INTEGRATION
Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees
Institutional Affiliation(s)
This paper describes my story of life. The school is the socializing agent undoubtedly par excellence within a community, complementing family work, which is also essential, without being able to replace either one or the other. At school, children and adolescents spend a large part of their days, and they are impregnated with the cultural values that leaders choose to convey (Deal, & Peterson, 1999). When it was time for me to go to school, everyone in the house was depressed, because they were sure that the school was a bakery, where they put a child on a baking sheet to give it shape, like a dough, and returned it to the parent’s ready-made. My studies are a real struggle for existence and independence.
The first person I came across was a father who was terribly proud that his son was going to school, while I, evaluating this event more realistically, thought that he had no special reasons for such pride. The father is the first man model that his children have, hence the importance of his presence, he is the first person who together with the mother will forge the identity in the child (Rosenberg, et.al. 2006). Then I entered into a fight with the school attendant, whom my father instructed to deliver me to school and whom I bit on the way. The watchman told me that he delivered other members of our family to the school in the same way. But the main battle unfolded in the school itself, where from the very first day two irreconcilable contradictions clashed: the disgust of individual teachers towards me and my disgust for individual subjects.
It was a truly continuous and long struggle, in which, on the one hand, teachers and science participated, and on the other, I. Of course, the struggle was unequal, and I almost always had to give in; I found consolation in a wise proverb: "The clever is always inferior" (Goffee, & Jones, 2007). But I had to concede also because the teachers, seeing me as their adversary, used the same favorite, but generally very dishonest method: in the lessons and exams they always asked me what I did not know. Thus, they deprived me of any opportunity to succeed in the struggle for independence.
But this struggle had truly rich traditions: it was waged by many of my ancestors, and especially their descendants. One of my relatives, for example, as he went to the first grade of the gymnasium, did not part with him for four years in a row. He considered a place in this class to be his hereditary immovable property, which no one has the right to take from him. In vain did the teachers convince him that, on the basis of school laws, he should part with the first class; he remained unconvinced and continued to go all the same to the same class. Finally, the teachers waved his hand at him and patiently waited for my relative to grow to marry, hoping that this would probably make him leave school.
Another relative of mine loved the gymnasium so much that he even remained a guard in it. And there was one who brought the teachers themselves to delirium tremens. For three years of study, he did not say a word. Some teachers just out of curiosity wanted to hear his voice, others lost their patience and literally conjured him to say a word. A math teacher, for example, even tried to tear his ears, so that at least this made him give a voice, just like a jerk of a bell so that it rings. But he was still silent and looked at the teacher with a daring look, which is generally characteristic of our family members. His silence irritated the teachers also because they could not determine which branch of knowledge he was inclined to; with his silence he very skillfully hid it.
Without breaking such bright traditions, I graduated from elementary school thanks not so much to my diligence, as to my father's attention to teachers. During my four-year stay at school, I diligently caught flies, put huge blots in notebooks, cut school desks with a penknife; every day by the end of class my hands were soiled with ink, as if I had spent this time not in school, but in a dye shop.
At the end of the fourth year of elementary school, my mother put on a new suit, fastened all the buttons on it, put a clean, neatly handkerchief in her pocket, combed her hair in the middle, and took me to school, where I recited some it’s patriotic verses, after which the archpriest kissed my forehead, the district chief stroked my head, and my father cried with emotion. This whole ceremony meant that from that moment I became a gymnasium student.
But before I went to the gymnasium, my father read a long admonition to me, convincing me that I should be more serious and think about my future. My mother blessed me, and my aunts wept bitterly, obviously anticipating what torment I was to endure in the gymnasium. In his speech, my father especially emphasized that I should study in such a way that he would not be ashamed of me. These words deeply sunk into my heart, and I would probably fulfill my father's desire if only the teachers agreed to help me with this. I remember, one time at a gymnastics lesson, I brought joy to my father, and I broke my nose; in other lessons, things went through a stump deck.
The archpriest spoke of teachers as if they were talking about the law of God at a math lesson, and about an eclipse of the sun at a drawing lesson. It was the same with me, but vice versa: when they asked me from the law of God, I talked about the eclipse of the sun, and when from mathematics, I answered from the catechism. Precisely because I never answered the questions I was asked, teachers, if they were more attentive to me, could notice my well-known political talent, but they did not notice, and this was the main reason for all the misunderstandings between the teachers and me . It goes without saying that at the end of the first year of study I failed in exams in three subjects and remained in the second year in the first grade.
