Examination: Different people about what they were forbidden in school

Tomorrow, September 1 - the first day of autumn and the beginning of the new school year. Even those who no longer need to go to school inevitably recall school that day — and if some people associate it with friends and carelessness, others well remember limitations and control. We asked different people about the prohibitions they encountered in school.

I studied in an Orthodox gymnasium - I still love my school very much. She largely influenced my principles and attitudes, taught to love others and to be kind and honest to myself. At the same time, we had strict requirements for students and even teachers. When I was in elementary school (we called it “progymnasium”), the first four books about Harry Potter had already been published, and the godmother gave them to me for my birthday. But at school we were told that in no way should we read Harry Potter, since this is literature from the devil. Over the next five years I read all the books one by one and became, in my opinion, the main fan in the world! Already in high school, during the lesson of God's Law, I constantly argued with the priest who led the subject, argued that Harry Potter is an incredible book about goodness and friendship and that there is nothing devilish there (of course, except for Umbridge). As a result, it turned out that he hadn’t seen this series in his eyes, but he was still sure that they could only write this in the netherworld.

In the same way, we were forbidden to watch Pokemon cartoons, because while watching all the children allegedly had seizures and foam was coming out of their mouths (In 1997, a cartoon series appeared on the screens, after which, according to news services, several hundred children had epilepsy attacks - but the unequivocal cause and exact number of victims is unknown. - Ed.). Apparently, for the same reason it was impossible to play chips with their image. The Wild Angel was also on the list of prohibited TV programs - my classmates were particularly upset that it was impossible to bring and view stickers to school with Natalia Oreiro and Facundo Arana. Probably, they had not "pure love". Well, the crown of everything for me was the case with our geography teacher, who put me a two in a journal for what I thought were UFOs, and publicly spoke about this right in the classroom. To say this, of course, was impossible, because everything that is unknown, also from the devil.

In the tenth and eleventh grades I studied at a boarding school for capable children located in the regional center. It was a conscious decision: I knew that I wanted to get into the linguistic class, I worked with tutors before the entrance exams, I did not feel any pressure from my parents. At the same time, I understood that moving to a boarding school would bring restrictions. It didn’t stop me: I had concentrated on studying before, doing music, communicating with my peers at school, and making friends there.

We lived in a nine-floor dormitory, from it there was a covered passage to school - some did not go out for days on end. The first restriction was that on weekdays we could leave the borders of the boarding school only for an hour without accompanying adults - no more. All this was fixed by turnstiles and controlled by security at the entrance. The school was located in an industrial area, far from possible entertainment. The road to the center by public transport with the most successful scenario took half an hour one way, so few traveled outside the district. And there leisure was limited to a park (rather creepy and gloomy from October to April) and a shopping center.

I also remember that we were forbidden to keep laptops in the room. Of course, it was almost ten years ago, now you can hardly imagine a student without a laptop or tablet, but then the school was confident that computers interfere with their studies. I had a laptop, and I had to hide it in a closet for clothes or to put it deep under the bed. In the morning and in the afternoon, while we were in class, the administration inspected our rooms and confiscated prohibited items. They were mainly looking for cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, and the technique, it seems to me, could be grabbed between times. If they found something, they gave it to their parents.

Although we all had room keys and we had every right to close the front door during the day (it was forbidden to lock at night), we were asked to keep the doors open during the check-ups. I don’t think that many of us had something to hide, but the very fact of such an invasion of personal space resented. We imagined how the director with the head teachers was digging in our clothes, opening the tables and drawers. It is clear that further discontent matter did not go. To parents who sent children of fourteen or eighteen to another city, this could seem an adequate way to control — I did not ask my own people about it.

For ten years I managed to learn in two schools. The bans were very different - for example, in elementary school my classmate, who hated her name and preferred to be called Asya, was forced to sign notebooks "Anastasia", and already in the senior classes of another school we were given a form, even if it was not strict.

Most of all, I remember the story from elementary school, when we were forbidden to change. I know that now in many schools, undergraduates are forbidden to leave the class, but our teacher went further: because my classmates ran during the breaks, she forbade us to leave the room (we went for lunch in an orderly, orderly and quiet) and told us to decide on independent work in math daily.

I'm not sure that this was legal, but, fortunately, everything did not last very long - it seems no more than a week (it is unlikely that an elementary school student can take it any longer in this mode). I don’t remember well already, but it seems that they didn’t remove the ban directly - it’s just gradually disappeared. True, because of this, I probably have less warm feelings for an elementary school than an average graduate.

