She had a teacher once, I think of French, who decided that no matter what my mom did, she wasn't going to get a passing grade. My mom ended up arguing with her friend, who was making an A in the same class with the same teacher, that it wasn't her fault she was failing French. Friend was understandably skeptical.
"Fine!" says my mom. "You do my homework tonight. I'll hand it in with my name on it, and you'll see, it'll get an F."
[Mom telling this story later: "This wasn't cheating, because I wasn't having someone else to my work to get a better grade. I was having someone to do it to show her I wasn't going to get the grade I deserved no matter what."]
Friend does my mom's homework that night, Mom hands it in, and sure enough, it comes back unread with an F at the top.
"Wow," says Friend.
Eventually, this culminated in an F on the report card.
Now, my family, as you know, was as unintellectual as they come. You had to go to school, behave yourself, work hard, and pass your classes. As long as you did that, there was no difference between bringing home all As and bringing home all Cs.
But bring home an F, and there was a problem.
My grandfather took the day off work, called a conference with all his daughter's teachers (and possibly the principal?), and sat them down.
[Mom: "Dad! But French is the only class I'm having problems in!"
Grandpa: "Doesn't matter. As long as I'm taking the day off work, I might as well get everyone in so we can talk about any and all problems now, so I don't have to take another day off later."]
Grandpa: "Why is my daughter making an F in French?"
French teacher: "Because I don't like her."
Grandpa: "Really? So no matter good the work she does is, you're going to give her an F?"
French teacher: "Yep!"
Grandpa: "..."
At home, to Mom:
Grandpa: "Well, the teacher admitted in front of me and all your other teachers and the principal that the F isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do differently, so for this one teacher, you won't get in trouble at home for failing. Keep doing what you're doing."
Given that another teacher (I *think* it was a different one) said that she let my mother get beaten up at school because she didn't approve of my Hispanic grandfather marrying a white woman and my mother being "mixed race," and given that my mother said yet a third teacher said that my mother just wasn't that smart, and generally her teachers just decided that she was never going to college, I'm willing to bet racism was at play with the whole public "Because I don't like her" and everyone else just accepting that.
Because Mom was an incredibly shy, pathologically rule-following child, as she was when I knew her, so it's not like I can see how a teacher wouldn't have liked her on the grounds that she was difficult. I'm guessing racism, and the undiagnosed dyslexia probably reinforced it.
Mom made sure to instill the pathological following of rules in me, but she relentlessly combatted my shyness (which I did have as a toddler/very small child!), because she said shyness held her and her grandmother (Mildred) back. "Everyone thinks shy little girls are sweet, and they'll grow out of it. You don't grow out of it! You have to fight it!" And that's what led to the yearly "Don't be shy! It doesn't matter if the other kids don't like you! You have to show off in front of the teacher so you can go to college someday!" talks.
She got a lot of things right! But others not so much. (My latest post this morning, about my uncle, was from thinking about Mom's childhood, as a direct result of this conversation we're having, in which I explain why her childhood led to me showing off my brains in my childhood.)
Re Mom and college: despite a total lack of support from her teachers (I think at least one actually told her she'd never be successful), she went to the local community college in her 20s.
Her father said he would pay for tuition but not books.
Since her parents also wouldn't let her get a job (yes, in her 20s), she was in a pickle.
Her grandmother, good old Mildred, the only intellectual of the family, paid for my mother's textbooks out of her Social Security check. Which, given how little that pays (and I think she was only getting part of her bigamist husband's Social Security, because part was going to his second family), I gather was a non-trivial sacrifice.
When my mother started taking classes, her mother was actively hostile. Because, of course, seeing my mother succeed intellectually reminded her that she had dropped out in tenth grade.
I may not have gotten the extracurricular support I needed, but at least if I did well at school in a way that didn't make extra demands on my parents, I got praised for that and not "I'm not speaking to you"!
At the community college, she finally had good, supportive teachers and had good experiences. That was where her undiagnosed dyslexia became the thing that was really holding her back. She never managed to get an associate's degree, got pregnant, had me, had my sister, got pregnant with my other sister, and got married and *finally* moved out and escaped from her mother at the age of about 30.
