Broadcast: News items

Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex

It is less nostalgia for the age of Barack Obama – though much preferred to the current circus in town – than the sentiment behind the three words that draw me: yes, we can!

The words especially resonate out of my own ‘no you can’t’ experiences while still in the early years of primary school. I was reminded of these early experiences when a Facebook friend recalled in a recent update how he had been labelled and even mocked by teachers in his primary school – as it happened in the very Catholic school where I had been.

I remember Jeff from my early years as just a familiar face in the neighbourhood. We both attended the same high school in Niagara Falls, NY. But I did not remember him from my primary years at Sacred Heart School because he would have been in kindergarten when I was in first grade.

Jeff was dyslexic – though this was not diagnosed in the early 60s – and tended to get things back to front, earning choruses of mockery by classmates, led by the nun who was his teacher.

Jeff went on to do very well for himself, serving as an adjunct professor at Belmont College and an accomplished artist in the medium of decorative metal work. I was pleased to hear his story of rising above the ‘no you can’t’ culture of that early classroom.

I too was labelled at the same school. I am also dyslexic – something I came to discover only after I completed a postgraduate degree with summa cum laude grades. I had found coping strategies over the years to help me move ahead academically.

In my case it was the label ‘retarded’ – to use the parlance of the time – that the nun seemed to have tattooed on my forehead. I remember her announcing in front of our class that I was going to fail first grade – which I did – and refusing to give me a report card because, she said, I was "a retard".

My parents took me to a psychologist to have me assessed. Suffice it to say the assessment differed wildly from that of the nun, though they found that I was within spitting distance of a nervous breakdown.

Upon their recommendation – I think the phrase used by the psychologist was, “Get him the hell out of there!” - I was removed from the Catholic school where my siblings had gone and countless cousins attended and where my mother had gone as a child. I gradually began to catch up on my reading skills and later had some speech therapy.

I love reading but still struggle and sometimes experience a mounting anxiety when I do it. I also am conscientious when speaking lest I slip into slurring and those habits of speech that can make me unintelligible to people.

I sometimes think how odd it is that, after all this, most of my working life came to include a great deal of public speaking and reading. However, I realise how much affected I was by that label appended to me by the nun. Paradoxically it also lay behind my early intent to go to college and university. But still, for many years, the label was like a tattoo on my self-consciousness

Like Jeff, I was fortunate to have been able – and supported – to turn that ‘no you can’t’ of my early days into the ‘yes I can!’ of my adult years. I fear that not all make that same journey.

As for the nun – I do not wish to name her – I have ceased to imagine her as a kind of Darth Vader figure clad in her black robes looming over me like a tenebrous villain. I came across her picture the other day posted on the Facebook page for former students at Sacred Heart. Her features were softer than I remembered. But she was recognisably the nun who had taught me in first grade.

Yes, I remember the labelling and humiliation in front of other students. I only vaguely recall standing outside the school, crying hysterically when the bell sounded because I dreaded going into the classroom. I am reliant on siblings’ memories re the latter.

But I will also remember the way she made a fuss over me and another girl when we got our first pair of glasses. I will recall the time I forgot to bring my lunch to school and how she took me to the convent next door to find some fruit for me so that I would not go hungry.

No one becomes a nun or teacher because they aspire to be a Bond villain. Whatever hurt I experienced at the hands of this sister, I like to think the intention, however distorted, was to do well. I am sure other students will remember her quite differently. Sadly, like others in the field of education at that time, she fell afoul of her own and instructional limitations.

I choose not to remember her with a sense of blame or view myself as her victim – a choice I think that sustains the energy for moving on. Without her I would not have become who I am – and basically, I am happy with myself. Though a bit more hair would not go amiss!

Sister, you helped me develop the grit to rise above the ‘no you can’t’ culture of those early days in your classroom to embrace the ‘yes I bloody well can!’ attitude that sustains me now.

Oh yes you did!