Troublemakers

Reading this reminded me of my elementary school experience. Due to autism I was having a hard time learning social skills, when to sit still and often couldn’t. I would even get in trouble because my hand writing was bad, because my motor skills weren’t where they should’ve been. My teachers often seemed to assume this was purposeful. While reading this writing on troublemakers it reminded me a lot of these experiences. I somewhat understand how that was seen as misbehavior, however I think about the expectations placed on kids who are learning new expectations for the first time. While some kids had the experience of learning outside school I didn’t get that, so school was new to me when I went. Then all these expectations are thrown on. Along with a teacher shortage I see how these kids get failed so often. Oftentimes teachers have to deal with more kids than most people would all at one time. This makes it very easy for the kid who is struggling with an adjustment slip through. I also find that we as people tend to assume the worst in the children, even when they’re still learning how the world works. I think it’s important to talk about how young children’s sense of self is affected by these labels as well. If we keep telling someone they’re bad, they might just start to believe they can only be this one thing. Then by the time they get to higher levels of education they’ll think “why bother?” I also thought the comparison of the children to these canaries in the mines was interesting as well. I do think the rules of conformity are poisonous to children and their freedom. However I don’t see issues like that getting fixed unless we somehow get way smaller class sizes where teachers can give all their students what is needed.