I remember very well this my first life success. When I was going to the exam that morning, my mother again dressed me in a new suit with a starched lace collar, cut my nails, combed my hair parted, put a clean handkerchief in my pocket, and kissed her forehead and said:
- Please me, son.
And my father, when I went up to kiss his hand, said to me:
“Son, this is your first serious exam, the first serious step in my life, and I want to reward you for it.” When you return from the exam and tell me that you passed it, you will get this. “And he showed me a brand new gold ducat.” “And if you do not pass the exam, then it is better not to return home, because I will beat you like a dog.”
And so, failing brilliantly in the exam, I went out the gate and began to think:
“I still can’t avoid thrashing, and I won’t get ducat. And this is double damage. But it would be nice to reduce all this to one. “May I get a thrashing, since it cannot be avoided, but let me get the ducat!”
A happy thought crossed my mind, and I scooted, bouncing, rushed along the street. Cheerful and contented, I flew up to my father and mother, kissed their hands and shouted:
- Passed the exam! Passed perfectly.
Tears of joy burst from the eyes of both father and mother, then father reached into his pocket, took out a brand new gold ducat and handed it to me, kissing me on the forehead.
Of course, after some time I was forced to get a serving of birch porridge, but I also received a ducat. In general, this, of course, is a trifle, I mentioned it in passing only to show that once I received a fee in this way.
Another time, already in the third grade, to which I somehow crawled, I told my father that I needed a tutor in arithmetic, which throughout my life caused me a headache. For this purpose, I invited the "best" student of our class, my father paid him thirty pennies a month. Of course, this student was my friend, who studied even worse than me; during extra lessons we played ears, and at the end of the month we shared the fee. Thus, even with poor study, I managed to secure monthly fifteen pennies for myself, which I disposed of at my pleasure. Who knows how long this could go on if the exam didn’t show that both my teacher and I could not equally answer any question from the subject on which he was rehearsing me.
So passed year after year, and I slowly crawled from class to class. How I succeeded, I can’t even explain now. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that we did not go from class to class, but won class after class, as if we were not classmates, but a company of volunteers who were ordered to recapture the trench after the trench from the enemy. And indeed, span after span, sparing no strength and showing miracles of heroism, we captured the trench after the trench. The fight was stubborn, on our way we left the wounded and killed, but the rest, who were not hit by deadly bullets, made their way forward and forward, feeling that the closer the victory, the more dangerous our path becomes. Before we could overcome several trenches of the gymnasium, a fortress grew up in front of us - a gymnasium, which had the most modern means of destroying gymnasium students. The walls and towers of this fortress were completely covered with all kinds of sines, cosines, hypotenuses, legs, roots, logarithms, declensions, conjugations and other deadly unknown quantities. You can imagine how much courage and readiness for self-sacrifice was needed in order to storm the fortress like a gymnasium with bare hands.
But we did not get scared: we fell and got injured, during the holidays healed them and gained strength for a new offensive, were captured and languished for two years in slavery in the same class, but in the end our long seven-year war led us to the decisive battle for the certificate of maturity.
If you ask me how I managed to pass the exams for the matriculation certificate, then you should know that you raised a question that I cannot answer, just as if you asked me: how can you teach an elephant to play the mandolin? Such questions are usually not answered. By common sense, by the logic of things, by my deep conviction, by all laws, both God's and human, by all rules, at the final exams I should have failed, but I have not failed. So, there really are exceptions to every rule. As I recall, this same wise saying was justified and justified before me by one girl who, in contrast to me, fell, although by all rules she should not have fallen. Of course, she didn’t fall on the matriculation exam, but on the exam that life so often puts in the way of young girls,
- I know that I should not have allowed a fall, I know that I had to protect my reputation and honor. I know there is such a rule, but there are "exceptions to every rule."
