Thursday 14 April 2011

Confessions of a Reluctant Convent School Girl

Like most Filipinas, I went to an all girls’ school run by nuns. In the Philippines, especially in the 1960s-1990s, there wasn’t much integration of sexes in schools. Girls went to school with girls and boys went with boys.

That pretty much is the tradition in my family – we only ever encountered the opposite sex at university. Usually, you go to the school attended by the elders in the family when you were growing up.

These schools are mostly run by religious orders of every sort. How progressive or regressive they were in terms of teachings and environments were and remain dictated by the order.  My brothers (and uncles and grandfathers) had the luck to be in a school run by the Jesuits – notably the most progressive order. I went to the school attended by my aunt. During her time, it was incredibly prestigious and their class rosters were dominated by important family names. When I entered it was still alright but by the time I hit high school, they forgot it was the 1980s and went back to even stricter, more ridiculous, incredibly regressive ideas of womanhood. It was only later in life that I learned the order then was actually run by German nuns.

That was the worst – a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns.

I digress. I like saying that as an excuse to explain how I turned out this way.

Anyway, pretty much from day one, religion, specifically, Roman Catholic doctrine is staple food for any child in the Philippine educational system.

From day one, I HATED it with a passion. I hated the subject and did everything I could to give the nuns and my teachers a terrible time. I was an absolute tiny terror. Making teachers cry and getting the nuns to lose their tempers was something I looked forward to on a daily basis. Sometimes, I won and sometimes I lost and got punished.

It didn’t matter – I HATED religion classes with a passion. No let me be clearer – I HATED everything they did in that school.

I absolutely detested the way they painted God as someone who was obsessed with doling out punishments. I hated the way they squashed any questions they could not answer about faith, about their conscious promotion that God wanted women to be docile, idiotic, unquestioning, unthinking, unblinking, perpetually smiling, “nice and simple” sheep following their damned idiot of a shepherd.

I may have been all of nine years old but even then I thought to myself, “If that’s the life I’m supposed to lead, I think I’ll follow the devil instead”. And follow the devil I did.

Looking back I suppose it really was in my nature any way to question everything. Everyone who knows me can attest to my personal nature as being incredibly defiant of any sort of authority and would instigate an argument quicker than you can sneeze. I cannot explain it but even now that I am an adult, I still have the incredible tendency to go left when everyone is going right and right when everyone says left.

It did not help matters at all during my schooling that my aunt told me “You don’t have to accept everything they tell you in school as the truth. You can think for yourself. If you don’t believe what they are telling you, then you should tell them. They cannot hold it against you for believing differently”.

My aunts were all American entrenched immigrants encouraging an exceptionally defiant Filipino 9 year old studying in a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns. I think that was God’s funny idea of “if you’re going to make a situation explosive, don’t hold back on the gasoline.” He certainly made sure there was lots of it and I was an incredibly enthusiastic flame-throwing participant.

Sometime before I went on to high school, my aunts were forcing me to move to 2 other schools due to the changes in the way my school was being run. Unfortunately, both of those schools had an extra year in primary school (what we used to call 7th grade). In my school, we only had 6 years then we moved on to high school. I could not for the life of me stomach the idea of adding another year to my personal hell. Every year, they forced me to take the exams for the other 2 schools. I always passed them then I stonewalled about moving. Finally, they gave up and let me be. I sighed with relief knowing I would be gone in 4 years instead of 5.

My hatred of all things ‘nuns’ and ‘religious’ led to my considering a solitary application to a university that was public therefore non-religious. Luckily it happened to be and remains the premier university in the Philippines. God must’ve decided to give me a break because I got exactly into the course I applied for without any difficulties. Had I failed, there would have been a lot of explaining to do as I hadn’t applied to any other university.

Looking back, I don’t blame my elders for putting me in that school. Neither do I blame the nuns because they were simply doing what they believed was right. They were all simply following tradition and hey, it worked out for my brothers who are both kind, intelligent, well bred and well spoken in the tradition of men that their school like to make. I on the other hand, remain this formless mass who still likes to make lots of noise, the only difference being, I now wear make-up.

My main terror in life is giving birth to a mini-me, which is not unlikely. However, I already have a head start because there is absolutely NO way I will be putting her in a school run by nuns. On second thought, it could actually be fun….hmmmm….my second wind at torturing nuns this time with a miniature sidekick. Now THAT is a thought. 

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