Once you adopt the perspective of ‘turning things around’ life is never quite the same again. All the things that we take for granted in life exist as a kind of ‘wallpaper’ in our daily lives. We don’t question why they are there or why we do the things we do. We just do them. And one of those things is going to school.

            When my two older children, who are now in their thirties, went to school I didn’t question it either.     

            Then, just a few years later, I trained as a teacher myself and went to work in schools so I was continuously seeing things from both sides of the fence. As my children got older and progressed through the system they became more and more dissatisfied with, and critical of, their schooling experiences.

            My own path mirrored theirs in that I began teaching at primary level and progressed upwards through the secondary age range. And I too became more and more dissatisfied with, and critical of, my daily experiences.

            I found myself ever more alienated from teachers and ever more aligned to pupils because, when viewed from their perspective, so much of what we are taught to believe is right about schools really isn’t. The belief that schools are the best and only place to educate children is a myth that has been drummed into our everyday social consciousness as an inalienable truth.

            Schools are the most PRACTICAL way to educate children. This doesn’t make them either ‘best’ or ‘only’. What it does make them, in the eyes of society and especially in the eyes of the professionals who work in them, is NORMAL!

            Schools are fine for children who can fit into them without too much trouble. This usually means children who are neither too far above nor too far below average intelligence and it certainly doesn’t include children who are inclined to question the system they find themselves in. It also includes children who can happily fit into the peer-related social system of the school.

            This last aspect of ‘socialisation’ is frequently cited as one of the most desirable benefits of school attendance. This is another myth that permeates mass consciousness. Large numbers of children, far too large, neither enjoy nor benefit from what passes as ‘social interaction’ within schools...they simply survive it.

            When we factor all these things in together we find that children who are neither too bright nor too dim and who are of a reasonably conforming and uncomplaining nature are also then classified as NORMAL! ( As are their parents as long as they too are conforming and uncomplaining.)

            My personal problem was that I was not very good at being a ‘normal’ teacher. Neither was I very good at producing ‘normal’ children and we became increasingly divorced from the school system with each successive one of them.          

            My first daughter dropped out of school at sixteen with blue punk hair. She then went on to establish a very successful career in Public Relations, travel the world, get a Master’s Degree in Anthropology and work in a Social Research Foundation that assists in the making of U.K. Government policy.

            My second daughter increasingly studied at home in her final year because she found that the school’s inability to control disruptive boys made attendance a complete waste of time. She is now a Digital Media Consultant and is just finishing a Ph.D. She is also now involved in U.K. Government advisory work.

            My third daughter took us even further from the realms of ‘normal’. This time to the completely opposite end of the spectrum from my severely autistic son because she is highly intellectually gifted.

            I have asked her if I may include her experiences along with my son’s as they intertwine inextricably with his story. Giftedness can be a two-edged sword because many of its qualities and characteristics can overlap with those of Asperger’s Syndrome, making ‘giftedness’ as difficult a system-fit as severe autism is...

            She doesn’t mind me writing about her experiences because she hopes they will be of help to other young people. In her case the ‘system-fit’ was so bad that she studied (very happily) at home for most of her ‘school’ life.

            I’m going to go on and look in greater depth at the problems that giftedness and Asperger’s Syndrome can cause in later ‘Letters from the Frontline of Autism’ as I believe that these can also be understood and resolved by adopting the perspective of seeing things through the eyes of the individual concerned. But for now I’d like to end with one of my most favourite quotes.

            It’s from Len Masterman, who was an early pioneer of Media Education.

He said...

            ‘When you have learned how to ask questions ...you have learned how to learn and   nothing and no-one can stop you from learning anything you want or need to know.’

            This, to me, is the best definition of education I have ever read. This, to me, is what schools should be all about...but they are not.

            Children come bouncing into primary schools full of a natural curiosity which is the absolute essence of learning. They have an innate ability to generate questions which is increasingly discouraged and squashed until, by the time they hit their teens, they are passive and grudging receptacles for whatever the educational system wants to pour into them. This is ‘normal’.

            Parents of children who are gifted or who have Asperger’s Syndrome, or any combination of the two, know that one of the prime reasons that their children have difficulty achieving  ‘system-fit’ is their passion and capacity for generating  questions and their ability to think independently about the answers.

            And yet this brings them into direct conflict with the norm of passivity that is required by schools, causing untold stress for both themselves and their parents.

            Now tell me, how normal is normal?

            Gaia Charis, March, 2010.