School…..
As i write this post there is a documentary on the BBC about the 11+ transfer test, or whatever it is they call it these days! I am not watching it!!
Why? Well, if you know me, you know i hated school 99% of the time! My experience in primary school, secondary school and a brief stint in “tech/college” was all just rubbish!
But why?
In my earliest Primary school years it became apparent that i was in a class full of super smart kids. In any ordinary circumstances i would have been in the top 5 or 6 pupils but this was a group of kids who got 100% in tests all the time so my 85-95% was not quite up to scratch. I do not remember actually giving up & accepting defeat but from stories my mum has since told i think i did this in about my 3rd year, i was probably 6 or 7 years old.
When you are 6 years old and you make 2 spelling mistakes out of 100 in a test, you do not need the teacher to say the words “you could have done better.” Thats 98%, just in case you didn’t know! By the time i was 11 or 12 i had tuned out! The standby light was on but the screen was blank!
I am no expert but the dents my confidence and character got while in Primary school had to be a contributing factor to the rest of my education, or lack of it. At this point i need to say that i am glad that an unhealthy focus on achieving in school was NOT present in our household. I have my parents to thank for a childhood that was centred around far more important things, eternal things that are far more precious than any school exam!
I can only attribute encouragement from school teachers to a couple of people during my teenage years. One of them was my Art teacher and the other was my English teacher. In general though, my school had nothing to offer me, a quiet, introverted and creative teenager with a complete lack of self-confidence. I remember the Art teacher and the English teacher but by God’s Grace i have forgotten a lot of the other details of school life.
Occasionally during my adult life i have bumped into some of my school teachers from both Primary & Secondary years and it brings me immense comfort to finally see that many of them are complete wack-jobs and it wasn’t personal!
I’m sorry ally to hear you had such a bad experience with schools in general.. I do suppose it’s very much up to a school you end up going because I had absolutely amazing time
It was so much fun and challenging and great at the same time.. I do remember teachers, although most of them weren’t any good, but there were some that I always meet up with when I go back to SK , and like chat to them for 3-4 hours 
Hey Mate,
Never knew this about your past, I too had tremendous difficulties through my primary, secondary and later College (in England) years.
I am glad that God has removed the majority of your memories to do with your life.
A lot of my school life I can unfortunately remember very clearly but I think in time, God will remove the majority of these memories. Just like you.
Of course there are things he will leave engraved in our minds and I’m guessing he has for you but only as a tool to help you now or later on in life whether you know why or not?
Anyway I’m going to be quiet, but I will say keep up all the blogging.
It’s nice getting to know you Ally
Xander
I should have said i still had fun in school, had friends who were good mates but the direction of my life changed when i quit the idea of education and got a job at 18 so you could call that a new chapter.
I have done some Open University courses since my mid 20′s so i am not a complete zealot against education, i guess i was just one of the kids who had a bad experience with schools…….
I was never a high flier in school, I wasn’t terrible, but by no means a straight A student, wasn’t prefect or rugby player or anything, it always kinda bugged me, but in the end I didn’t really care…
Hmmm – well when I was in Primary school I was one of those horrible annoying high achievers! Top of the class know-it-all. Always asking questions that foxed the teachers…
So – when I was 10-11 my parents thought it would give me a real opportunity in life to send me to a fee-paying school. A posh school. Outwardly I was very excited about this. I remember the precise moment – the moment where I could have expressed my real feelings (what 10 year old can?!?! I just wanted to please my parents mostly!). I was lying on the floor in the lounge and Dad said “Are you sure you want to go to this School?” I said “Yes”. Inside I was screaming NO.
How wise I was! I spent 3 years of hell in a school surrounded by the ‘cream of the crop’, ‘the old boys’ network’ etc etc. Confidence destroyed. Demonized as a hopeless case. I was lifted out of the school (before I was expelled I fear) and put back in to the comprehensive system.
I don’t resent my parents in any way for doing what they did, their motives were pure. Their financial sacrifices were very real. (we were not well-off).
But – just to finish – I got my confidence back only really in the last 6 or 7 years.
Im not sure, I think everybody has those moments, high achiever or not. I did very well in terms of all the academic stuff but didnt really like anything else about it, bullying and the like for all of primary school and then the same guys went to my second school so i still couldnt escape them! sigh. but you get over that and need to leave it behind you or else it will follow you. while others who didnt focus too much on the school work had a great time.
It got better only when I decided to make something more out of it and remember that I was a child then and that the rest of my life wasnt going to be dictated by those few years. yes there were some pretty horrific times but that was almost a decade ago and it needs to be moved on from.
When I got to Uni i managed to combine both having fun and doing the work needed, but when i moved onto the postgrad stuff I realised that I’d had enough and wanted to start living in the actual world instead of continually trying to advance dry theories that are totally separated from reality. but i wouldnt give up on what iv had so far even though its tough for graduates now.
but i wouldnt give up on what iv had so far even though its tough for graduates now.
Drew, I’m glad to hear you say that
Love you man 
@Andrew.. trouble – is i left school at 16. straight in to the adult world and never had a chance to ‘work it through’ as it were. i think it then became one of those things that damages your soul without you even knowing it. and as a christian its these failiures that stop us from getting close to God, or worse still not even knowing him. It certainly stopped me.
I’m 37. And i became a christian last September.