I’m fifth from the right

I remember my education being quite dull.
It started with my preschool year. I was 5 years old and sent off to a school with a class size of approximately 30 little kids.
I could already read and write, but I was now made to cut and paste, do very simple embroidery, and play in the dolls’ corner without access to books or anything remotely educational. I hated every minute of it.
One of my strongest memories involved putting your head on your desk and “sleeping” for one whole hour so the teachers could have their lunch or whatever. Even now, at 64, I find sleeping during the day impossible. My mind barely lets me sleep at night, let alone in daylight. So you can imagine that for my 5-year-old energetic self, it was an impossibility, and it felt like torture. One day, when the teacher had to reprimand me once more to sit still and “sleep”, they, while I was dutifully putting my head on the table with my eyes closed, thought it was hilarious to secretly tie the bowstrings of my dress to the back of the chair. When they finally gave the go-ahead for us to get up, I couldn’t, being hampered by the chair, while they were laughing. Being a very proud child, I was mortified.

My older brother is doing his homework.
The only good thing that came out of that was that when I told my dad about it, he took me from that hellhole, and I could spend the rest of the year before primary education reading and doing my elder brother’s homework with him. This first introduction to institutionalised learning put me off going to school for a long time, but luckily, I was not put off learning new things.

Sixth form, Primary school, Weird girl on the left is me. The next phase was a primary school. Still living in Curaçao, I was starting school in a class with mainly local children, many of whom had never spoken Dutch before they came to school. So you can imagine how fast that was going. When I complained to my dad, who did not believe in putting me a year forward as I was a tiny little thing already with my birthday at the end of the school year, he asked the teacher to put me in the back row with a pile of books so she would not be bothered by me, And so she did.
Being precocious and already having a best friend at home who was attending another school, I never made any real friends. But somehow, that never bothered me.
In the first three years, our teachers were quite lovely ladies. But my last three years I had male teachers who except for the one I had in year 4 were all psycho’s if you ask me. We had a very cranky guy with a short fuse in fifth grade. As this was the sixties, and Curaçao was somewhat backwards, he felt it his duty to use corporal punishment at the slightest disobedience. I think he was one of those strict Christians who do not believe in sparing the rod when it comes to raising children.
Once, one of my fellow pupils refused to leave the classroom, feeling he was being mistreated. The teacher went utterly ballistic, kicking him out of his chair and some more out of the school. We were all frozen in terror. When I told my dad about this little episode, he made me promise that if I were ever in that situation, I would immediately leave the school and come home. He, being a teacher himself, always felt that you let yourself down as an adult when you physically hurt a child. A shame he never could convince my mum of this. Remember the carpet beater?
That year, I kept my head down and came through without damage.
The last year of Primary school was a completely different story. Our teacher was the Headmaster and a teacher of Form 6, and was already advanced in years. We all knew he loved to whack children on the head or lash out with his ruler. He used to creep up on you from behind if you were not paying attention and suddenly hit you on the side of your head, so your ears were ringing.
One time, he did the same to me as I was chatting with my neighbour while he was standing in the back of the class, reading a story. Remembering my father’s advice, I took my school bag with my stuff and went to the door. I remember him shouting: ” If you leave through that door, you will never come back in!!”, foaming around the mouth. I left anyway and got myself home. My father went to talk with him, and I was allowed back in class the week after. Knowing my dad, he threatened to do him some serious harm if he ever touched me again. My dad was not exactly known for diplomacy. I got that from him.
Sometime after, not having learnt his lesson, he was sneaking up on another pupil,  a local boy, who did not have the benefit of a violent dad and the disadvantage of not being the right colour and was going to give him the usual wallop on the side of his head. But this boy, frightened, held up his metal dip pen, which went entirely into our teacher’s hand. You could hear a pin drop in class while we waited for the fury to unleash on this poor chap. And it did.
My last school report with this teacher was the best of the class, but he still commented that I was all ready to go to the MMS, which is equivalent to going to a poly to become a housewife or secretary. I don’t need to tell you that my dad did not follow that advice.
Much, much later, I heard that teacher died of a very nasty cancer, and you know I sort of thought: “There is some divine justice after all.”
So, as you can see, there is still no real incentive for me to start liking going to school.
