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Discrimination in Mainstream Schools.

Zo

Hello Everyone,

This may sound odd from the other types of threads that you read but never the less I feel this is just as important for your child or yourself if you are a student. If you or your child may be on either end of the spectrum, alot of you perhaps dont want to give your child another reason to seem less "normal" or cant afford to put your child into a private school or a special needed school, so Mainstream schools are you're only option. I am a student, 18 years of age, I have Aspergers syndrome. I just want to explain my experiance at a very good, mainstream school before I explain the problem. 

When I first diagnosed, I was just about to do my first set of exams. This school in particular did not have good facilities despite having a *lot* of funding put into it. Here are some of the issues:

Take the very well known English teacher, this man had got many students with pass results (Later found out that is because most of the parents can afford tutors) however he had a preconieved idea of what Autism was. He believed if you didnt "look" autistic, you werent effected by it. The story to how I got kicked out of his class is because one afternoon (We had double lessons, a break inbetween) We were studying close reading, where you look at a text and have understanding and analysing questions. The questions I was given that day were about tone in text. Many of you may know that reading tone in a text for someone who is autistic can be difficult, to say the least. However I was determined I had to pass this class so there I was staring at this text which to me couldnt have a tone in it because you are writing! My page stared blank for atleast 20 minutes before I plucked up the courage to raise my shaking hand and go "Sir...Can I have help please with this question? I dont understand the tone in this"

The response I got was "Go onto the next one" Seeming like a clear instruction I did so..ah, another tone question, another twenty minutes of blind confusion and back up my hand went. "Sir, I simply dont understand the tone in these questinons, can I have some help please to understand?" He looked at me with a frown, the whole class silent and watching me, it was clear he was angry with me. His response, made my jaw drop. 

"You arent even trying, How do you expect to pass your exams when you cant even try, there isnt a right or wrong answer. You are being useless" 

Was I being useless? I had sat for 40 minutes making myself frustrated and embarassed for trying to answer something like everyone else...and asking for help makes me useless? By this point the first class had ended and I couldn't help feeling that I had wasted a whole lesson. If the man paid to teach english wouldnt teach me english. I went downstairs and found a random P.E teacher in passing during my 5 minute break. I said simply "Sir, Can you help me with this question? I have no idea what tone in text is" He was clearly about to go and do something, and had no idea where to start on english, but he gave me a smile and took me to a room and done his absolute best in the five minutes he had to give me an answer to this question. (The answer was completly wrong but at that point, beggers wanting an education cant be choosers to who gives them such) When I came back, two minutes late because I was tidying my handwriting up I was welcomed with another angry look, I was asked why I was late and I said politly "Sorry Sir, I went to get help with my question so I would of had an answer for todays class". I was told to grab my bag and get out his classroom. So I did such. He stepped outside and shouted in my face, calling me useless, how dare I leave his classroom to get help, how dare I...

My response, I will never forget because I still wonder this. "Sir, You are an English teacher, how come I got more help from a P.E teacher in 5 minutes than with you, in 50?" I was told to never come back to his classroom. 

Before some of you think simply bashing education, and few of you will think "Maybe its just that teacher.." Well, There was the math teacher who literally refused to teach you if you had any learning difficulty or behavioural problem. The history teacher who believed dyslexia and asd could be cured with a stick being hit off your table, the head of your year telling you to leave school at age 16 because you academically werent the same because of your learning difficulty. 

The problem here is this, For some students and parents, the only option is to have your child in mainstream schools, some mainstream schools getting alot of funding, and some teachers getting more than their worth in pay. Teachers cant help your child because they either dont know what Autism really is, or they believe it isnt a big enough problem. My solution is that if you can be paid to teach, you should be able to teach *ALL* students, with any difficulty before you are qualified as a teacher. 

The reason I made this thread, is to give you an insight to what many students go through a day in normal mainstream schools, I want to hear if you or your child is experiancing this like I did. If you witness these problems aswell as other children around you. If you have had to deal with prejudice behaviour from educators, or open discrimination because you have ASD. 