Part of the reason I'm sharing all this is to give you some of the context for why and how my family does not care, not even a little, if their kids are successful. Which I know blows your mind! :)
no subject
She had a teacher once, I think of French, who decided that no matter what my mom did, she wasn't going to get a passing grade. My mom ended up arguing with her friend, who was making an A in the same class with the same teacher, that it wasn't her fault she was failing French. Friend was understandably skeptical.
"Fine!" says my mom. "You do my homework tonight. I'll hand it in with my name on it, and you'll see, it'll get an F."
[Mom telling this story later: "This wasn't cheating, because I wasn't having someone else to my work to get a better grade. I was having someone to do it to show her I wasn't going to get the grade I deserved no matter what."]
Friend does my mom's homework that night, Mom hands it in, and sure enough, it comes back unread with an F at the top.
"Wow," says Friend.
Eventually, this culminated in an F on the report card.
Now, my family, as you know, was as unintellectual as they come. You had to go to school, behave yourself, work hard, and pass your classes. As long as you did that, there was no difference between bringing home all As and bringing home all Cs.
But bring home an F, and there was a problem.
My grandfather took the day off work, called a conference with all his daughter's teachers (and possibly the principal?), and sat them down.
[Mom: "Dad! But French is the only class I'm having problems in!"
Grandpa: "Doesn't matter. As long as I'm taking the day off work, I might as well get everyone in so we can talk about any and all problems now, so I don't have to take another day off later."]
Grandpa: "Why is my daughter making an F in French?"
French teacher: "Because I don't like her."
Grandpa: "Really? So no matter good the work she does is, you're going to give her an F?"
French teacher: "Yep!"
Grandpa: "..."
At home, to Mom:
Grandpa: "Well, the teacher admitted in front of me and all your other teachers and the principal that the F isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do differently, so for this one teacher, you won't get in trouble at home for failing. Keep doing what you're doing."
Given that another teacher (I *think* it was a different one) said that she let my mother get beaten up at school because she didn't approve of my Hispanic grandfather marrying a white woman and my mother being "mixed race," and given that my mother said yet a third teacher said that my mother just wasn't that smart, and generally her teachers just decided that she was never going to college, I'm willing to bet racism was at play with the whole public "Because I don't like her" and everyone else just accepting that.
Because Mom was an incredibly shy, pathologically rule-following child, as she was when I knew her, so it's not like I can see how a teacher wouldn't have liked her on the grounds that she was difficult. I'm guessing racism, and the undiagnosed dyslexia probably reinforced it.
Mom made sure to instill the pathological following of rules in me, but she relentlessly combatted my shyness (which I did have as a toddler/very small child!), because she said shyness held her and her grandmother (Mildred) back. "Everyone thinks shy little girls are sweet, and they'll grow out of it. You don't grow out of it! You have to fight it!" And that's what led to the yearly "Don't be shy! It doesn't matter if the other kids don't like you! You have to show off in front of the teacher so you can go to college someday!" talks.
She got a lot of things right! But others not so much. (My latest post this morning, about my uncle, was from thinking about Mom's childhood, as a direct result of this conversation we're having, in which I explain why her childhood led to me showing off my brains in my childhood.)
Re Mom and college: despite a total lack of support from her teachers (I think at least one actually told her she'd never be successful), she went to the local community college in her 20s.
Her father said he would pay for tuition but not books.
Since her parents also wouldn't let her get a job (yes, in her 20s), she was in a pickle.
Her grandmother, good old Mildred, the only intellectual of the family, paid for my mother's textbooks out of her Social Security check. Which, given how little that pays (and I think she was only getting part of her bigamist husband's Social Security, because part was going to his second family), I gather was a non-trivial sacrifice.
When my mother started taking classes, her mother was actively hostile. Because, of course, seeing my mother succeed intellectually reminded her that she had dropped out in tenth grade.
I may not have gotten the extracurricular support I needed, but at least if I did well at school in a way that didn't make extra demands on my parents, I got praised for that and not "I'm not speaking to you"!
At the community college, she finally had good, supportive teachers and had good experiences. That was where her undiagnosed dyslexia became the thing that was really holding her back. She never managed to get an associate's degree, got pregnant, had me, had my sister, got pregnant with my other sister, and got married and *finally* moved out and escaped from her mother at the age of about 30.
Part of the reason I'm sharing all this is to give you some of the context for why and how my family does not care, not even a little, if their kids are successful. Which I know blows your mind! :)