Identity

Sue Bush: Learnt Behaviour

Sue Bush was born in 1948 in London. At the age of three she was sent to Chailey Heritage, a residential special school in Sussex, where she stayed until she was sixteen, then going onto college in London.

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Sue Bush

Here Sue describes the impact of school culture on her self-image.

https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/learnt-behaviour.mp3

Transcript

I occasionally joke now and I say to people 'Oh that's a Chailey-ism, that's a Chailey behaviour learnt that you know, you don't ask, you don't expect any help, and you apologise for even being alive, which is the way you kind of felt when you left. My attitude changed I have to say, slightly, when I had children, and I thought 'No I'm not going to spend the rest of my life with my head hanging low pretending I don't exist, trying to kind of, blend into shadows and pretend I'm not here, no. The world can either take me as I am or that's their problem, not mine, not mine' and I did change considerably.

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