When you're a student, one of the most common questions you get asked is "How was school?". To say that this question is a daily phenomenon would be an understatement. Every day, I'd get to answer this question at least 5 times, and I'd say "Yeah it was good". But if someone was to ask me the same question in a very generalised, non-daily sense, I'd be left speechless. Honestly..... I wouldn't find words to describe my school experience in a nutshell.
But to begin with, let's call it surreal.
Anyone who knows me well enough from school will know that I am the kind of person who enters a room smiling widely. I like to wish every passerby in the corridor a good day, or at least flash 'em a smile.
But very few people know about the little things that break me or chip away at my self-esteem.
One of my biggest pet peeves has been separatism, partiality, and where better to look for it than in any average highschool school? Well I'd say that this isn't another "The DUFF" story, but it kinda is, I'm not gonna lie...
See, I've never been what you would call a "popular kid" and I'm not interested in being one. Yet, despite my aloofness towards popularity, the struggles of being unpopular do not become less stingy.
Partiality by definition means an unfair bias in the favour of one person or thing. But in a school, partiality means playing with the self-esteem of students by flaunting a few students' performances over that of others.
Inside the walls of a school, separatism and partiality strike in almost every possible manner. When we talk about separatism in a school environment, two main concepts come into play, that most of us have witnessed in some manner or the other; pretty privilege and smart privilege.
According to google, Pretty Privilege refers to the notion that people who are considered more attractive by the societal beauty norms have the upper hand in the world over those who do not conform to these stereotypical norms.
Now the question is, how does pretty privilege come into play at school and how does it affect an average student?
Have you ever observed that a "pretty" person is much more likely to get an important part in a visually creative ensemble than a "not-so-pretty" person, irrespective of their capacity, talent or desire?
From a personal POV, pretty privilege has been rampantly evident when it comes to representation of the school in a public forum, such as competitions, especially those like elocution, dance, drama, etc.
Another instance of evident pretty privilege comes during events that require students to nominate their classmates. It's natural for an average person to go with the crowd, but this only augments toxic cultures in school environments. Nominations such as "Student of the Year '' (a major toxic event in itself), or Student council nominations and/or extracurricular nominations; all have one phenomenon in common - the overwhelming populace of popular students. Why is this an issue? Such events are essentially meant to raise school spirit and unity amongst students and it's pretty obvious that most of the people want to participate. But not every one of those participants is popular, and even though not everyone can come out on the positive side of such events, they at least need to know that they have a chance. Crowd mentality is a legitimate phenomenon, and even though it's not toxic in itself, it has a Ripple effect that eventually reaches the participants and instils thoughts of self-doubt, alienation, body image issues, etc.
This concept may even be unintentional from the side of the person getting the benefit of it, and naturally, it does affect them as well, but from the perspective of a student witnessing or suffering this, these things sting on an entirely new level.
Such trivial instances may seem undetectable or subtle to the witnessing eye sometimes, but to those who tolerate this, are affected on a deep level. However trivial the matter is, when someone is sidelined on the basis of their appearance (something that they might even feel insecure about), coping with it just becomes all that difficult.
Talking about the second factor of this toxic separatism culture in schools, Smart Privilege means that students who are considered to be academically smarter are given preference over those who are said to be "average" students. In a formal academic environment, we witness this factor much more often than pretty privilege. Equally, as damaging as pretty privilege, smart privilege plays at the self-esteem of a regular student in many different ways.
Few questions that have always lingered at the back of my mind are "Will I never be good enough? Will I never get noticed if I don't perform exceptionally in everything? Am I capable of being nothing more than an average Joe?"
Trying to get to the root of all these waves of self-doubt, I realised that the problem lies not within an individual, but rather in the bigger picture.
Smart privilege shows up in our lives almost constantly when we're in school. It comes up even in the most regular things like how many teachers treat every student in class in a certain manner, but only on the basis of their marks; how every student is 'expected' to behave in the class and how generalised these expectations are, and how every such "expectation" is modelled from the behaviour and academic score of the smarter students in class.
Now, some would ask, "Isn't that how students are supposed to be treated? Smarter students being at the top of the academic hierarchy whilst average students get shunned to their 'levels'? ". Well, ask yourself, isn't this situation identical to the issue of a widening economic gap, 'the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer?
The difference, individuality is the very essence of humanity and every human being has their own weaknesses, their strengths, each is unique to their own personality.
Then naturally, every student learns differently, reacts to knowledge differently and processes things differently. Schools are essentially meant to enhance our minds, to augment our development, but if our learning systems and academic environment treats everyone the same, Then what good are our schools for?
To look at it from the equality perspective, we'll see that equality doesn't mean the same treatment for everyone, rather it means that every student, every human is treated in a manner that is commensurate with their unique set of abilities.
Despite the fact that I have been angry at such kinds of situations in school most of the time, I can't help but look at them from a slightly utopic perspective with fresh hindsight.
So, pardon me for the philosophy, but at the end of it all, school is just a stepping stone, and albeit the fact that such partiality and separatism has a deep effect on the psyche of students, it is completely up to us how much we let it overwhelm us.
We may miss opportunities at the school level, due to a plethora of reasons, but many more opportunities will be presented to us tomorrow. I know this philosophy is the most cliché of them all, but that doesn't stop it from being true. It isn't easy trying to rise above such biases, but we don't need to do that in one day and neither do we need to do it at the school level itself.
The most basic takeaway from this issue for me is that our differences do not put us above or below anyone else, rather they just make us extremely unique and novel, and that makes me stronger.
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