As a boy half a century ago with an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, my Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped.
I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but I’ll nevertheless always remember how she had the immoral audacity — and especially the unethical confidence in avoiding any professional repercussions — to blatantly readily aim and fire her knee towards my groin, as I was backed up against the school hall wall.
Luckily, she missed her mark, instead hitting the top of my left leg. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her dark sunglasses when dealing with me.
But rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’.
I was much too young to perceive how a regular-school environment can become the traumatizer of susceptible children like me; the trusted educator indeed the abuser. …
As for my own autism-spectrum disordered brain, at age 56 I’m still ‘undiagnosed’, though that means little to me. An official diagnosis would cost a lot of money due to our [Canada’s] "universal” healthcare system not really meaning universally accessible regardless of one’s financial status.
It’s an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names.
Then, again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nevertheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].
While low-functioning ASD seems to be more recognized and treated, higher (as opposed to high) functioning ASD students are more likely to be left to fend for themselves, except for parents who can finance usually expensive specialized help.
Throughout my life, I’ve occasionally been told with a tone of surprise and sometimes even a you-look-okay-to-me facial expression of doubt: “But you’re so smart”. Today, I would reply with frustration: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.” It really is crippling, especially on a social level that affects employability.
Perhaps not surprising, I feel that schoolteachers should receive training in higher functioning ASD, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing.
There could also be an inclusion in standard high school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating condition. Neurodiversity lessons, while not overly complicated or extensive, might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against such vulnerable students.
It would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with ASD, including those with higher functioning autism, are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior is really not a choice.
It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among higher functioning ASD people.
The final lesson could be that a physically and mentally sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. And not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by the educational system is definitely a moral right.