Dared To Survive - Olya Mancuso

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me at school. Teachers and students practised abuse. The whole point was to make me feel unwanted and rejected for my bad behaviour. I simply had no logical reason to behave better.

      The child like me comes to school and we ask him or her to be quiet, curious, and excited about learning. Unfortunately, such behaviours are foreign to the abused child’s. Unruly behaviour is a cry for help. My cry was never answered or understood by teachers. The law supported their psychological abuse inflicted on «bad» children.

      As a teacher or parent, you cannot whip the hurt out of this child. His or her behaviour continues and worsens and leads to failure after failure. He or she grows to adulthood and becomes another of our modern and enlightened society’s losers – miserable, often criminal, and a burden to society.

      I always knew that the teachers of Soviet Union schools – particularly the ones in my life – failed to control classroom behaviour.

      Their use of abuse upon children was protected by the system. As the protest to their poor teaching methods and poor discipline strategies, I made myself a promise. One day I would become a teacher. I would take a stand against their primitive ways and prove them wrong by showing them that there are alternatives to the use of corporal punishment – alternatives that maintain classroom discipline and provide an environment for learning, a place for effective and rewarding teaching.

      I grew up abused by my mother and in the unhealthy climate at home. I suffered non-stop violence. The next day I would come to school unruly. Instead of paddling unruly child like me into temporary submission, why could Soviet Union teachers not be trained to recognize a child with problems and have at their disposal the referral sources for psychological help or family counselling? Why couldn’t teachers be trained to recognize the withdrawn child as a young human being in need and have at his or her disposal the resources for saving that child’s life?

      For over seventy years, corporal punishment has been forbidden in Soviet schools. Though they don’t use physical punishments any more, they will never stop abusing children psychologically.

      Consider the child who is abused by parents. They are a small number, you say? Statistics indicate that almost two million children are abused in America each year. The statistic of the former Soviet Union is much higher.

      As well I, personally, consider that figure to be low, low because it is virtually impossible to measure fully the emotional abuse of children. For many parents, just like for my mom, emotional abuse is a style of parenting, one probably passed on by their parents. «Oh, you are such a dumb kid. A «B»! I’m ashamed of you. Do me a favour. Get out of my sight. I don’t like you. You are a fuck dumb idiot.

      You had ruined my life. I wish you never born. You are trouble. You are not normal. Look at other kids. They make their parents proud. I am ashamed to be your mother. You are more trouble than you are worth. To think of all the trouble you have put us to. Go away. I don’t like you.»

      Just like I did, many of our children hear those words again and again, from toddlers until they leave home.

      By the time such a child reaches kindergarten, any self-esteem has been destroyed. The most important person in this world – the parent – has told that the child that he/she is of no value. Such a child can have a significant intelligence but will be unable to learn.

      A teacher is faced with an impossible task in trying to educate such a child. How can they hope to undo the emotional damage inflicted by the parent?

      This is exactly what happened to me. I wasted all my years at school, learning nothing, simply because I did not want to. There was not one single motivation for me to learn. I felt bad about myself inside and out. I never believed I was of a VALUE………I behaved badly at school and drove everyone mad around. I simply wanted to bring the message to the world: I am of no value. I AM BAD. The message mother had instilled in my whole life. I had no reason at all to expend any effort.

      I was convinced I was an EVIL EGG…

      I simply hated myself all my life – just the way mother hated all m. Never, in all my years in school, did anyone attempt to find out what was bugging ME. What were the underlying causes of my misbehaviour?

      Emotional abuse of children is but one of many conditions which inhibit the ability of a child to learn, the ability of a teacher to educate.

      Former Soviet schools had proven their poor, pedagogical ways of dealing with problems student behaviour. Still, today, they believe in public humiliation as a punishment. Still, today, they are not aware that there are better ways, methods – ones that work.

      Being an obedient child is not enough. It’s too temporary. A child must be taught to be responsible, to respect others, to respect herself. A child must not merely have values forced upon him/her only to abandon them a few years later.

      A child must understand and respect our values. The child must internalize society’s values so they become his/her values. A child must learn that the future lies in her/his actions. We must develop high self-esteem in our children. We must give them the hope that they can accomplish, that they can succeed.

      All this and much more can be achieved through positive discipline, love, and respect. Children learn what they live – at home and at school.

      In public schools today in Ukraine, Russia and other countries of former Soviet Union, students are still obligated to work up to the level of the class standard in all subjects. This underlined the importance of the collective over individual achievement and abilities. Public humiliation, rather than positive reinforcement, is still considered the prime motivator and means of disciplining lazy or weak students who do not meet the class standard. No thought is given to challenging those with intelligence or nurturing those with talents in special areas. It’s all about everyone in the class meeting that standard. The collective is once again reinforced by the practice of forming a class (regardless of ability and harmony) which remains together not only day after day as the students move from course to course but year after year until graduation eleven years later.

      Under the Soviet system, all students wore uniforms, suit-like jackets and pants for boys and short brown dresses topped with a white or black apron for girls. Make-up, jewellery, and fancy hairstyling were strictly forbidden. Today, most of the students, freed of their uniforms, try to make a fashion statement by the way they dress. The cult of materialism flourishes as each item of clothing or accessory indicates the type of connections one’s parents have, whether they have access to hard currency, and the ability to travel abroad.

      Even during this period of extreme economic hardship, paying for an item is often the easy part. Working one’s «canals» to locate it and then create the possibility to actually purchase it can be infinitely more difficult. Hence, the acquisition of consumer goods reveals one’s station in society and consumes the attention of status-conscious teenagers.

      Most striking to Western eyes is the double duty that all students, parents, teachers and administrators are called upon to perform. This «double burden» has plagued all schools, Soviet and post-Soviet, public and private, elite and ordinary. It is the ultimate mixing of manual and intellectual labour. The children are more than just students. They are the school’s janitors and gardeners. They wash walls, scrub floors, and prune bushes. Every day, two students from each class are «on duty». This means that they are responsible for cleaning the classroom, washing the blackboard, and running errands. On any given day, little girls with pompom pigtails in white aprons and boys with their sleeves carefully rolled up can be seen dipping a tattered rag in a steel bucket to scrub down the stairwell.

      It is not any easier for parents. They work a second shift as repairmen, renovators, and contractors. They often provide with their own money the

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