Life at School
As a schoolboy I lived a double life. In the evening I would go from door to door with my father or attend a meeting. Sometimes I would address an audience of one hundred or more adults from the platform. I would rub shoulders with men and women many times my age. They were kind and complimentary towards me, praising my comments or telling me what a fine “talk” I had given, being a lecture from the platform.
This was my world! These were the people I was soon to live with in a paradise earth, when my school and teachers had been destroyed. In the morning I would return to school. My classmates knew nothing of my other life. My teachers would sometimes cane me for failing to do my homework. I accepted this as a necessary persecution I must bear in order to pre-study for and attend the meetings. It was a matter of priority.
My day at school would begin with sitting alone in a classroom while the rest of the school attended assembly. I was forbidden to worship with them, so I would sit and pray or recall the events of the night before. I was not allowed to join the school orchestra or take part in the annual school play. I never belonged to a school sports team or took part in any team event that might mean spending a moment more than was absolutely necessary at my “worldly school.” Weekends away canoeing and camping were also taboo. To be a “boy scout” was totally banned.
Children of the Witnesses are forbidden access to many of the self-esteem enhancing activities that are open to other children. They are brought up to believe that they are different and separate from the world. They do not fully integrate with their schoolmates or teachers, due to their resistance to being fully involved with the education process, and their training to avoid forming friendships with worldly people.
More so than other children, their main security comes from winning the approval of their parents. They find that to win this approval they must do whatever the Society and their parents tell them will win Jehovah God’s approval. I was told, by my own parents that if I ever left the religion they would never talk to me again. If I were to ever marry outside the religion the same penalty would apply. Although these threats are not always carried out, the Witness child grows up believing that the continuation of their whole world depends upon gaining their parents approval.
In addition to this pressure to conform, is the threat that God himself will kill the child, if he or she should go against their parent’s wishes. The child is also puzzled by the parent’s willingness to lose them in this way and often concludes that the parents do not love him or her. How can they threaten a child they love in this way, or say that the God they love may kill their child? As a child I concluded that I meant very little to my parents. Not all Witness parents act in this way. Those that do, say that they are practising a form of principled love for the child. Unfortunately children do not interpret threats of his kind as love. Nor as far as I know do most adults.
Attending school was a legal requirement. As long as I left school with sufficient training to go from door to door as a pioneer, the time spent there could be justified. I was repeatedly told that schoolmates were bad association. Time with them was to be kept to a minimum. They were not invited to my home and I was forbidden to go to theirs. I would turn down all invitations to birthday parties and other celebrations. Although I was sent cards I was never allowed to return the gesture.
Despite the restraint I showed towards my classmates they were friendly towards me, though disappointed that I avoided them, and made excuses for my anti-social behaviour. It hurt me to reject their friendship but even more to think that they were soon to be killed because their parents were not Jehovah’s Witnesses. When they discussed their extra school activities or career plans I would look at the ground. Until the last possible moment I allowed them and my teachers to believe that I was staying on to take exams. To disclose my intentions would have meant me being placed in the lowest grade among the school’s rougher element. A few weeks before I left school I explained that I was leaving school to pioneer and support myself by window cleaning.
Taken from the newly released book 'Opening the Door to Jehovah's Witnesses ' Available from' Amazon Books 'ISBN 0954018206