I was an avid hustler, so it was a great success for me when I finally started to attend school regularly. Though I was late every time, I somehow got to the class. Teachers fought with me, as well as with other late ones, by different methods: for example, it was the norm to stand outside the door for five to ten minutes. With the advent of the new director, new measures began to appear, one of which was a total ban on going to school after the bell. I made an effort, but I was late anyway - the entrance doors were closed when I arrived. The guard saw me, went out and said that he would not let me go. I drooped and went to wait for a call for a break on the bench right before entering the school - the headmistress was right there at work. She was very surprised to see me. She asked why I was outside, did not scold, brought me to the class, and we said goodbye. Perhaps it was her initiative, but she realized that it was meaningless. Innovation was soon canceled.

It was the second or third grade. There was no widespread ban as such, but there was a teacher who demanded that we not go to the toilet in class — and in the elementary classes we had to listen to his instructions. Once the lesson came to an end - there were five to ten minutes left. I was sitting far enough away from my classmate Kolya (the student’s name has been changed. - Ed.), but he heard well how he tried to take time off to the bathroom. To this, the teacher replied that there was nothing left until the end of the lesson, so "sit down - be patient." But, unfortunately, Kohl could not bear it, and the teacher called his parents to school "with dry linen." After that, the issue was settled and the students' requests were taken more seriously.

The bans on the appearance in my school, in my opinion, were pretty standard. Form - white top, black bottom, denim jeans, as well as makeup and jewelry. I remember that mother came from parental meetings, where the class teacher gave parents instructions for girls about her flowing hair, bright make-up and massive earrings. The boys for some reason did not have any standards or it could not be checked - in my school years I didn’t know a single boy who would have voluntarily made up.

In my school, the rules were more nominal, nobody repressed. In fact, the appearance was a reason to find fault with the student, if it was possible to find fault with him on other issues. In my school years, I wore T-shirts instead of shirts, black denim overalls instead of black trousers, neon tights of all colors of the rainbow, and large beads. But it was okay: I am an exemplary student, olympiad and medalist, there were no problems from me at school, so there were concessions. Although girls from the parallel could send home to change clothes for low waist jeans and a bare navel or wash because of too bright makeup. On the other hand, a girl with green hair studied for two years younger (zero, colored hair in a provincial town is the height of outrageous). It seems that her parents were reprimanded, but the teachers looked at it with indifference and did not expel her from the school, although such a measure was in the school charter. So I learned the meaning of the statement "the severity of laws is compensated by the non-binding nature of their laws."

In our school, we monitored clothes and forbade painting. Whether I followed the length of the skirts, I do not remember, I will not lie. Several times, those who lived close were sent home to change clothes if they had an open stomach. If they saw heavily made up schoolgirls at recess, the teachers sent them to the toilet and sometimes waited at the exit to see if they had washed off everything. Sometimes they led to the teachers' room (or maybe it was the director's) - there was a sink near the wall, and the teachers stood over the girl’s soul while she washed off her makeup. With me this was only once.

The director or head teacher sometimes went into the cabinets during the lesson and if they saw someone in the makeup, they would send them to the sink directly from the lesson. Sometimes, if there was, for example, quite a bit of carcass, they simply warned that it was impossible. Although our class teacher told my girlfriend, who, like herself, wore glasses: "Well, you and I can tint cilia a little, you can't see behind the glasses!"

It all started with the fact that my mother before September 1 changed my last name from Gurevich to Kachurovskaya: as the director told her, the quota for Jews ended. Well, over so over. In 1985, an experimental zero class was opened all over the country, small ones were taken there, from the age of six. With a new surname, which I initially did not respond, I was sent there. It was great there: we lived separately from the school in three classes with a game room, a bedroom, a classroom and a lot of recreation. There were some incredibly cute teachers with us, and they misled me about the future.

