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  • Writer's pictureAngry Lump

Once upon a time, a fish nearly killed itself climbing a tree.

And ever since, fish have been whipped up trees and punished for not keeping up with the squirrels: the problem with schools.

Imagine a whole bunch of different animals living together in peace and harmony, until one day, capitalism and colonialism come along and decide that all animals have to meet the same set of requirements in order to continue thriving in the midst of this reimagined society rather than be marginalized to its fringes. That's the school system, in pretty much any industrialized nation.

Schools are like bird parents. They only teach their babies how to eat, then kick them out of the nest and expect them to figure out how to fly before they hit the ground - or, you know, fall to their deaths.

Math, physics, languages, history, sciences - all of these are important things to learn. Look at me, I learned English in school. J'ai aussi appris le Francais à l'ecole, en ook Nederlands heb ik op school geleerd. Being a polyglot is amazing and opens so many doors. And math is quite useful too, and don't get me started on the importance of a basic understanding of physics and biology. I'm not here to contest the importance of these subjects, although we could question WHY they're important. The people of today's Democratic Republic of Congo had no use for French until French-speaking colonialists invaded and made French their problem. History? What history? Whose perspective? And how truthful? Despite the immense importance of knowing your history, the latter is typically taught biased, from the victor's - read: oppressor's - point of view, giving us "Cowboys and Indians", and brave white explorers "discovering" so-called savages who somehow ended up enslaved. Or extinct. Or fishing in mercury-poisoned rivers.


But the need to decolonize schools aside...


One size doesn't fit all


Society loves to label everyone. Gay, fat, criminal, ignorant, insane, trashy, disabled, poor, what have you. Labels are great for identifying differences. Sadly, society likes to weaponize these differences, these labels, in order to marginalize people it deems undesirable, or just good enough for exploitation under capitalism. And the label "criminal" is usually applied when such marginalized people resort to breaking rules they never signed up for, in order to improve their situation or at least resist a system that's on a mission to keep them down.


When, in fact, these labels should indeed help you identify differences and build a society that accommodates them to the point where "criminals" cease to emerge. Where "poor people" aren't a thing. Because they are, we just pushed them out of sight. You know, until they come back as aforementioned criminals. "Disabled" is a label we could use to assess an individual's different needs of support so as to help them thrive. For people in a wheelchair, this can be ramps and lifts in addition to stairs and thresholds, and in terms of school and education, this can be a greater effort to recognize neurodivergence or similar "issues" early on, but also things such as allocating more time for kids whose socioeconomic or familial circumstances are slowing them down, and give those children tailored education. Of the same quality, striving for the same results and future opportunity, as the education given to neurotypical, average-IQ children who don't experience food insecurity, housing insecurity, family trauma, abuse, or other factors that interfere with education.

I have ADHD. I self-diagnosed, then had it confirmed by a medical professional, in my thirties. Anger and grief rise in me when I think of all the missed opportunities adults had to nurture me in accordance with my different needs. Instead of sedating me or putting me in schools that lead nowhere. Assessing me and finding me "retarded" because I didn't respond well to classic lesson models, big classrooms, bullying, or having to live up to the expectations of neurotypicals while drugged up to the eyeballs with epilepsy drugs and struggling with the effects of undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and, most likely, also autism. Instead of the availability of schools, or classrooms, where children with different needs are nurtured to achieve the same success, I was discarded in schools that were not designed to nurture success, but to fulfill the legal requirement of compulsory attendance. I was sat next to children who were drooling in their wheelchairs, heads lolling, unresponsive to their surroundings. I was told to shut up about my demands to be given French or English lessons, because an autistic classmate five years my senior needed her meltdown attended to. My own meltdowns were mistaken for tantrums, and I found myself punished, traumatized, paralyzed.


And after I had so stubbornly made my own, unassisted way out of that environment and made it all the way to college, ADHD and the CPTSD and borderline personality disorder born from a lifetime with unaccommodated and penalized neurodivergent needs, took their toll. Everything I had built for myself, the social life, the college life, the hopeful life, collapsed, and I found myself shackled to an ICU bed.



Conformity is where futures go to die


My story may sound extreme, but there are a million nuances of nonconforming children being punished for not keeping up with "one size fits all" school systems. Yes, there is special education, but what goals does it pursue, what opportunity does it offer? Waldorf schools were a well-intended, but still lacking alternative, as they, too, expect conformity - just in a different aesthetic. Cottage core over calculators. While there are different forms of education, each one only accommodates a limited array of differences that must fall within what the school was designed to accommodate. We cannot assign a tutor to each individual child, obviously. But teachers should be trained to recognize and accommodate a variety of learning methods, not dish out fail grades left and right because different children have different ways of "getting there". I had Es and Fs for math all my life, until in eleventh grade, a new teacher recognized that all I needed, was to be shown a different approach. I graduated with an A.


There are also subjects where you have to wonder if they're worth discouraging or even abandoning a student over. Why not offer alternative subjects? If the child is truly hopeless at one subject, let them choose one they could actually build a skill on. In my case, that would be languages. Why fail me and make me drop out over bad math or geography grades, when I'm planning on becoming a filmmaker, or a dog breeder? If I end up needing geography or math skills, I can always teach myself or attend courses later. We present children with a set, set, of required subjects to get good grades in, when many of these subjects are all but useless in real life. Meanwhile, how to do taxes, how to fix your own car, how to recognize when consent is withdrawn, how to take care of animals or babies, personal healthcare, knowing our rights, even decent sex education - we have to teach ourselves all these actual life skills, and can even end up in prison if we mess up. Schools are like bird parents. They only teach their babies how to eat, then kick them out of the nest and expect them to figure out how to fly before they hit the ground - or, you know, fall to their deaths, which many a chick does. Shouldn't we be better? How much longer can society accept that countless children fall to their deaths because school didn't prepare them for life and couldn't even find a way to teach them whatever was being taught?


Children are squeezed into preset molds and punished for not fitting. We need to either add a larger variety of molds, or let children find their own.

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