Schools aren’t safe havens and we need to accept that before we fix it
By: Sunvi Aggarwal
Tags: Society, Teens, Girls, Schools, Education Reform

Schools aren’t safe havens and we need to accept that before we fix it Sunvi Aggarwal Apr 19·6 min read

*insert casual blow to self esteem *

This is not a feel-sorry-for-me story. With this, I hope to spark conversations about how educational institutions play a pivotal role in perpetuating faulty ideas of self, caste, religion, sex, gender, class, success and beauty.

Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash

I was very fortunate to have studied in one of the best schools of my town. It gave me so many opportunities, taught me almost everything I know today and introduced me to people I proudly call my friends.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for everything. I have nothing but respect for my teachers as people but as educators, they failed me several times. They put thoughts in my 6-year-old head that shouldn’t have been put in my head at all.

Instead of equipping me with the armor to achieve my goals and realize my potential, they burdened me with societal expectations and forced me to limit myself in subtle but venomous ways. (Find below career crippling advice.)

I am no expert on psychology or children but from what I know from my experience as a child is that they’re impressionable and any callousness can cause deep dents. Teachers and parents are human too, they can make mistakes but it’s the repetitive behaviors that can cause indelible marks in the child’s mind.

I wasn’t the best at anything. I was good at some things, yes. I wasn’t struggling with anything. I was yelled at several times for indiscipline and frankly, I deserved it. There were times I needed a strict correction and I am glad someone went through the trouble of correcting me. The things I write about today aren’t about those times. This is not about the things that we as a society collectively haven’t been able to crack such as early detection of learning disabilities, practical hands-on knowledge, sex education, nurturing individuality and personal freedom for women.

Also, not going to mention the extreme slut-shaming that happened.

I have mustered all my maturity for this. I don’t want to be a cry baby and it’s okay if you don’t want to validate my feelings but this is how I felt and I know I did not deserve to feel that way.

I asked a couple of friends and revisited some unsettling memories from my time in school. As a twenty-three-year-old, I still remember them clear as day. I try to ensure that they don’t affect my behavior now but growing up, they sure did.

I grew up feeling things that were unhealthy for my self-esteem and I still catch myself feeling terrible or behaving poorly because of the things that were said to me and my peers.

I will try to be as objective as possible but pardon me if I get carried away.

The poster child for the famine in Africa

These were words used to describe me in the eleventh grade by a teacher. Sounds like a lie, right? Now if this were a joke, it is likely that I wouldn’t have remembered it. Throughout that year, I was asked several times if I had an eating disorder in front of the class. I was asked why I am so ‘painfully’ thin and if there’s anyone to take care of me at home.

Not just this, nasty comments about body hair were quite natural. I heard a teacher chide a girl for not having waxed her legs. A few weeks later I heard a different teacher chide a different girl for getting her facial hair removed.

I mean? What were we being prepared for? Honestly, the only thing we needed to be taught was how we can best understand ourselves, take a decision on the basis of what truly resonates with us as women and how to be our true authentic selves. It affected my ideas of what is wrong and right and I am still unlearning the outdated ideas that I internalized.

Here’s a short story from seventeen years ago,