Looking at the school picture above instantly brings back some strange memories. One of those little guys used to put a small mirror on his shoe to look under girls’ skirts!
Our brave dip pen guy sits on the second row from below, third from the left. I hope he went and had a great life.
On the first row, third from the left, sits a boy called Tonnie, who, along with his brother, we always refer to as Joshie, and Tonnie, the sons of the redoubtable tante Gladys. They lived quite close to us, and we loved spending time at their house as they had a donkey we could ride. Sometimes my brother and I were allowed a sleepover. Though it was a feast, it was a bit scary too. When she was fed up with us not going to sleep but fooling around, Tante Gladys would storm into our bedroom with her belt and walloped us without discerning between her brood or their guests.
But the donkey made it worth it.
They say the older you get, the more precise your old memories get, and the hazier you remember what you did an hour ago. It is true. When I started, it was still a Convent school, hence the uniforms.
So next came my Secondary school years, which in my case were split between three years at the Gymnasium in Curaçao and three in the Netherlands in Hertogenbosch. This isn’t easy for a teenager, as you usually make your friends at the beginning of this period. When I had to restart socialising in the Netherlands, it was a bit of a disaster. I can barely remember the girls from the class of those last three years.
After living in boredom mixed with terror during the first years of my education, the secondary school was a delightful surprise. We were finally learning interesting things that I had not heard of before. Maths was a fantastic subject for me in those years.
I still read voraciously, so homework was never my strong suit. This resulted in me finishing high school with rather poor marks.
Besides my first job application, no one has ever inquired about it, so I feel I chose the right way to learn: by reading copious amounts of books instead of wasting my time on learning by rote for school.
My first three years were in a school called Pius X Maria Immaculata, which was run by nuns. As the head Convent was in France, some of the soeurs were of French extraction. They made us start every school day reciting the Hail Mary in French after we had all cleaned our desks from the soot of the neighbouring Oil refinery. There was no health and Safety in those days, and there were no directives on what to wear for school and gym.
After we got a male gym teacher, hallelujah, the nuns also insisted that we wear rather strange breeks with a short skirt over them during our physical education lessons. All in the school’s dreary aubergine tartan material, and all those layers in 40 degrees centigrade shade, just in case the teacher would get a naughty thought of seeing the shape of our crotch.
In the second year, we got secular management and were allowed to wear our own clothes, but there were still no trousers for the girls in school.
I can proudly say I was one of the organisers of our protest march to school, all dressed in trousers. We were all expelled and called the newspaper- we only had one, which reported on the event and helped us stop the discrimination between the boys, now allowed in, and us girls.
It was probably one of the few times I enjoyed going to school. Being a cynic and a rebel did not make those years easy on my poor teachers. Though I think a sense of humour would have helped them a long way. For example, once our Dutch language teacher who thought himself a great actor was reading a long and dreary poem to us in a very theatrical over the top way. I suddenly took my handkerchief out of my bag ( we all still had those on our person) and threw my face in it making loud sobbing sounds. “Lowik what is wrong with you? “he said, impatient to get back to his Oscar-winning performance. “Sir “, I sobbed semi overwhelmed by emotions, ” I am so touched. I can’t help myself”. The whole class was roaring with laughter, but I was immediately sent to the Headmaster for ridiculing Art with a capital A.
After it was my turn to go in, the headmaster could not understand what the fuss was all about, as you would have to have been there to feel how funny it had been. I came off lightly that time.
Do children still have to sit lined up in front of a Headmaster’s office waiting for a green light to go in? In my school, we actually had three colours. Red was busy, Orange was getting your story ready, and Green was entering.

In the Netherlands school life was far more liberal and relaxed and I spent most of those three years catching up with the one year I was behind and pining after my latest crush, be it a boy from the boy’s wing of our school – we had segregation- or a teacher who that year caught my fancy. Homework was still not much of a priority. But thanks to some great teachers and a headmistress with a sense of humour I had a good time and still learned a lot of things that were actually useful in later life.

After all that education, I went for one year to University studying Tropical agriculture- I wanted to turn the deserts green again. I flunked most of my subjects and my dad then sent me to my next educational challenge: becoming a Radiographer. More about that later.

This is me looking very fashionable on a visit with my student group to Das Deutsches Röntgen-Museum in Germany, obligatory for all Radiographer students.