Having written about self-doubt last week, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about its origins. What strikes me is that self-doubt, despite feeling so deeply personal, is often planted by external voices – particularly those we hear in our formative years.
The judgments and assessments we receive as teenagers don’t just shape who we think we are in the moment; they can echo in our minds decades later, becoming the foundation of how we view ourselves.
I discovered this firsthand when I recently found my old high school report cards in the Sir Ken Robinson Archive boxes.
Take, for example, my high school French teacher who wrote at the end of my freshman year:
“Kate managed to get through the "boring" French class on her own terms. She was never interested to learn about the rules of grammar, reflected in all her scores for this class. When she was present in class, she participated but never brought her books, notes, or even made photocopies of the book to follow with us in class, showing great disrespect not only for me as her teacher, but for the class, her classmates and the program in general. She always gave an excuse, but rarely held herself accountable … I hope that Kate will be successful in her pursuit of fun and entertainment in her future studies of choice. Good luck, et bonne chance l'annee prochaine!”
The thing is, I love French, and as an adult I learnt to speak it almost fluently through trips to France and conversations with French friends.
Here’s one from my English teacher that same year:
“I am aware that Kate is away from school because of a death in the family. I think, however, it would be remiss of me not to write home to alert you to Kate's continued troubles in English. She left school last week just 10 minutes before having to take an exam in my class, and though she left me a note, I still find it worrisome that she would leave without finding me to clear up her reason for leaving. I checked her margin notes on JANE EYRE on Tuesday; at that point, she had read 24 pages of a 385 page book -- one which was assigned over three weeks earlier (with practically no other homework during that time). I told her to bring the book back on Wednesday so I could give her a grade on the notes, but she didn't bring the book to class. She's earned a 0 for the grade.”
The death in the family was my Nana – Dad’s mum. My teacher felt it necessary to send this to my Dad a week after his mother died… anyway, that’s not the point. I love writing, here I am doing it this morning – by choice! I also loved Jane Eyre. So what happened?
Reading these now, they scream missed ADHD to me. Or at the very least “kid going through something” which I was – my Nana’s passing introduced me to the entire concept of death, and my mother had a major surgery that left her in bed for weeks with her jaw wired shut. In truth, it was the first time I met Depression, an unwelcome companion that has visited ever since.
I first rediscovered these report cards a couple of years ago, grieving, sorting through my Dad’s belongings, and totally unaware of my neurodiversity. In that light, I read that I was an awful human being, and for a few weeks grappled with how bitterly disappointed my Dad must have been in me. How could I have been so disrespectful?
It doesn’t match at all with the values I hold myself to. Or even how I saw myself back then. But there it is, in black and white.
What’s also in black and white though, are the thoughts of my dance teacher:
“Kate is beginning to show a stronger utilization of the conceptual principles we study in our improvisational lessons into her compositions. She has wonderful facility for choreographic invention with flexibility, strength and expression … I tried to put Kate through her paces in the close of our term, using our final lessons as an audition opportunity to challenge her choreographic and leadership skills. She met my challenge and showed perseverance, creativity, leadership and heart as she worked collaboratively with partner to teach, compose, and perform for her peers a dance study of her own … Her creative process, collaborative skills, technique and her performance were all excellent and on track for the honors dance performance class junior year. Welcome to the B.D.C*. Kate. I will be working on various projects over the summer so feel free to e-mail or call if you need to run any ideas by me or if you just want to "kick" around in the studio. ( when you are back in L.A.)”
*the school’s Dance Company
And the theatre teacher:
“I was utterly delighted with Kate's three monologue audition final. The entire class made comment about how much she had improved since the beginning of the year. Monologues that were self conscious and unsure were suddenly leaping off the stage with confidence, wit and humor. The first time she did Gwendolen from THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST I thought, good heavens, this is so shy and tiny and I know she can get more from this - after all, she's British! Well, her Gwendolen at the final audition was proud, precise, haughty, witty, loud, perfectly timed and very funny. I almost leapt out of my seat. Similarly, her Queen Margaret from RICHARD Ill was strong, proud, and filled with pain. And her final monologue, in an American accent, was so natural the class forgot she was doing an accent. I hope that Kate has a fabulous summer and that she will bring back lots of stories to tell me!”
How can these all be written about the same person, in the same year?
But more importantly, how can words that were written about me TWENTY YEARS ago, still hit me this hard? And why do I gloss over the positive ones and dwell so endlessly on the negative? Why do the words of my 9th grade French teacher live rent free in my head? How can they still affect me this much?
The Scientific American writes that adolescence is “a time of rapid brain growth and neuronal fine-tuning when young people are especially sensitive to social cues and rewards. More recent research has focused on how the adolescent brain interacts with the social environment. It shows that social context and acceptance strongly influence behavior. Adolescence might even constitute a sensitive period for social and emotional learning, a window of time when the brain is uniquely primed by neurochemical changes to make use of social cues for learning.”
As we learn so much more about the teenage brain, why do we still choose this time in a person’s development to pile so much onto them? Why do we force them to make huge, defining choices, like what they want to do with the rest of their lives? Why do we ignore their natural circadian rhythms and insist they wake early to mirror business hours? And, critically, why do we feel the need to pass so much overt judgement of who they are as individuals?
Whether good or bad, none of it is real – schools aren’t a true reflection of the real world (there’s a whole article to be written on why that’s a huge failure in and of itself), and people change. At 15 a person only feels grown up, but their experience of the world is so narrow.
We can’t possibly form a well rounded opinion of a person so in the throes of development – why do we a) feel entitled to and b) feel we should let that opinion be so widely known?
I suppose if this article has a point, beyond self indulgence and a long overdue trauma dump, it is this: the things we tell our kids about who we think they are become a part of their inner narrative. It defines who they think they are. Tread softly.
To quote American social reformer Frederick Douglass: “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
I’m genuinely curious – how did your experiences of school, teachers, parents, and peers affect the way you view yourself even to this day?
