I chose these words “I Don’t Like It” from the novel because I did not like my childhood. Just as Mary, in The Secret Garden, exclaimed when she first sighted the moor, so do I feel the same way when I think about my childhood. My childhood home was not a very academically conducive environment. No one in my family circle had any academic aspirations. As a result, we did not have much exposure to newspapers, books, or anything of literary merit. Despite this, from the time I learned to read, I had a yearning for the written text. I remember, as a very young child walking home from school, I would read all the advertisements on shop windows and the posters at bus stops.
At home, I would read the writing on toiletry bottles and canned food. It was an indescribable hunger to read but my family did not understand this. Whenever my grandparents caught me reading something, they would say that I was strange and that something mentally was wrong with me. I used to wait at the gate for the postman to deliver pamphlets before my grandmother got them because she used them to wrap the vegetable peels when she cooked so she could dispose of them
37 “I don’t like it,’ she said to herself, I don’t like it” (Burnett, 1969, p. 17).
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neatly in the garbage bin. With this photograph of my primary school, which I took on 12 April, 2015 (Figure 4.1), I commence the story of my primary school experiences.
Figure 4.1 My primary school (1969–1975)
I attended this school from 1969 to 1981, all the way through its transition from a primary school to a high school in 1976. When I looked at this photograph of the school taken when it was a primary school, I was filled with the same kind of dread I felt then. Despite the fact that the windows and doors now have burglar-bars, which they did not have then, it felt more like a prison then. I was trapped inside those walls where my creativity in writing was stifled. I was forced to take subjects in a rigid curriculum that allowed no room at all for choice. Some teachers were hard masters—
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cruel and unkind—corporal punishment was rife and their solution to any digression from what they wanted. I had no other feelings about primary school other than dread and humiliation, even after all these years, because the injustices I endured left an indelible mark on me. Whenever my feelings are hurt or I get upset by certain events that occur, I am automatically drawn back to the feelings I experienced whilst at primary school.
At school, for the reading lesson, we were given books from The Gay Way Series (Boyce, 1970) that started with The Yellow Book and progressed through The Orange Book, and The Violet Book (Figure 4.2), to the ultimate The Red Book (Figure 4.3).
Figure 4.2 The Yellow Book, The Orange Book and The Violet Book
Figure 4.3 The Red Book
When you were able to read The Red Book, you had passed the reading test and could move to the next grade. I remember clearly sitting at the back of the class for reading so that I would get an opportunity to read the other learners’ books whilst they were waiting to read to the teacher. The learners were at different stages in their reading so there were yellow, orange, violet and red books
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in the class. I used to borrow the other books even if I had read them many times before and I would read them over again while waiting to read to the teacher. I was very disappointed and disillusioned because I knew I could read all the books but the teacher had her favourite learners whom she would allow to read to her and, by the time she got half way through the class, the time was up. The next day she would start again with her favourite learners and some of the really bright learners would never get a chance to read at all.
We were never given these books to take home because the teacher collected them at the end of the day. The school had a library but you could not take the books home and the library was not very well stocked. You could go during the breaks and read what was there but the library teacher wanted to have her lunch and the library was locked because she was in the staffroom. At that time, not much emphasis was placed on reading so no one really bothered to question her, not even the principal. I do not remember much about being in Class 1 (Grade 1) or my first day of school but I do remember receiving a book prize at the end of Class 2 (Grade 2) because I could read fluently.
Over the years, the book got lost but below is a drawing (Figure 4.4) I made in April 2015 of a recent edition of the book (Kelly, 2014), which was called The Ugly Duckling, a popular children’s storybook originally written by Hans Christian Anderson (1843).
105 Figure 4.4 My drawing of the book, The Ugly Duckling
When I looked at this drawing of the book, I was taken back to the time when I started losing my self-confidence. At the time, I was too young to understand the deeper meaning that this story would
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have for me because, to me, it was just a story. My life mirrored that of the ugly duckling because, indeed, I did turn from an ugly duckling into a swan. When I was at primary school, I saw myself as the ugly duckling that did not belong but, in high school and over the years with all my achievements both personally and professionally, I came to realise that the ugly duckling did indeed grow up to be a swan and find her true place with other swans. I believed that I had found my true place in the field of teacher education.
When I received this book as a prize, I was still too naïve and young to understand why I had received the prize, and I happily took it home and showed it to my grandfather. Hoping to be congratulated by him, my hopes were dashed when, for some reason, he told me that the school gave me a book because they felt sorry for me because I had come last in the class. I remember not saying anything to him because I believed him and, moreover, the book was called The Ugly Duckling and he had chuckled and said that I was like the ugly duckling. I hid the book away because he told everyone in the family, and it became a family joke to refer to me as Ugly Duckling. I would take the book out when no one was around and read the story—and I believed I was the ugly duckling, and grew up with this negative image of myself. I related this to Mary’s initial experiences of a dreary, contrary, and miserable existence while living on the moor. It was initially an unfriendly home full of secrets and dark passages with the wind howling in the night. Similarly, I felt the same way about my primary school years. However, I always remembered the story that when the ugly duckling found out who he really was, he discovered that he was an elegant swan. I waited patiently for the day when I too would become a swan.