I am one of those boring people who love tormenting their brains. When I was a kid, I loved books so much that my internal world could not contain such love. I would read them, reread them, arrange them in the best possible location, take them around with me. They are not fun to carry and I got bullied a lot. A LOT.
I always thought I loved school. But I found out I should reflect more on this statement. I loved learning. I loved books. I loved meeting friends and enjoyed certain topics more than others. The politics and the drama of socializing, not so much. I think I am one of the few “teacher’s kids” that had zero privileges to brag about with this “connection”. My late father never taught me by the way, he barely acknowledged my existence at school. The only reason he enrolled me there was out of convenience because he was going there anyway. Kindergarden and Primary school was my dancing queen and arts and crafts phase. I always knew how to entertain myself.
Teenage years were a nightmare. They were a sad blur of immature friendships, uninteresting things to learn about and parental obsession about grades, the smart kids, the “good schools”, the useful degrees and future prospects. Harry Potter was still being released when I was in High School. I was hooked. The book releases were what I looked forward to. They were pricey but my parents said it was okay since I was getting good grades.
There is something very stupid about the school system in my country that just does not make any sense, and makes teenagers’ lives even more miserable. A system inherited from our beloved french colonizer. Rather than taking all types of classes until graduation, the student needs to choose a section: Sciences, Maths, Computer Science, Economy and Arts. Arts was dubbed “the section of the kids who were dumb at maths” but somehow everyone was not keen on languages and writing, which was the focal point of the section: Languages, history, geography and philosophy.
There was an unspoken social rule where you had to make your kid choose one of the STEM sections even if he sucked, have him tutored until graduation because even they fail their SATs they would still get their pick from university degrees. “They can even choose something in humanities because you know, he thinks better than the humanities ‘ suckers!”. I chose to major in English, and the plan immediately unfolded: She will become a teacher, what else is there?
There is an obscure prep school for languages and humanities that most people do not know about. It prepares students for a national examination to teach. If you scored top 5, you secured a spot as a university teacher. The rest would be assigned in High schools. Government jobs are the most convenient way to generate wealth in Tunisia. You get contracted somewhere to slack off for life.
University was amazing. The teachers were amazing. Super competent although strict and authoritative. After years of repeating the same dull “fill in the blanks” exercices about random topics no one cared about, we were studying the real deal: Drama, Civilisation, literature, Discourse analysis.
Stellar training to master Academic English. But do I want to be teacher? One would caution to give it a try and find out. I did not wait to find out. Two years in and I dropped out.
