Walking across the bridge like he always does, Kuba was late for school again. It doesn’t really matter though because no one cares whether he goes to school or not. He gets to school, and walks through the doors with a sign reading zvlastni skola, or special education. He had always been a pretty good student at his last school, and his grades weren’t terrible. Yeah he did joke around with the guys and didn’t always fully listen to the teacher, but what 8th grader does? His teachers had low expectations of him because he was Roma and they told him often that his brain was actually smaller than white children’s. So he started believing that, and not working as hard. His parents expected him to fail because neither of them had made it passed 8th grade. They told him not to have such high expectations of himself, and not to sweat getting bad grades sometimes. If people were going to make fun of him for trying, than why should he? So he started doing less and less work, and slacking off more and more. Yet his elementary school moved him to this school with no explanation except a note saying why he needed special help. The note said he had “Heavy behavioral problems” and that he was “out of control” and “impossible to work with”. But in reality, they just didn’t want Roma in their school. They were all being segregated into these special schools. So now he was at a school for mentally handicapped and people with serious learning problems, such as dyslexia or ADD.
He kicked rocks around for a few minutes outside before going in to school, then went in and took his usual seat next to Marek. Marek was also Roma, and at that school for the same reason as Kuba. Actually most of the class was made up of Roma with “behavioral problems”. The rest of them were white kids with Autism, and one with Tourette syndrome. They were the ones that got the most attention, which still wasn’t much. The teacher sat at her desk, drinking her coffee, sighing in deeply, and rolling her eyes at the ceiling. Kuba couldn’t stand her; he couldn’t do anything, not even ask a seatmate for a pencil, without getting yelled at. And then if he did something worse, like ask to use the bathroom, he would have to stay after school and do extra work. They were all about keeping bad kids in line here.
The teacher finally stood up and called attendance, but since half the kids never answered anyway there was no real point to it. Then the teacher had them do puzzles, which were supposed to help their concentration, which was believed to be a big part of behavioral problems. The theory was if the kids can focus on one thing for a long time with no breaks than they would not get distracted and “disobey”.
Kuba started on his puzzle, and quickly got bored. This, of course to the teachers here, just proved that they were right, that he needed help. Many of his Roma classmates rebelled against the way things were, but it didn’t do them any good. Every time they acted out, it was written down to prove that they needed help. Kuba didn’t see the point of acting out. He knew it would just make things worse. He was one of the best students in the class, yet the teachers would not acknowledge that. No way was a Roma boy going to be the smartest in the class. So they watched him extra closely, waiting for him to mess up.
At lunch time Kuba went to the cafeteria. Probably eighty five percent of the kids in that room were Roma. Then after lunch he was asked to meet with the school psychologist.
“Hello Kuba”, the psychiatrist said roughly, “take a seat”. He then took out the papers with the teachers notes about him.
“I see you were causing a disturbance in class the other day, do you want to talk about it?”
“No”, Kuba said dryly.
“Well it seems you were making fun of the teacher in front of her class”.
“Actually I was correcting her, because she’s not teaching us anything”
“I see, and you don’t think that’s mocking?”
“No, it’s pointing out the facts”.
“Now I know you can’t help a lot of what you do, being from the family you come from, but that’s no excuse.” The man then said.
“It’s a scientifically proven fact that your brain is smaller than the average white Czech male your age, so I’d say you have no right correcting anyone.”
Kuba had argued this a thousand times. He had argued about Roma brain’s vs. Czech brains and it just got him in trouble, and the thing was he was starting to believe it. There’s only so much a person can take of lies before he starts believing them.
At that moment something snapped in him, he had had enough.
“Fine” He replied.
“Okay so we’re in agreement” the man said.
Kuba left his office, and stomped through the halls to his classroom. He slammed the door behind him as he came into the room. He sat down again and just glared at the teacher. She was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and her hand slowly moved over to her paper, putting little marks by his name. That was it; he stood up and grabbed the paper from her desk, and ripped it into pieces. She grabbed his arm, but he was too strong for her and pulled away, almost knocking her down.
He ran out, her cries behind him yelling “Kuba! Get back here!”
But after he was off the school property, she seemed to forget about it and go back to class as if nothing had happened, her face red.
He ran home and stomped to his room, and slammed the door.
His mother yelled “what are you doing at home? Have you given up on school?”
He came down later and told her what had happened, and she just stared at him blankly.
“Then why go?” she asked. “Just stay home.”
“I am” he replied.
“Good” You’ve finally realized that in our family, no one succeeds.”
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