Published on 12, July, 2020
I have noticed questions by carers about their children during lunch breaks. This got me thinking of my own experience.
I left school over 40 years ago and it is only in the last few years I realized I was autistic.
When I was at school a lot of lessons were quite formal which suited me. However when it came to lunchtime as all the schools I went to were nearby I went home for lunch. In the Junior school quite a few people went home for lunchtime which was nearly an hour and a half. Most occasions when I stayed it was for a club but I didn't like being at school for the whole day and especially the long lunch break.
I wonder if modern schools are more of a challenge for autistics.
I hated and feared school to a greater or lesser extent from my first day to my last. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, "Hell is other people", and at school there were far too many of them. Luckily, I was reasonably bright academically, so learning was no problem, it was the other people, kids and teachers, who were the problem for me. I hated the arbitrary exercise of power by teachers and the random unpleasantness of other children. I didn't bother other people, why did they bother me? Until I realised that I was probably autistic, very late in life, I had no understanding of people I knew saying that they enjoyed school; the very same schools I went to, that were so Hellish for me. As a child, I remember seeing Australian TV shows where kids living in remote sheep stations would be taught over the radio, I always thought, 'You lucky buggers!'
Yes the Australian model sounds good.