Kat Dancing

So I was reading this post from blackaire, which is interesting in many ways... but for me struck a chord because of the brief mention of homeschooling vs. private school. Because, yanno, I was homeschooled from sixth grade on. And among the many condescending comments one gets when homeschooled, "If you went to a real (read: non-public and/or non-rural) school, you'd have liked it," ranks high. (Though "you'll never get into a good college" makes the top of the list by a mile.)

So. Interesting.

Discussion of this with a fairly sympathetic party, however, elicited the following comment:

"If you'd gone to school, you would be far less of an introvert."

Which in turn, elicits this rant, because the party in question doesn't really deserve it.

First, let's clear up the vocabulary issue. Introversion is not a measure of social aptitude, it's a measure of your gregariousness and whether your general focus is inner or outer. I've always been an introvert, I always will be an introvert, regardless of how many people I meet or know or even like. People fucking wear me out. Sitting at home alone staring at the wall makes me feel all happy and well-adjusted. See? Introvert. What he meant was "If you'd gone to school, you would be far less socially inept."

Now that we've cleared that up, I can call bullshit.

See, I used to be a very outgoing kid. No, really. I used to talk to anyone. I used to make friends easily. I used to walk up to complete strangers and start conversations with them. Those of you who've met me can stop laughing anytime.

Care to guess what changed that? You got it. I went to school.

School taught me to fear people.

School taught me about teachers who would browbeat and humiliate me for no reason save that I failed to conform to some unspoken set of standards. Teachers who'd stand me up in front of a class of kids and mock me about my handwriting, my spelling, my clothes, anything, knowing full well that those kids would take it as a license to bully me all they wanted. Teachers who'd accuse me of lying to get attention when I said I couldn't see the blackboard, causing me to suffer in silence for weeks before I finally got the vision test and the eyeglasses I needed. Teachers who'd fudge my grades to keep from admitting I was smart. Teachers who'd tell me what I wanted, then punish me if I didn't prove them right.

School taught me about weird. Not wearing makeup, that was weird. Not having a boyfriend at age eleven, that was weird. Reading was weird. Wearing glasses was weird. Making friends of the opposite sex was weird; having friends from a different grade than yours was weird. If the teachers liked you, you were weird; if they disliked you, you were weird; too smart, too stupid, too anything... and once you had it, it was a stamp of doom, a stain you couldn't wash away. Weird!

That stamp meant anything went. It was okay, for example, to let the weird kid be your friend for the first few weeks after you moved to school, until you got in with the real kids, and then turn on them and savage them with no warning to gain the approval of the in-crowd. It was okay to booby-trap their locker. It was certainly okay to call them any names you could think up. Send them anonymous notes filled with insults, shoot them with rubber bands, kick them under the table, gouge their arm, pull their hair, think up any nasty trick you liked: that was fine. If they yelled for the teacher, you won. If they tried to fight back, you won. Their best possible option was to show no reaction at all to what you were doing: a qualified win, or maybe a draw, if they were pretty good at it.

(I remember sitting on the school bus digging my nails into my arm, or standing in the shower and turning the hot up until I scalded myself: training myself not to flinch, training myself to bear the pain. I always was proud.)

It never stopped. On and on, day in and day out, the endless round of abuse from kids and teachers and, if you were unlucky, parents, all designed to make you conform. To force you into an identity. Any identity. Jock, dyke, geek, slut, loser, prom queen -- you could chose well or badly, you could be lucky or unlucky, but you had to fucking choose. You had to match somebody's category, because they'd keep pounding on you and hurting you until you did, ripping away every bit of self-confidence or good self-image you had until you broke.

Homeschooling did not make me socially inept. School made me socially inept. Homeschooling left me a few rags of identity left on which I could try to rebuild that fearless, outgoing kid who walked into a kindergarten and never walked out.

Now, I admit I have a warped perception, and I'll admit that my rural backwater of a school was worse than most. But I don't think I'm a unique case. I watched the automatic flinch reflex kick in too much in college when someone admitted to something a wee bit off the norm -- the apologetic half-smile, the self-mockery, or that air of hurling it in your teeth and daring you to say something about it. I watched too many people struggle to treat members of the opposite sex as friends and not sex objects. Some of it's society, and some of it's teenagers, but a fair bit of it? Is school.

In America, anyway. I've been told it's different in Canada. Feel free to speak up for or against.

*sigh*

Okay. Ranted out now. It's amazing how much stuff from when you were a kid can push your buttons, even after years and years.

*goes off to do something useful, like sleep*