The Sadist Method

I vividly remember the tumultuous turmoil I, among other kids, had to endure throughout our elementary education. The pressure to do well at school, coupled with a rooted fear from the wrath of our teachers was weighting upon me as were the  pounds of textbooks, copy books and pens, neatly arranged in my colorful backpack, weighting on my tiny shoulders. Students were not the only stress victims in the process of producing tomorrow’s eager minds. The teachers were also under pressure to produce students of an excellent caliber; and it showed.

I was a student as the Nour Primary School, a small private school with an all women staff. Thinking back about all those young women among whom we took our first steps on the road of formal education, I believe some of them were very good and naturally predisposed to teach young restless kids, others were average, while a minority were mediocre. Some of those had very peculiar ‘disciplining” methods that would seem by today’s educational and psychological standards extreme and often sadist. In fourth grade, for instance, one teacher used to seclude a row of students. She made only “stupid” students sit in the notorious “stupid row”. How did she decide who was stupid? Based on exam grades… I had the “privilege” to sit in the stupid row for a couple of weeks following a mediocre performance in an Arabic grammar quiz. Although sitting might seem beneficial in that it encourages kids to work harder to get out of the embarrassing situation of being labeled stupid and becoming the laughing-stock of childishly evil pupils. This can be devastating to an eight year old’s self-esteem.

Another teacher had championed an even more extreme method for addressing misbehavior, she had card board made “donkey ears” that she crowned a kid with whenever need be. The unfortunate kid had no choice but to wear his pair of ears throughout the day. Amidst the laughs of classmates, he could only sob in humiliation.

Physical violence was also omniscient throughout my elementary education. Each teacher had a stick made either of wood, plastic or iron. Mischievous kids used to fervently argue whose stick was the most painful to be hit with. I tried all of them, but I will never forget the beating I received in fourth grade. I was sitting in the front row discussing with my elbow partner a popular contraceptives television commercial I had seen. During our childish discussion the word “contraceptive” was uttered. The teacher had heard it and all hell broke loose. Both my partner and I got beaten on the tips of the fingers with a stick until our fingers got swollen. To this day, I still entertain myself with the idea that I received a beating for uttering a word that all Moroccans heard, day and night, alone and with their families in the most conservative national TV channel of that time.

It’s surprising that even with so much physical and psychological violence, most kids survived the ordeal to excel in their professional careers. Some are now engineers, salespeople, mechanics, teachers, journalists and doctoral students. Some are living and blooming abroad in Europe and North America while others have chosen to settle down in their homeland and have careers and families. Is it the strength of these individuals that made them survive the turmoil of the Nour Elementary School intact? Or are the “disciplinary measures” they were subjected to only a speck in the titanic norms of the bizarre world of Moroccan elementary education? That is the million dollar question.