The “thing” in my school and how a girl’s parents literally ruined her life bc “discipline”.

#thread

TW: child abuse

I went to school in Nairobi. It was an international British school so slightly segregated between white europeans, black Africans and Indian kids.

One day, a girl’s parents were called into school because she had been caught “attempting to have sex” in the bathroom.

Her mother brought a belt AND a stick to beat her at closing time, when all the kids were rushing out of class and excited to see chaos. One of the white teachers began to cry. Our headmaster screamed for her to stop but she beat the girl until she bled.

The school still went ahead and decided to suspend her for a week - in full awareness of the treatment she would suffer at home.

She came back to school with her head shaved to the millimeter. Literally a skinhead. She was 15. The intent was for boys to bully her.

Naturally, they did. A couple years passed and the story had travelled everywhere, to the other “international” schools around the city. Everyone was laughing about her, the cruelty was sprinkled with the racism of white and Asian kids who implied it was all so primitive.

By 18 she was (and I don’t blame her) badly drunk & high at every party, hanging (alone) with 35-40 year old men who were known petty criminals. $15k in school fees a year and she finished with poor grades. Didn’t want to go to uni. Casually mentioned all her suicide attempts.

You do not beat your child to “better” them. In which world does trauma account for education.

You beat, you humiliate, you hurt your children because your own past abuse taught you that parenting is about power and that maintaining the latter was achieved through violence.