wut

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I picked Harriet Tubman because Harriet Tubman, and I wrote about how her master had thrown an anvil at her head, leaving her with a permanent dent in her forehead. I know that the anvil part was definitely in the school library book.

My teacher circled the word “anvil” and took off points.

“I HAVE SPELLED ANVIL CORRECTLY,” I roared in tiny confrontation.

“No,” she said, and it transpired that she didn’t know or care that “anvil” is a word or that “anvils” are a thing.

And so despite my helpful attempts to explain what anvils were, including references to blacksmiths and the Roadrunner, I had points taken off OH MY GOD.

YES, I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THIS TWENTY YEARS LATER. FUCK YOU, LADY. YOU ARE DOUBTLESSLY DEAD BY NOW AND I HOPE YOU KNOW YOUR STUDENTS STILL HATE YOU.

“…85 percent of the men and women we interviewed for the shame research could recall a school incident from their childhood that was so shaming, it changed how they thought of themselves as learners.”

If a student didn’t get a perfect score on an assignment she would make us stand in front of the class one by one and publicly discuss all of the mistakes that we made. It was terrible.

I also vividly remember the time a teacher dragged on a confrontation for a whole week because she wouldn’t accept the way I spelt “occasion” and made me write “I will not talk back to my teachers” 100 times which of course I refused to do and she made me stanmd outside the classroom in a half-sit holding my ears. The issue was only resolved when I told my mother about it and she came to school with an Oxford dictionary and schooled the stupid teacher about it.

I also think about how wild it is that women get mocked and made fun of for pretending to be interested in sports and other things that are typically understood as male interests, and it seems like we’re the weird ones for doing that, but it’s crazy how there’s no pressure on men to be interested in, or at least understand anything considered feminine, like, wouldn’t you want to have knowledge about something your significant other is interested in?