  • True we perhaps may "dwell" on things, for one person an issue like this they can brush it off because it doesn't effect them, the reason I may "dwell" on this isnt because it was my personal experiance, it's because kids younger than us may get the same treatment and have to go through the same obstacles. In my opinion if I saw a problem, Id fix it so the personn after me didn't have to deal with it. I see no wrong in that. 

    As for Cheeking a teacher and autism awareness. I see it like this. If you were a plumber you would learn how to work with all manners of pipes, that just seems like the norm in your job, you get taught how to work with them, you get paid to work with them. That is no different from being a teacher, you get paid to teach students, no matter their spectrum level or learning difficulty. It's not about hoping they read a pamflet on autis awareness and "may adjust". It's that attitude that so many children (from looking at the several education problem threads on this forum alone) that these students are having these problems. It's not cheek, it was raising an issue. 

    Yes I may be raising that issue alone because Im autistic and my logic is well, say what you think. But that isnnt necessarily a bad thing. To blame the student for a teachers mistake is what I belive is laughable. 

  • If I could venture a reply there are three ways of looking at this.

    The first is with autism you tend to dwell on things. Lack of social referencing means the only way of addressing explanation is in your head. That might seem true for anybody, but subconciously or otherwise, my impression is non-autistic people exchange glances, gestures, and somehow that dispels the problem, and it is almost at once forgotten.

    This experience has been "bugging" you for some time, and may continue to do for years. I carry a whole cratehold of such things - some have been going on in my head for half a century. It wont go away. I suspect that some NTs do let things linger in their minds but a lot less so.

    The second thing is there is no doubt in my mind that some concepts are difficult to process when you are on the spectrum. Teachers are supposed to convey various ways of thinking, as part of the learning process, and it is a particular element of university teaching that becomes a pain for lecturers - such as trying to put a different expression of thought process into every exam question. Criticise, compare, discuss, analyse.....

    Yep, I've no difficulty recognising "tone" as a problem. I can guess what the teacher intends, but for someone on the autistic spectrum who may not use tone in social interchange, and may talk with less variation, understanding the tone of a passage of text might be difficult to convey. We are not well geared up to inflexion, inference, double meaning, sarcasm, subtelty..... all of which could be what tone he wanted you to find.

    Thirdly there is this basic problem - lots of professionals don't "get" autism (we've been having this discussion on here lately). It is abundantly clear whatever schools and SEN staff may say they know, actual understanding of day to day living with autism is truly laughable. I still feel the Triad of Impairments (designed for diagnosis) is used too much to explain autism to professionals including teachers. It misses out so much of what can go wrong for someone. It is lazy autism awareness training.

    I don't think it pays to cheek a teacher. You probably pushed your luck too far.

    Having said that I don't see, from your description, much sign of a competent teacher. My guess is it is on the curriculum he has to cover this, he doesn't really understand it himself, hasn't tried to understand it, and isn't putting it across well. Although I taught an older cohort, generally 18-22, I would have found ways of conveying the task beforehand, engaged students further if I could see they were struggling. Teachers who just give out work like that shouldn't be paid - he was being lazy.

    What you may not have picked up is that your classmates probably didn't understand it either. But there will have been lots of glances and smirks round the room you wouldn't have noticed (that I only got wise to through years of standing up front) where they reassure themselves what is going on, and they know that they can drift through this bit. So they don't get aroused. You being isolated by autism were more inclined to worry about it not working.

    It is very easy to lose a class, and not get much feedback from the students,. Ask if they understood it and they'll all nod OK - you can usually guess it is all bluff. Students lie constantly - fail to understand things for weeks or months - never ever tell you they are puzzled.

    Except the kid with autism, who actually is saying what everyone else would like to have said but daren't. It is a hard lesson but sometimes it is best to "keep your head down" even when your autism logic says otherwise.  Society is a mass of bewildered monkeys all sharing the same fate. Unfortunately being autistic, while it makes you more aware, doesn't do you any favours.