I hated school from a young age. School, to me, wasn’t something that I did, so much as something that was done to me. Although I was lumped in with the so-called gifted and talented kids, I had no interest in schooling and was only there because my love of reading bolstered my literacy. I was entirely unable to pay attention. I felt trapped; institutionalised. School, to me, felt like a prison where you got to go home at the end of the day.
I hated waking up early. Having to raise my hand to go to the bathroom and other kinds of bizarre formalities like that incensed me. I was bullied in primary school, and by high school, although people were comparatively kind, I still hated attending. Yet, there at Penrith High School in Sydney's west (and I shouldn’t have been surprised given that it’s an academically selective school) I was surrounded by other kids who were not only engaged with their learning but enthusiastic about it. Several good teachers really tried to help me realise my potential, but I participated as little as I could get away with.
I barely got high enough marks at school to get into university to start with
After nearly a decade’s tertiary study, a mostly-finished doctorate, a good deal of arduous work and an incessant pestering of my mentors and superiors at the university, in 2021 I finally found work as a casual university teacher. It might seem bizarre that someone who hated school went on to teach at university, but they are entirely different beasts.
I barely got high enough marks at school to get into university to start with. I almost didn’t attend enough to get my higher school certificate.
But at university, I managed to get on the Dean’s Merit List in my last year of undergrad. I realised that doing the non-compulsory readings was usually enough to pull a distinction, so long as you turned up enough to not absent fail. The freedom to learn on my own time and teachers who were practising writers was what allowed me to succeed at university, when I had failed in school.
It wasn’t until I was a teacher myself that I understood the kinds of students who would hang around outside the teacher’s staffrooms at lunch to get clarification. Who took notes constantly, and who went to tutoring outside of school even if they weren’t failing.
As a teacher, I noticed that there was a distinct class of student – and I say “class,” in the most literal sense because that was usually the differentiating factor – who would email me with the slightest of questions, arrange meetings whenever they didn’t understand. They were usually kids who spoke and carried themselves with the signifiers of being middle-class or above. They had no reservations about taking as much of a teacher’s time as they saw fit. I care about all my students, and I will always, without hesitation, oblige. Teaching isn’t just a job to me so much as a lifestyle. Likewise, if I wanted to help struggling students from working-class or minority backgrounds, I often had to reach out to them.
I saw my own schoolteachers as state-mandated babysitters
It occurred to me when I was a teacher myself that both well-off people, and people from migrant backgrounds hoping for better class mobility don’t see schools as prisons: they see them as a resource. They ask for help because they felt either entitled to it, or that their future depended on it.
As a working-class person from a white Australian background, with one parent who left after year 10 and another who has never had their degree directly influence their employment; not only did I not value education, I could not see how it could help me achieve my dream job of being a writer.
I saw my own school teachers as state-mandated babysitters rather than what they were all along: people who cared about me and wanted to see me achieve. I liked a lot of my high school teachers; I was especially fond of my year coordinator, my art and music teachers and most of all Mrs Taylor, my senior English teacher. I liked them, but I never appreciated how much of themselves they were giving in every attempt to try and get me to engage — until I became a teacher myself.
Although it cuts into my free time, I will always encourage my students to mine me for whatever resources they can. It’s my job, and it’s a lifestyle I chose — and whether or not it feels like it, they’re paying for it, too.
Benjamin Muir is a freelance writer and academic.
