We were a hundred students and an adult was showing us a condom

PalmWhen I was studying, there were already attempts to teach sex education, but they were often massive and ineffective: sessions with over a hundred students and an adult monitor who showed us a condom he held in his hand. In some cases, the content was simply avoided. I remember, for example, that in fifth grade of EGB, the teacher skipped the topic of the reproductive system. He was from another generation and simply decided not to do it.

My school life began earlier, in early childhood education, what we then called preschool, at La Salle. The memory I have is of a very defined space: a closed courtyard just for the youngest, marked routines, and a sense of order that was not questioned. My mother was a teacher and that conditioned everything a bit. I especially remember one day she came to see me in the courtyard; when she left, I felt a very intense longing. It is one of the first moments when school stopped being just a game. At La Salle, I did all of EGB.

From those years, the constant separation of genders, of levels, also remained with me. We did crafts – rosaries, ashtrays, flower bouquets for Mother’s Day – within an apparently innocent dynamic, but one that already marked very clear roles. There were boys’ things and girls’ things, and no one questioned it. This order was also reflected in the evaluation: you either did well or you did poorly. Without nuances. The grades were done by hand and, later, they became printed by computer. I remember that first sheet as a small break: the teacher’s handwriting disappeared and everything became more impersonal.

I was number 44 out of 45. I wasn’t last, but almost. I remember that students with evident needs did receive support, but anything that wasn’t clearly visible fell off the teachers’ radar. The relationship with the teaching staff was formal and distant. Some female teachers generated a certain warmth, but there was also another, much more rigid way of doing things: teachers who spoke to you formally (“usted”), called you by your last name, and maintained a clear distance, also physical, with individual desks and ordered rows.

Discovery of Catalan

Discipline was straightforward: if you misbehaved, you ran a lap around the track or went to the blackboard to repeat the lesson. All of this happened in Spanish. Throughout EGB, Catalan did not exist within the classroom. It wasn't until what we now call Secondary school, at Lluís Vives school, that I had a Catalan class and discovered it was a Romance language. It was a strange moment: becoming aware of one's own language as if it were something new.

There were also teachers who made an impact on me, especially in Catalan literature, who conveyed interest and affection for the language. But they were exceptions within a system based on memorizing and repeating. The level was high and I still remember many things today, but there was no room for discussion or doubt. Over time, I have understood to what extent we were a depersonalized school. No one ever asked me if I was okay. What mattered were the grades. With high ratios, this logic became even more evident: we were numbers.

In the playground, the roles were very defined. The boys played football and others of us stayed on the sidelines, talking. Among us were some boys who would later be gay, and over time their vulnerability became evident. What we identify as bullying then had no name, but it was constant: insults, comments, and in some cases, shoves and spitting. It was persistent harassment.

The teaching staff, in general, ignored it. They only intervened in cases of physical aggression. I don't remember any talks or any protocols. It was a normalized reality: there was always someone who received it all. And the rest of us learned to avoid both the aggressors and the victims, because getting caught in the middle could have consequences.

Insensitive school

Now, the difference is clear. There is more closeness and more attention to the student's well-being. Without idealizing the present, the contrast with that model is evident. The school of that time was more rigid, more hierarchical, and less sensitive to anything that was not strictly academic. And yet, I still remember many of the things I learned. Probably because they were taught without leeway, with a forcefulness that made it difficult to escape from them.

'My school years' is a series from ARA Balears that reconstructs what education was like in Mallorca, decade by decade, through first-person testimonies. In this installment, we delve into the 80s.*Text elaborated from the interviewee's testimony