Experiences with the education system

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It was not only how it affected my life but it how it could have affected me if I received some support and was guided in the right way. I realize that we all could have benefited from a bit more supportive childhood and these special programs do cost a fortune however school as it is was designed for NT children - it literally harms me and does little of what it should. I do much better with textbooks. Children are evil and unkind to those who are different and aspie kids usually are very bright but sensitive. Seems to me our (capitalistic) society is pretty dysfunctional in general.

I have found that most mainstream education from the beginnings up through college level is quite collectivist and geared for social, verbal people who actually gain something from being lectured at and participating in group activities.

I have always excelled at hands on learning, where I actually do something myself, rather than be told how to do it.
Most everything I know I learned on my own. School was just a place a HAD to go, and was pretty much a waste of time for me.

I never really had a lot of trouble being bullied, I was always good at being 'invisible'. The only rough patch was 8th grade where I was possibly a bit too "honest" with a popular girl who liked me, but I didn't like her and told her in some not so nice words(called her a whore in front of everyone). She responded by manipulating dozens of kids against me, I would up getting chased home very day for 6 months. Otherwise socially, I was a ghost in high school, nobody really knew me, and I liked it that way. In high school I was just the dude you could always bum a smoke off of.

Negative. Public education is designed to dumb people down and turn out good worker bees for corporate society.

"In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present eduction conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen - of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."
- John D. Rockefeller, General Education Board (1906)

I wouldn't say the education itself was overall negative; however, I've had negative experiences with the school system in general. Teachers did not always react well to me or help me if I needed it. Bullying was a big problem for me. One kid tortured me from grade 2 until grade 6 (after which he must have moved away, thank goodness!) I tried to ask a teacher (not mine) if I could stay in at recess one day because of him and she said no. I ended up sneaking under a desk in the classroom and hiding, but she somehow found me there and I got into trouble for it. I was punished for being bullied--he was never punished. In high school a group of kids were horrible to me for months. One day the ring-leader of the group threatened to kill me and they even surrounded me in the neighbouring arena. I went to the principal's office. He said he didn't have time to deal with it, so I would either have to live with it or leave school. I dropped out of school....2 months before graduation. So, education aside, the school system and its policies have failed me.

Horrible. The teacher's aide tormented me and verbally abused me into having a meltdown because she knew that the sight of my own poo before supper struck a nerve of fear within me. I would only do that after supper and she verbally abused me in the washroom, trying to get me to go when I didn't have to go, causing me to have a massive meltdown every time. I got her back by being very nasty and defiant towards her.

I had no clue what to do with my life when I graduated high-school except that I did NOT want to go to college. I was really lost & I spent the next couple years spending most of my time at home except for going to stores & other places every month to put in job applications. I'm very dependent & tend to think I'm a lot stupider than what I really am. I'm not a very confident person & i have lots of anxiety issues.
If I would of been in different type of school environment that taught things in a format that was rite for me; I would of been a lot more aware of my strengths & some of them may of been a lot better. I might of had a plan after high-school instead of wasting the next couple years years of my life by putting in job applications & having no luck, then being unemployed for 6 months after only working for 3 years & then losing that job after 3 months & being unemployed ever since

As a youngling and I was OK in school, I performed well above average acedemically but didn't have any friends I'd see outside school, I was often bored and paid little attention to subjects I didn't like, it went downhill from there till I stopped caring, rarely bothered with homework because I refused to go to school and such, which lead me to a therapist for the first time.

I too was one that slipped through the cracks because my grades were good. I had enormous difficulty (especially from Years 8-12). Even now when I think back I can see how lucky I was that I didn't commit suicide in that time. I was in desperate need of a more structured environment, guidance and coping skills. I was in relentless overload.

The only thing that really got me through was a couple of teachers who saw something was not right and stepped in to be kind of mentors to me. They were my "safe space" in a sea of confusion and panic. They encouraged me in the areas that I was most interested, let me talk to them about my struggles, and mostly just let me spend time with another human being whilst being myself. I have no doubt that they saved my life.

I had 2 problems with the school system (I could write a lot more about my daughter's experience and will if I get a chance):

1 Bullying/ teasing/ name calling and no-one having the guts to confront the bullies.

2 Being recognised as really smart, but when I struggled with anything in particular, I was told, 'You aren't trying hard enough'. I now know that I'm what can be described as 'twice exceptional'. In my case, the giftedness was apparent, but no-one took any time to figure out my specific educational difficulties (concentration, reading to order, fine motor problems, to name a few). I breezed through primary school. But, each week, I dreaded a particular task (which involved concentration and reading to order), knowing that the teachers would be incredulous again. But, nobody suggested an educational psychologist should take a look at me. They were baffled and just made me feel awful, stupid and lazy. When I went to high school, my grades gradually decreased, as studying was becoming more and more essential and I couldn't study. However, I did well enough to go to uni, just not as well as my early years might have suggested.

I also believe I encountered sexism too. I was very good at technical drawing (got As), which we had in first and second year of high school. When we were choosing our 3rd/4th year subjects, the teachers had to make recommendations on what subjects we should pick. Like all the girls, I was not advised to choose this subject. Had I been advised to choose this, I may have been persuaded to go down that route, rather than biology. Instead, I was left thinking that maybe I wasn't as good as I thought. I didn't query it and my parents should have. I don't think this sort of thing happens these days, but I could be wrong.

Although I had to put up with some bullying, I generally enjoyed school. The rules were pretty simple and if you followed them you were actually rewarded, which is the way school differs from real life. I also got to pick the brains of some very smart people without the bother of having to form a personal relationship with them first.

Negative. Hopefully college will be better.

Hell on Earth..

It was hell, it was really hell. I went to school as strange but happy child and left it as reclusive, unsure, angry and confused young man. And it took me years to recover.

The problem with public school was not the lack of "services" (they never helped anyways when I was much younger). The real injustice was how they treat individuals who were different. In American schools, or at least the ones I attended, anyone who struggles academically, emotionally, or socially, is thrown in remedial classes with ret*ds or psychopathic thugs. < This almost happened to me in 1st grade. Everyone was supposed to take academic tests before entering classes (tracking), yet my teachers, knowing I had an autism spectrum disorder, placed me in remedial classes, without even testing me, until my parents complained. Then I just joined everyone else. I am thankful thay they actually cared because mediocre parents would not and would let their child languish intellectually while he or she cannot learn because of the psychopaths placed in the same classes who could not be placed anywhere else. "Educators" in this country do not know how to handle anyone in their classroom with the slightest difficulties so they designate them to remedial "classes" (more like supervision without any structured teaching if even that) to claim that the individual with a learning difference or emotional struggles ruining academic performance is being "served".