Humiliation at Sacred Heart

“…she gave you a mark, a small black blot against your name on the board beside the library. Library hours were compulsory for all, and so everybody saw it. The idea of the mark was bad enough, but what made it worse was everybody could see what kind of person other people thought you were.” (p. 65)

Among the many shocking events in Dangarembga’s Book of Not, I couldn’t help but notice the blatant humiliation that the girls are subjected to on a daily basis. Indeed, we know that the African dormitory and its lodgers are often the butt of jokes, but I think it is interesting to note that academically and behaviorally, the girls are all subjected to the “black blot” system. This fact hit me on a personal note because I noticed a similar public exploitation in another student body. We can probably all attest to teachers marking three strikes on the board before being sent to the principal’s office, but I have seen a much different type of embarrassment.

In France, I worked at an English teaching assistant and thus had a solid glimpse into the educational system. On the first day of meeting a new group of students I was supposed to work with, their teacher came into the room with the roster and proceeded to, in front of the entire class, begin pointing out names to me on the list and saying (out loud, with no discretion) what was wrong with each. “This boy has horrible dyslexia, so he is very difficult and has a lot of trouble with his work. And this boy is just plain incompetent. Pay him no mind…” and so on.
This simply isn’t allowed in America. There is such a thing as privacy, even for students. But the French have done things this way for a long time. I asked other assistants if they had encountered the same thing, and they had.

In conclusion, I am inclined to think that the speech about the clogged sewers is along this same line of public shaming, and that the “black blot” system is nothing in comparison. The British/Rhodesian system is one of competition and humiliation, much like the one I saw in France.