My "look" at culture, identity and education

Personal Reflection on own experience of culture and education: 

Leaving your two bedroom department of housing flat (that you share with your full-time working single mother) while wearing your spotless private school uniform is an experience that’s hard to sum up. I’ve struggled in a variety of tutes, lectures, and other get togethers to describe my school experience, and no matter how I paint it, I never truly hit the nail on the head in describing how it felt at the time- so bear with me. When I tell people I went from a wait-listed catholic primary school to an all-girls private catholic school, they give me the look. 

The ‘oh I see, I can safely put you in a box’ look. 

I hate that look. 

Because that look fails to understand what it was like being the non-Catholic kid from the houso units from the suburb over, who was routinely the last one waiting in the playground for her mum to pick her up after work. It fails to understand how awesome it was to become the school captain even though I was one of five kids sitting in the back of the church while the others practiced their holy communion, reconciliation and a trial of other rites. It doesn’t explain what it was like to come home and kick a footy around with my best mates, all of whom went to the local public school and picked on me for being ‘posh’. It ignores watching my mum constantly work a 9-7, 5 day a week office job and still have to spend hours negotiating the school fee payment plan with my school because even with the single parent discount- it was impossible to pay. It doesn’t cover coming to high-school with second hand uniforms and a blazer 5-sizes-too-big and still being grateful that I didn’t have to go to the scary local high school where they flushed your head down the dunny on the first day. The look doesn’t see how I was one of the few senior students who had to keep up a casual job during the hsc, and it doesn’t see how I ended up losing some of my best friends because we’d drifted apart. 

But thank god that look is blind to all of that because I’m fairly sure I’d go from getting the ‘oh I see, I can safely put you in a box’ look, to the ‘cry me a river you privileged little princess” look. 

Because I’ll cop it square on the chin- I had an incredibly privileged educational experience. I finished up in year 12 as the social justice captain, with a 90’s ATAR to boot and my first preference in the first round UAC offers. 

Of the three best friends I grew up with in the housing commission units, one has a three year old little girl, and still lives there, one is currently in Canberra, training to join the air force, and one is currently in prison. We lived in the same place and had the same setbacks more or less, but I think it’s safe to say that the sacrifices my mother made to send me to a private school made all the difference.

So while throughout this course, the issue of public vs. private has been thrown about in a number of different contexts, I am still entirely undecided. I agree that it’s terrible that school choice is condemning underprivileged students to an unequal education system. But I can’t possibly join in with the condemnation my peers express for the parents who choose to perpetuate the cycle and send their kids off to private schools.

The fact I went to a religious school also complicates my experience when relating to the issue: I pretty massive percent of the ‘otherness’ I felt while at school was being unbaptised and the illegitimate child of a single mother, rather than just economic background and not living in the suburb. My mother’s school choice was based on the fact my primary school was the best in the area that could make an allowance on non-Catholic students so long as they made up no more than 5% of the grade. I was on the wait list from the time I was three and still, when admission in kindergarten were made, I didn’t make the cut. I was admitted shortly after the start of year one when a student moved from the area. 

It wasn’t anything as pervasive as to impact my education, or indeed eventually stop my becoming school captain, but it did result in my feeling of ‘otherness’ which only drove my desire to compete with my privileged, catholic peers. As Christina Ho states, and I utterly agree with, “even when adherence to a particular faith is not a pre-requisite for enrolling, religiosity defines the character of most private schools, to a greater or lesser extent.” Learning about the sin of sex outside of marriage was incredibly fun as a ten year old who was smart enough to put two and two together, eventually going home to tell my hardworking mum she was most likely going to hell according to Ms Ryan.

While I don’t repent my school choice for a moment, even taking into consideration the unique position it placed me in, I do understand that it is an issue which is not up to parents or students to overcome. The remedy is not simply parents sacrificing a higher quality education for their children by sending them to a public school- the solution is in the improvement of our public schools so that the distinction in quality and performance no longer exists.

I personally believe my experience as a lower SES student in private high SES schools shaped my perception of education: I truly felt privileged and I was forced to realise in a multitude of subtle and not so subtle ways how much of an opportunity my education was- something I am eminently thankful to my mother for today. 

Ho, C. (2011). respecting the presence of others: School micropublics and everyday multiculturalism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(6), 603-619.