Found Out Something Slightly Disturbing About An Incident In My Past

[SilentLoner]

I hesitated about positing this, didn't know if it was worthwhile or not, but its been on my mind as of late and I wanted to vent about it somewhat.

 

Many years ago I was living in El Salvador with my family, attending the sixth grade. We had a teacher from the U.S. who had recently come to the country. She was a bright, engaging teacher we all liked.

 

Some relevant backstory - now, El Salvador is a small, heavily catholic country where the church has its grubby fingers everywhere. Pretty much everyone I knew was catholic, save for two Jewish girl from Israel and a buddhist girl from Tawian who were briefly at our school in later years. My mother's friends were all irritatingly catholic - in particular this one woman who I would classify as psychotically obsessed with her religion. She came from a wealthy and politically influential family. Nice enough in person, but she also did lovely things such as micromanage what the school was teaching us kids, she ran fake abortion clinics that would trick women into thinking all sorts of bullshit about abortion (and abortion is completely illegal in El Salvador to begin with), traumatized me and a lot of other girls in the neighborhood with a catholic sex talk (she basically strong-armed our moms in to making us attend). She was even crazier with her own kids - she forbade them from locking the bathroom doors and would barge into the occupied bathroom randomly to make sure they weren't doing anything bad.

 

Anyways, back to the main story. Our sixth grade teacher soon introduced us to Harry Potter. She would read it to us during class. We all loved the book and got hooked on the story.

 

A few weeks into the school year, she breaks down in tears in front of the class and tells us she has to leave and go back to the U.S...says vaguely something about her father not being well. We are all upset, both for her being sad and the fact that she is leaving.

 

She leaves the class the Harry Potter book, writing all of our names in the front cover.

 

Of course, I stay hooked on Harry Potter for the next several years and always had her to thank for it.

 

Now, many years later, my mother and I are on the subject of Harry Potter and somehow I bring up my old teacher. My mother looks uncomfortable for a moment and tells me that the teacher didn't leave because her father was ill. I'm surprised. She's vague at this point - but says her leaving had to do with her fundie friend and the Harry Potter book. I got a pretty cold chill down my spine when she said that, no joke. People in El Salvador were pretty wary of the book if not hostile, one of my own uncles once pulled my parents aside and chided them about the book teaching witchcraft. I can only assume she used her church/political influence to threaten the school and get this poor woman in trouble. I wouldn't put it past her to threaten her directly or start a harassment campaign among her mommy clique.

 

Since then, I've tried to get more details from my mom, but she refuses to get into it because she doesn't want to badmouth her friend. It gives me a disturbed feeling to think about it. Basically this poor woman lost her job and a once in a lifetime chance to teach abroad because of a crazy fundie woman. Really pisses me off. Seriously.

 

(A small consolation is that both of fundie woman's kids rebelled against her, partying hard in college and basically flipping her the bird, one of them even had a kid out of wedlock. And I always keep fundie woman in my thoughts when I make a donation to my local abortion fund).

 

I'd love to run into my old teacher one day, but sadly I have been unable to find her on social media

[♦ ficino ♦]

A very sad story, and sadly, believable. I hope the teacher and the other kids in the class turned out OK (I don't need to say this about you, SL!).

[Justin]

Wow. Sad and pitiful, all over nothing.

[MightyLikely]

Oh, yes, I am familiar with the Harry Potter is Evil crowd.  

A couple years ago my aunt was telling me that the Harry Potter books are evil, and I asked her if she had read any of the books, and she said, predictably for the hating-Harry crowd, that she had not.  I told her that I had read the entire series and that, in my opinion, it is more accurately classed with science fiction than with the occult.  It is a very imaginative book and the "magic" is a well-thought-out technology that runs the Harry Potter universe.  I told her that in my opinion the underlying theme of the story is forgiveness.

We didn't continue to discussion because, not having read it, she didn't really have much to discuss, but a few years later I met her grandson for the first time, and he is a dead ringer for the actor that plays Harry Potter.

Did I mention this to my aunt?  No.  I try to be gentle with Christians.

[Overcame Faith]

Such a sad and tragic story.

 

When I was a Christian and Harry Potter was published and gaining in popularity, members of my church were declaring the book evil and declared that their children would not be reading that "witchcraft manual." My child wanted to read the book so I decided that rather than take the word of others, I would read the first book for myself and then decide whether it was appropriate for my young child. After I read it, I thought it was a delightful book and gave my child my full blessing for reading it and all the sequels.

 

It's such a shame that a harmless and delightful work of fiction causes such consternation among fundies and especially terrible that such a good teacher that you described was driven out of the school over it.

[amateur]

That's a horrible story, and so tragic for the teacher and the kids who enjoyed being her students.

[SCM]

I was forbidden to watch or read harry potter growing up because of my family. my family weren't fundamentalists, just really really scared of demons and witchcraft stuff. I watched all the movies with my cousins a couple of years back, and found them to be delightful.

 

heh, you should have seen my crazy traditionalist Anglican teacher talk about those books "manuals for witchcraft, j.k .Rowling is possesed by Satan. those books are the devils work"

 

I'm pretty sorry your teacher got forced to leave, some people aren't interested in understanding or even enjoying the world we live in, just making it how they think it should be. sometimes they are strong enough in their community to force out or oppress people of different opinions.

 

still, if your gonna get fired for some bullshit reason, getting fired for harry potter is a pretty good one.

[FreeThinkerNZ]

I am hoping she returned to the US, continued on with her life, and that you find her someday.  I know some Latin American countries have had ways of dealing with people who threaten the establishment.

[Stamps1962]

I am hoping she returned to the US, continued on with her life, and that you find her someday.  I know some Latin American countries have had ways of dealing with people who threaten the establishment.

That's exactly what i was thinking. I wonder if she or her employer was getting threats from someone high up? El Salvador was a hellish place back in the 1980's. Lots of right wing paramilitary groups that would as soon shoot someone as look at them if they were considered leftist or in any way counterculture.  (and, with the help of the CIA) Not sure when the OP's  experience was but I'd bet some of that is still there.