University Life

Abstract

In the mean time, we children grew up. My sister and I went to the boys’ Hogere Burger School and the gymnasium, which was unusual in those days. My father did not distinguish between my sister, myself, or my brother, who also went to the H.B.S. We all had the same opportunities and each of us had the same rights; so it was and so it remained for him. Father had the same interests in problems regardless of gender, and he felt deeply about the future of all three of his children. He wanted all of us to have the necessary skills and education in order to prepare ourselves for whatever we might feel called to later in life. No lessons, which he considered useful to our later life, were too costly not to learn. Father and mother denied themselves any luxury for it. Actually we three children were their luxury for which everything else was secondary. Even though father was always interested in our school work, he made sure that it did not occupy too large a role in our lives. He was opposed both to excessive ambition and to the struggle for privilege, which he considered to be fatal — morally, physically, and spiritually — to a young person’s life. When my older sister came to him beaming to tell him that she was number one in her class, for which she had struggled hard, his only answer was: “Don’t ever sneer that in my face again!” With this response he showed a wise and deep insight into the real worth of life, and my sister learned a lesson she never forgot. That is why he was also adverse to all types of competition, and why he never wanted his children to take any part, pointing out to them the emptiness and worthlessness of the approbation.