Equality in teachers
One female teacher told me that teaching was one of a few jobs in which men and women are equal in their salary when I told her I never aspired to become a teacher. My indifference to the occupation stemmed more from the oppressiveness of the school system, but I also thought, even the teachers were equal, the students were not. We were numbered and uniformed by sex, assigned the sports, and taught how to behave appropriately for their sex.
Mr. Watanabe told us his wife, who was once a teacher herself, graduated from one of the most prestigious girls’ colleges. I asked him why she was just a housewife if she was so smart. He didn’t take offense in my rather impertinent remark and told me she wanted to take care of him when they married. I told him how unfortunate, what a waste of intelligence. Mr. Watanabe, unlike his wife, graduated from a mediocre school.
I was smarter than any of the boys in the class, so I’d have to make more money than they would ever be capable of. If I became a teacher, I’d only be equal with them, which didn’t sound fair at all. And I could not imagine afflicting a limit to my life by marriage.