In the first grade, we were given a honored teacher of the USSR and the same eminent teacher. I remember very well how I decided on the very first day: they escaped from prison, where they worked as wardens, and simply pretend to be teachers. The next three years I stood in the corner. The scale of this process could be assessed by a hole in the wall leading to another class, which I dig up in three years of standing. I don’t remember all my sins. But, for example, I refused to use the ruler, making a frame for my drawing; or trying to assemble a crane from the Shkolnik designer not according to the instructions - I imagined that this was a spacecraft. She considered that it was not necessary to raise her hand in order to take time off to the toilet, or to announce where you were going, in front of the class. It was forbidden to do so. Once, my stuttering girlfriend was called to the blackboard to read a poem. From excitement, she could not start right away, but the teacher began to shout - then I jumped up and also began to shout that it was impossible. Then she stood in the corner. Once a teacher told me that from my mother’s interview about children's fashion in “Pioneer Truth” it is clear that she is not Soviet. I didn’t understand what it meant, but I told my teacher that she was also not Soviet, and even worse, fabulous, Gingham from The Wizard of the Emerald City. Again stood in the corner.

Resistance to school obscurantism very tempered not only my character, but also the nature of my parents. For example, my grandmother to the sixth grade for another call to the school offered me a lie that she went to Africa to my parents (I lied about my parents in the second grade).

I perceived my junior school as an inevitable conclusion, a place of imprisonment, which for some reason all children must go through. Only now, when my children went to a private school, I realized that it could be different. Great discovery.

I studied in the so-called Zilov school in Chertanovo - it was built for residents of the ZIL dormitory. For some reason, at my school, children at recess were forbidden to go to the blackboard and draw on it with chalk. It is clear that somewhere in Western schools the creative beginning is developing with might and main, and in the Soviet school, firstly, it was not up to the creative beginning - they wanted all the children to go along the line, and secondly, apparently, they felt sorry for the chalk, I don’t know . Somehow in elementary classes I went to the blackboard, not knowing about this ban, and began to play something quietly in the corner. A girl immediately jumped up to me - her name was Olya - and she says: "By the way, we were told by the teacher that you shouldn’t draw on the blackboard, but you draw." I said, "Well, I will not." All erased, put the chalk and a rag, moved away.

At the next break, I see that Olya herself has already gone to the board and is drawing on it. I thought it was strange, and I approached her — not that I wanted to misunderstand her; it was just interesting for me to solve this logical paradox. I said, "Olya, how is that? You told me that you can't draw." To which Olya absolutely brilliantly replied: "It is not me who draws - it is you who draw."

I remember sometimes the head teacher came to us and told the girls to get up and raise their hands. We looked to see if something was exposed in such a position: then there were pants with a low waist in fashion. And once I got rid of it and put a bunch of baubles on my arm, and it was impossible to wear baubles. I was told off with all the class, they said that in all this I "look like a fenya", and "give a damn about these are women who stand by the lanterns." And they asked their parents to clarify what kind of women they stand with lanterns. More about the prohibitions, but not with me anymore - at a parent meeting for first-graders, my girlfriend was told that in no case should you buy a child with a black sole: a black sole can leave strips on the linoleum that was just laid.

My grandmother sewed me a school uniform. The same brown dress and black apron, but the dress is long, the sleeves are buff, the apron is not with wings, but with wings. A pioneer tie didn’t go to him at all, and I didn’t wear it. At first, my teachers drove me for this incredible form, and then they kicked me out of the pioneers. Literally - for the design form and show off. The class of my eldest son Moti is forbidden to run at recess, but this, of course, is not so dramatic.

I graduated from school before the introduction of the mandatory USE, so from the fifth to the ninth grade we were dragged to write graduation (and then introductory) essays. They used to train, as elsewhere, in a peculiar way: “pour water” was considered a solid skill, their thoughts were sorely punished (as usual, the author wanted to say, the teacher knew better than others), they could lower the mark for handwriting or the corrected mistake in the script. Nothing special, just like everyone else.

That's just at the same time with corrections for some reason fell into disgrace the words like "good" and "bad", "bad" and "good" - what is called value judgment in the rules of commenting on Wonderzine. The hit of such a word in an essay automatically shot the score. Therefore, many years later, becoming a journalist and having the opportunity to write my own texts, which no one checked for the theme of the “problem of the“ little man ”in Dostoevsky’s works, I continued to be afraid of combinations with forbidden words. Like Pavlov's dog, I corrected them for "not bad", "not the best", "excellent" and other epithets. It was possible to get rid of the fear of punishment literally a year ago, when it finally reached me that Ruschka would not get to my texts and no one would scoff me to read my work aloud. It's good that everything is already bad in the past.

Photo: anmen - stock.adobe.com, Africa Studio - stock.adobe.com, Ozon

Watch the video: I Rebelled At School Bans But It Went Too Far (December 2024).