Cultural Identity in Education

by yael nachshon

Joined Dec 2020
Published Books 1

INDEX:

The years go by – Yael

Damn, I really have to go to school – Marton

The New Kid – Jana

3

The years go by –

I remember the first day I went to school, do you?

My older sister took me to school because both my parents worked early and until late doing menial jobs for minimum wage in South Tel Aviv like most African parents do in Israel. My sister put me at school early so that she could catch the bus to her school on time.

“Go on, “ she said, pushed me gently into the school and said: “You are strong, like your ancestors who crossed the desert to get here. You can do this Ashagre!’

We are not kids who cry. We are kids who stand wide eyed in the corridors waiting for white faces to tell us that it is okay to be in their schools. Once a year they have a cultural day for us where we bring our food and teach them our dances but the rest of the year even though they try, we know it is just a matter of time before someone says “kushi” or “ האתיופים האלו’.

One day in the 6th grade, my teacher called me into her classroom to talk to me. She said that I was doing very well and that she wanted me to consider going to a good middle school. She said that I had options and that I did not have to go to a neighbourhood school. I had options! Me? I had never thought about it before.

My sister took me to an interview for a school in the middle of Tel Aviv. They had a sports program, arts program and a science program. When I arrived for the interview they asked me if I had come for the sports program.

We know that others think we can all sing and run but I am a born academic. Some of us can do other things you know? We wait for you to notice but many of you have eyes but you cannot see.

I loved science from the first time my teacher pulled out a stuffed stork bird in the first grade and showed us how god made it with feathers that repel water and feet that can grip onto reeds and flap through water.

“Science,’ I said and looked the interviewer in the eye waiting for the usual reaction.

“Well then, welcome Professor Ashagre,” he smiled from ear to ear and shook my hand.

“The laboratory is to the left and up the stairs. Go and have a look around and make yourself at home.”

So that’s what I did. I made myself at home there for 6 years. I put up with the ‘kushi’ comments, made friends of all colors, got good grades, studied on the bus to school, took my little sister to school, got home tired but persisted.

Today I am a laboratory assistant in a major company in Tel Aviv. And if anyone asks me I say proudly: “I am Ashagre. I am a scientist. That’s who I am!”

4

The ambivalent times, when I was young, and I really had to go to school – this is how it felt in my teens:

The cold in the mornings when my aunt opens the door, and lets the awaiting sounds and smells in to chew me with their tiny little teeth. The navel of my room reopens, and indigestible food bursts through the umbilical cord of the will to care. ‘I love it’ – this is my first thought, but then, as so often, I realize that this is just the outer layer of wax on the sour plum of inertia, of non-existence. Then, of course, my favorite stuffed animal, an octopus arrives, who wants to babble with its suction cups, but it can’t reach me anymore, because I jump out of my soft pile, into the mug on the table, and start taking a bath.

‘Do you want to live today?’ – The tea filter asks as I watch its squid dance.

‘Snap, buddy!’ – The sugar roars. Metal dots bounce on me and tingle like itchy powder.

The hot water sings like this: ‘Even today the sun rose, it did not let you down. And the expectation of an uprising, you know, is mutual.’

So I drop out of the night tunnel, but now I don’t know where I am, even though I meet and get to know each morning, but the equator is always elsewhere. I lose myself completely when I look in the mirror. That’s not how I found myself yesterday. Look, the world’s still here! My body doesn’t make it real, just the toothbrush and the comb.

A special attraction emerges from the school. So bored, and with the thought that everything was unfinished after all, but I see what the end would have been, I sit on my favorite cloud. It’s old and shrunken, nothing else keeps it in the air other than a foggy feeling for me, there’s as much left of him today as much as I’m real. Our journey is only a few minutes, but in the meantime, I actually become visible to the school and become part of an eternal present. When I enter its open mouth, I have to hold my breath so I can’t feel its brimstone breath, I have to close my eyes so I can’t see the carious teeth, I don’t feel anything but my own stomach and hand tremors. When I arrive, I am confronted with a beautifully created, yet random, yet purposeful movement. Lots and lots of wax puppets run after themselves, walking their souls, pretending to melt into each other. Of course, my old-fashioned, crimson eyes see that everyone is just rushing for one thing, one food, they want to own and possess, to devour, not to unite. It’s not just a game and a fairy tale, it goes for blood, flesh. On my own constellation, my umbilical cord, I squeeze in like fresh food into the current arena.

Hurried hands reach for my tongue, and they always manage to tear off my organ, laboriously kneaded every morning. No language. Words fly apart, I just run after them, there is no meaning, I can no longer speak. This is when I swim in the water of the pre-word glitter, down to the perfect depiction of the pieces of reality, I swim down with pre-language communication music that dances through my body cavities and pores. But this water is layered, in concentric circles, and I am at its deepest. The trapped, bubbling water made up of torn tongue-trophies descends and floods my private sea, making me drowning there. The hands press me down, and the shards growing out of them push out of me the little I managed to suck in.

And why my body, the farthest thing from me, is that makes me finite, is that vibrates from these impressions and depressions? I have to reincarnate and bow to the powers that be. I throw my pneuma into the slot machine of spiritual salvation. Mens sana in corpore sano. I am where I want to be, when I want to be. I can create anything for myself whenever I want to. I don’t have to have the world. Everyone is me, and I don’t force it, I just spill out, I don’t wash, I water. Damn, I really have to go to school 🙁

5

Being a student is sooo hard!. Being the new one is even harder. I just moved to Israel from Mexico. Lifestyle is very different. There kids and teachers go to school five days a week. Here six days a week; There almost every store opens seven days a week. Here everything is closed on Saturday. The city is so quiet then.

About school. As I said, being new is hard, tough and rough. I speak hebrew, but learning in hebreow is… uf! Making new friends sucks. Most of the kids are nice, but we have such different habits and family traditions… I do not want to disrespect anybody… if my Mom or Dad invite themselves to a conversation with a new friend… NO, stop thinking about that…

School… walking to school is really new for me. In Mexico Jewish students study mostly in Jewish private schools and we are used to traveling in school busses or being driven by our parents. We rarely walk on the streets… Free entering or getting out of school, by yourself, not even thinkable.

On the other hand… that freedom is nice. Very nice and strange sensation of being able to walk alone, travel alone or with friends day or night gives a great sensation of belonging, of being part of something great. Even when studying requires a lot of will and patience, it is compensated by this sensation of freedom and independence.

Teachers are mostly supportive and patient. That is similar to my old school. In both schools teachers are always ready to lend you a hand. But not all of them. There is a teacher that does not care about how hard his assignments are for me… I hate it. Why should I learn Arabic? English and Hebrew are hard enough. But, I have to admit hearing Arabic is very interesting, I very often catch myself trying to guess the meaning of the words… maybe it is not such a bad idea to learn Arabic.

Being already in Israel is a dream come true. There can’t be a waste of time learning Arabic while living here

6