No School Awards for Autistic Students?

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When I went to middle school, I noticed that autistic students almost never received school awards of any type, including myself. I did get ONE award, though, and it was for directed studies. During my freshman year at high school, I did not get an award, nor did any other students I knew were autistic. Could this be discrimination? Leave your thoughts below!

Well, award selection itself is a kind of discrimination, but doubtful that the recipients' autism or allism factored into it. Part of it may be that the majority of students don't fall on the autism spectrum and thus it's more likely a non-autistic student will be the recipient.

Another consideration is that there may have been recipient(s) who were in the invisible band of the spectrum who received awards that wouldn't have been counted in your observations.

I don’t care what anyone says, all award programs are nothing more than popularity contests. It’s not who you know, it’s who you blow!

I won an award for writing at grade 8 graduation, and a few academic awards in high school.

I'm autistic and went to school a long time ago in San Diego, but I got multiple awards for three science fair projects, got one from the American Cancer Society, one from the Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association, etc. I did really well scholastically, but was pretty hopeless socially. Possibly things have changed over the decades.

I got several awards and honors in high school and college ... but none of them were for athletics!

I got academic achievements awards in college, and second place in the science fair in middle school. I was also voted clerk one year for student council in high school. My brother was voted president that same year.

I think most of the school awards seem to go to students from popular families. There is always a core group of families that get most of the awards every year whether it be the science fair or the senior year wards. Teacher's kids get a large chunk of the awards if they are from one of the core popular families. In my experience, autistic people like myself and my sister get very few awards because we don't come from the right families. My grades were excellent and so were my science fair projects, but my efforts weren't really acknowledged. The ese department at the high school had an award for most improved ese student, but my sister didn't get it even though she deserved it. She showed the most improvement out of all the ese students that graduated with her. Unless you come from the right family, your efforts go unnoticed and unrecognized.

When I was in the sixth grade I got most improved player on the girl's basketball team. But that was only because I sucked so much when I first started that no one on the planet could have sucked more except probably on that one episode of BBT when Sheldon and the other guy were playing for the corner office. But by the end of the year I had become coordinated enough to actually get through games. But it took a lot of really hard work to get there. After that I got pretty decent but I never won an award in basketball again.

When I was in High School, no one in the Special Ed room had their names up on the Principals List/Honor Roll list, etc etc and it wasn't until like, Grade 11 or Grade 12 there was a meeting between the principal and some randomly selected students (myself included) to talk about it... not much was said really from what I remember

I never did see my Name up on either of those lists after that meeting anyways; and they're just for pretentious little snowflake teachers/principals pets who are overachievers anyways in my opinion

Last edited by lostxprophit on 21 May 2018, 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

My secondary school dealt with the prize issue by tying it to the end of year exam results for each year : Highest mark in each subject won a prize, which was a voucher to be spent on suitable book(s) at Sherrat and Hughes bookshop.

The music department fiddled the system in my final year - I had been one of the three people who had taken music to A-level, and it was in fact the first A-level set for a while and the first where there was a good chance of all students passing (rather than the more usual No chance of anyone passing - the school's ethos was a sporting and science school). Somehow, it was contrived that there happenned to be three prizes, in either music or a vague arts and culture area and all three of us went off to Sherrat and Hughes with our vouchers to purchase the books for the speach day end of year.

I confess to some mischief. As required I spend the vouchers on what was regarded as proper litterature or accedmic titles, and I chose three books: Bede's "History of the English Church and People", Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" and"The Satiricon" by Petroneous in a recent translation from the Latin., and asked for the dedication sticker to go in the Bede.

The Satiricon is, in fact , a "Dirty Book", and I did enjoy some rather "Private" moments thanks to the description of the orgy about a third of the way into the book. But,as a book from the Latin writing "Classical" civilisation it rather sneaked in under the radar of the censor.

I bet those students came from popular families at your school. The ones I went to school with were self absorbed snobs. I'm sure you saw a lot of the same last names on those lists every year.

got one at college, but even if i did win an award I would not like to show up because I would have to present to 1000 people and smile which is the worst feeling

I got all kinds of awards when I was younger. Honor roll, honors classes, president's list for athletics. Got the school citizenship award one year. Was the salutatorian of my sixth grade class. Was one of the best swimmers in my conference.
All kinds of stuff.
I didn't know that I was on the spectrum then.

You guys are probably Aspies.....let's hear it from HFA's like Elaine whose autism was noticeable from an early age.

My autism was indeed noticeable from an early age. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Y'all couldn't have stuck out too much if you got plenty of awards in school and did well socially.