Public Education is HELL for Aspie children!

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The American public educational system is a bad enough place to send an NT child, but for aspie children it's a place of general frustration and living hell in the long run. Nobel Prize winner Glen Seaborg had this to say about it:

"If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war."

For aspie children beginning public school, to begin with it's like being a 12 year old in a class of 6 year olds; aspie's are born with a mental "head start" which the NT-oriented PS isn't designed to deal with. The result is 12 school years of frustration for most, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to repair the damage that has been done to them. This, of course, means that unless they have been very fortunate to be steered to the right classes and teachers, the odds of getting the grades for college are not that great; kids like me felt as though we were trying to learn in a school in which we spoke English, but all the teachers were speaking French; by the time we've figured out the language, school is over and we are struggling to deal with a world we have NOT BEEN PREPARED TO LIVE IN!

Another problem is the bullying; aspie kids are the automatic first targets of warrior children, i.e. the high-aggressive NT's, who don't belong in the general PS either; those are the kids who make most of the disturbance because they, too, are in the wrong school, PS when they should be in a martial school where their own special qualities can be trained and directed.

Both these two classes of children have special problems with a system that doesn't recognize their strengths and teach them the dicipline they need to develop those strengths, which is designed for the rest of the children, the "average Joe".

Aspie children in particular need to be in schools with their own kind, with whom they actually have a chance to socialize and make friends (lots of aspies go through school and college without ever making any real friends) and where they are taught by their own kind, aspie teachers. HF-NT teachers can teach aspies, but not without the support and direction of aspie teachers and administrators, because there's one thing NT's cannot learn for sure; they cannot feel what it feels like to be us.

A school whose overall administration is NT is never going to be the best school for an aspie,

It is self evident, that a society that actually recognized and directed it's children in this way would be far more stable and happy, and have a much lower crime rate than what we have given ourselves by the atrocity known as the American Public School System!
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I went to a private high school (Australian).

That was hell too. I'd have been better off going to one of the (non-religious) public schools in the town.

Now that was a tad rough towards public schools. Indeed I was picked on and bullied like many others including NT's. But public schools is where I learned all my social behavior mostly. I was never really ahead of many other kids, the most I was ever ahead was when I was the youngest child in a special ed class in 3rd grade, I felt isolated and left out, yet board cause I could do the work alone unlike anyone else.

I have good and bad memories of public school, but I would go back and do it all over again certainly, overall even my bad memories taken into consideration I did make friends, become involved with a group of primarily older kids who protected me in elementary and high school, and still hang out with some high school friends to this day.

Had it not been for public schools, I may very well not have social connections today.

Yes, public schools need work, but also I may have been lucky compaired to others.

public education is hell for every child

Well,
I have to admit this is true.
I grew up in Russia. Can you imagine the communist school?
It was much better than my daughter's middle school in affluent town here in US.
Not, the school but the environment.
The reasons are:
They did not toss my class through the years.
I spent 8 years with absolutely same kids in the same class. They were and still are my family.
Of, course they exercised their beating skills on me in the first couple if years, but after that we were same family members. 2 more years I spent with half new half old kids, which was OK too. American system of making new friends every year leaves no place to an Aspie.

Another reason is a my home yard, where we had about 20 kids running around screaming.
This was a friendly workshop for me. No arranged by mean parents play dates, just come and play if you can. Kids actually liked being at my place, because my parents worked full time.
We could be on our own, can you imagine it now?

Also local school is very snobbish and dictating. It is OK to be mean, but it is not OK to hit back.
I could hit as many noses as I found abusing; no one ever said a word.

Also Russian school is more about reading and writing and less about socializing. I think it makes it better for us too. I am tired of my daughter's teacher’s complaints about her refusing to work with peers and making more friends.

In other words, we were much more self managing and hence self adjusting than kids here.
It is a terrible pressure from school. And they do not show an achievement in academic skills, where my daughter is good.
Instead they seriously tell me that I should work on my girl to make her working more with peers. Leave us alone, please.

johnpipe108,

You described MY experience, and I have complained about this even when I was like 7! I STILL remember being the only one in my first grade class that could read fluently.(Steady with proper emphasis and understanding, while others read word by word.). There were a few years where I could use some programed teaching, and that was NICE! If I could go ahead, I DID!