Obtaining a matriculation certificate is not so simple and easy. A certificate is a certificate, an official document issued by the relevant state authorities in confirmation that a person has matured (Archer, Hutchings, & Ross, 2005). In my hometown, there is a man whom some authorities put in a madhouse, while others released him from a madhouse. Since the authorities changed very often and either had to go to the insane asylum or leave it, he was finally tired of it, he came to the authorities and demanded official evidence that he was not insane. Ever since Berthold received such evidence, he has been beating himself in the chest and insisting that he is the only person in Serbia who is officially recognized as normal. The same can be said about the certificate of maturity, which confirms the maturity of a person. When I received a certificate of maturity, it seemed to me that this is a document on the basis of which I have the right to commit all sorts of frivolous actions in life.
My joy, of course, knew no bounds. Arriving home, I hugged and kissed my mother and sister, and my younger brother, in a state of excitement, slapped a slap in the face; and before that, in front of the school building, I hugged and kissed the school minister, although he did not teach us any subject, and therefore was not guilty of the fact that I received a certificate of maturity. Staying in the same joyful excitement, I ran on, hugged and kissed the grocer’s neighbor, and then hugged and kissed the widow, my mother’s friend, exclaiming:
- Ma'am, I have matured, I have matured!
I proved the same after and to our cook. I hugged and kissed the hairdresser as well, since after the first manifestations of joy and excitement I remembered that the first duty of a mature person is to shave. Actually, I did not have to shave, but the shaving process in my eyes, as in the eyes of all graduates, was an external manifestation of maturity.
“Does the young man want a haircut?” The hairdresser warned me with the malice characteristic of this profession.
- No, shave me! - I proudly declared and sat down in a chair, cursing myself in the soul for not having my legs reach the floor and hanging out in the air.
The words “shave me” seemed to me something very significant, as if this had made a turning point in my life, as if after painful efforts I had opened a massive iron gate, beyond which a new, unknown world was supposed to open for me, as if I had crossed the threshold followed by a real life.
But after the hairdresser shaved me and erased the remnants of soap, no changes occurred on my face or in my soul. That unexpected, unknown that should have been revealed to me, that life that I had to enter, was still far, very far away. And my only feeling after I left the hairdresser was that I shaved and in my pocket was a document of maturity.
But by this I have not yet said everything about my training. I still had a university ahead, although for some reason we thought that they weren’t studying at the university, they were only “listening to lectures,” which seemed to us much easier: we were sure that we could handle this. Even if we have to stay at the university more than we should, we still won’t be ashamed, because, having entered the university, a person becomes a “citizen”, and being a “citizen” for a year more or a year less is not at all difficult, and sometimes better to be an eternal student citizen than a police clerk in Aril or a junior teacher
But back to the story of studying in elementary school, to which a person gives his best years. School and marriage are the two most important stages in human life. It is not without reason that they say: "He who successfully graduated from high school and happily married, he knew what life is." Moreover, school and marriage have a lot in common. For example, in school and in family life they learn something all their life, without any hope of learning anything; both in family life and in school there are strict and kind teachers, hard and easy subjects; in both family life and school one can get both a good and a bad mark; and here and here you can’t be late even for a minute, and here and there your absence is necessarily taken into account. Both in family life and at school they evaluate your behavior; in family life and in school you can fail on exams; both in family life and at school, enjoyable holidays. The only difference is that the divorce process with the wife lasts a very long time, and the divorce process with the school is one of the shortest procedures in the world. In addition, if a person begins to represent some kind of value at the time of graduation, then by the time of the end of marriage, he is already worthless.
Given all these circumstances, I must give a large place in this book to memories of the school. At first it seemed to me that this could be best done by telling each class in order, but when I remembered how much effort I had spent getting through these classes, I lost all desire to return to this again. Better I'd write a review of what we were taught. Thus, at least I will get the opportunity to avenge my unloved objects for the torment that they delivered to me in the past.
References
Archer, L., Hutchings, M., & Ross, A. (2005). Higher education and social class: Issues of exclusion and inclusion. Routledge.
Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (1999). Shaping school culture: The heart of leadership. Adolescence, 34(136), 802.
Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2007). Leading clever people. Harvard business review, 85(3), 72.
Rosenberg, J., & Wilcox, W. B. (2006). The importance of fathers in the healthy development of children. US Department Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau, Office of Child Abuse and Neglect.
