Saved By The Bell
By: Courtenay S. Gray
Tags: Philosophy Of Mind, Essay, Schools, Creative Non Fiction, Philosophy Of Life

This position I’ve held … it pays may way and it corrodes my soul — Morrissey

I often have this recurring nightmare that I have been forced to stay behind a year at school. I left high school seven years ago, the nightmares of that time linger in my mind like a foreboding hum. I had this same nightmare last night which inspired this essay. In the dream, despite being of the leaving school age in the UK, I was forced to stay. Incensed by this decision, I made a speech to my entire class. An internal protest of the education system and a way of sticking it to the man.

For me, school was like shackles on my brain and my soul. I felt intellectually stunted and emotionally fragile. Writing is my biggest passion and the only thing I have ever wanted to do as a career. I knew that I was a writer from a young age and that it was set in stone. However, in Primary School, I was in the bottom set for English until my last year. This was no indication of my talents but rather the intentional oversight of the teaching staff.

Being overlooked has been a constant in my life. There was a girl in my class and her parents used to help out our school, so she was always favoured by the teachers. It got to the point where our work was never good enough and would always be compared to this hers. I became so tired of it that I began to compete with her. We once had to race around the field outside and I ran as fast I could so that I would be at the front. The girl in question advised me not to start off fast because I will only get tired. Just as I was moments away from victory, my legs gave out beneath me and she won. My chest heaving, I lay down on the grass and cried because yet again, I had lost to her.

This was one of many incidents that we had with this girl. Her mother humiliated me in front of an entire room of people because I accidentally dropped a laptop. She screamed at me and yelled instructions at me as to the proper way to hold a laptop as though one were talking to your hard of hearing, elderly grandmother. A grandmother I was not, rather a sensitive and shy seven-year-old child.

We are taught the lesson that we should not compare ourselves to others and that we all blossom at our own pace but, in my school, we were actively taught that we were not good enough. When it came to high school, there were far more people to sink into a robotic system of numbers and letters. I always liken the experience to Another Brick In The Wall Part II by Pink Floyd. In the music video, the children walk robotically in a line to a conveyor belt which sends them round and round. In other versions of the music video, the children are portrayed as cartoons and they are minced into worms.

We all looked the exact same because of our uniform and we were forbidden from personalising the uniform. Our school went to the extremes of banning patterned headbands, flower hair clips and even coloured socks! In English, we were guided to a specific way of thinking about our required reading. If you diverted from the syllabus, you were wrong. Literature is inherently subjective and open to interpretation; therefore, it makes no logical sense to have a specific thought attached to the text.

I was reduced to another fish in a very plain and boring sea. The only thing differing me from other people was my name which was used quite frequently by other students as a peculiar attempt at an insult. We spend seven hours a day, five days a week in what is effectively a prison. The difference between a true prison and school is that we get to go home at a certain hour, and we are exempt from weekend duty. In my high school, there was a group of people, made up of the A* students. These students used to walk around their self-absorbed clique. The way they looked at the rest of us, you would assume that by now they would be living the high life with Elon Musk. However, as you can guess, that is not the case. I have yet to hear any of them winning a Nobel Prize.

I and others were treated as though we were dim because we did not get a certain letter written next to our names. Despite all my reading and writing that I have done since I was four years old, I was still considered average. All my end of term reports called me a shy and hard-working student but none of them mentioned that I was intelligent.

School contributed to my mental health issues enormously. I felt bored and suffocated in that horrible place. The teachers would often make the same mistake when discussing certain students’ bad behaviour. I can still hear it now.

“If you don’t want to learn then leave.”

They neglected to consider the possibility that those students did want to learn but not in the military way that the education system requires. I was too afraid to misbehave but I understood why and secretly rooted for those students. They were bored and just wanted to go home as did I. I love gaining new knowledge, but it must be on my own terms. I refuse to be painted as unintelligent just because I cannot memorise certain things to be written on an exam paper and never used again.

I have taught myself far more than school ever taught me. I remember my last exam and that last ten minutes before my final exam finished and my life truly began. I counted down the minutes like NASA does just as a rocket is bracing itself for lift off. I left that exam hall in a confused but euphoric haze. I could see the world whenever I wanted to, I could relax at home and destress. My life was now abundant with possibilities. Escaping that place afforded me the privilege of being able to wear my own clothes and as a result, regain my individuality. I reached the rusted verdant gates and I could have collapsed in relief; I was finally free.

Surprisingly, I went on to do one year at college before dropping out because as we have already established, traditional education is not for me. Interestingly, one of the courses I took was Religion, Ethics and Philosophy which I failed in terms of the exam. The teaching staff will only see that failure as a testament that I am not bright when that is far from the truth. I love Philosophy and when I research it on my own, I can engross myself with the information and impart such wisdom to acquaintances.

The aftereffects of school have left me with a deep-seated resentment for the education system. I feel as though half of my life has been taken away from me against my will. Those years I will never get back and I do not think I am quite ready to forgive that just yet. My character was reduced to a watery au jus and my intelligence became trapped inside the confines of a murky and moonlit bell jar.

“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings” — Salvador Dali