BTW A foreign government DID create the U.S. school system. Have you ever heard about how classes USED to be? They used to have something more like programmed teaching, ingividual instruction, and they tried to teach more. ALSO, socialization and propaganda weren't "taught".

public school is a respite from home. The main thing I hated about school until I was a sophomore, is that I lived in Small-town USA. When I transferred to a city high school in the next town, I was really happy. Bigger the better. University was heaven.

I thought the present-day US school system was created by industrialists to groom a workforce from the lower classes. It exists largely to warehouse kids while their parents work and suppress individuality, creativity, and critical thought and emphasize "socialization" (following the herd and worrying what others think of you, how you look, make sure you're not TOO "smart", especially if you're a girl) and submission to authority.

Of course there are individual teachers who buck the trends, or try to, but most of them don't last too long in the system, and burn out early and seek employment in other fields.

Actually it was a very exclusive private school that gave us our most horrific experience. Being private, they could pick and choose which children they take. My son was only three years old when his teacher let me know just how much of a disappointment he was. When I asked her if she had ever taught any other children with similar traits as my son, she said yes, but the parents didn't "get with the program" and that child no longer attended there. They let my child endure her cruelty because they didn't want to lose me as an employee. I quit and took him out of that place. At least public schools are required by law to accommodate children with special needs.

I've been to public (i.e. state-run, open to everyone) schools, private (i.e. paid for by parents) schools, and special ed schools, and none of them were anything less than hell.

My grandfather immigrated from Belarus (I'm not sure of the correct spelling) just before the revolution; he had said something to offend the Czar, and had to high-tail it through Germany to the U.S. Good thing he did, I wouldn't have wanted to go to schools invented by NT communist theoreticians, even if I was NT!

That's what we get when Low-Function NT's run the educational system!

What we need to do is start infiltrating the system and take it over; then we could see to it that everyone had a good education.

Of course, before we could ever succeed, we'd have to somehow teach the NT world to stop electing political hacks to public office; if we could get some public spirited individuals who don't want the job and don't represent ANY politically divisive entities called "political parties" then maybe we could accomplish something worthwhile.

George Washington was right about that!

p.s. Back in the late 1970's, a dear friend was dying of cancer; her sister, an English teacher from the Chicago public school systems, was visiting. She said "The purpose of the public school system is to teach boredom so the kids can grow up and work in offices". Right from the horses mouth ...

agree with all my heart

schools are both instruments and expressions of oppression. They keep children occupied so that they can't involve themselves in running things, earning money, or otherwise participating in society, until been trained/browbeaten into accepting authority, believing things that people in authority tell them, and into finding it completely normal to spend a lot of time and energy on doing completely pointless things.

Most children don't need teaching to read and write, it happens automatically if there is any good reason, as far as the child is concerned , to do so. Like walking. Using numbers happens as part of life , if go shopping, if look after chickens, if harvest fruit for sale; if play games, if think about anything really. All the rest, handwriting, the history of the romans/egyptians etc, "nature" etc If a child is interested can learn it anywhere, anytime; if not won't remember or use the info anyway. Their entire childhoods thrown away on unnecessary and useless activities. It is tragic.

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Dec 2007, 2:22 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think the problem is largely having mass education that is standardized as if one size fits all (when it really fits very few) that is formalized and... yeah. It just doesn't work out. Even for NT kids.

Yes, public schools in America are a complete joke. The prospect of school and standard work just makes me depressed.

...and yet the first response I always get when I mention home-shooling:

*gasp* "...But what about the social element???"

NT's seem to be under the impression that if you're not surrounded by hundreds of cutthroat, hen-pecking peers, you won't know how to communicate in the real world.

You know..... they have a point there. My kids might get a far better education, as well as being taught adult vs. child-peer socializing skills - but they won't have been subjected to torture and ridicule, and may be surprised by the treachery found out there by adults who behave exactly like they did in school!



I'm still on the bandwagon for homeschooling.... but have you noticed how "the system" is pushing hard for both parents to be working full-time and forcing the kids into the public system? Living on a single income these days is very difficult....

I always respond to that with something like,

"Yeah, I don't think that socializing only with people one's own age, and in an environment that makes them hostile to each other, promotes good social skills. In fact, homeschooled and unschooled kids tend to have better social skills than standard-schooled kids, because homeschooled and unschooled kids get contact with a wide variety of people in a much more natural environment. There are tons of ways to socialize that have nothing to do with school. But if you're so determined to force people into an environment where people are artificially separated by age and stuff like that..." etc.