instilling into the child the lowest quality of a Soviet person. You are a disgrace to the party. They must know this. They will kick you out.»

My mother went into my room and yelled to me, «Finito for your father. You are both in my black book.» «He can say good-bye to his work and his membership in the party. He does not deserve to carry it. See what you have done, little whore? This will cost you.»

This threat seemed to bring the desired effect for mother. For a moment Dad stopped yelling and trying to remain calm. He begged mother, trying to reason with her, asking her to love and care about me. This really fed her ego. She went on threatening Dad even worse. He then cried and begged her not to go to his work as the Communist party is the only thing that keeps us going and survive. He reminded her that his position was what fed the family.

Dad then tried to kiss her legs. But, she kicked him.

My tears ran like a fountain down my swollen face. I felt for Dad who was stripped of any dignity by my mother. Dad was devastated, and mother pushed the line as usual.

My father got up from the floor and broke the furniture, throwing it into walls. Then they both yelled. I remained sitting under the bed, my shelter, shivering with fear.

Dad kept on yelling demanding and begging mother to wake up and LOVE me. Mother would not give in. She continued threatening and swearing, convincing Dad that I am the Devil’s child, not hers. She told him I’d never change. My spirit is EVIL. Nobody would ever love me.

Crying under the bed I kept on talking to myself: «Stop Daddy, stop. Let it go. I am unlovable. I feel sorry for you. It’s pointless, Daddy.»

No matter how many times I promised mother to study and behave well at school, I never was able to.