Autistic Boy Voted Out of Kindergarten Gets Even

Post Reply New Topic

True, beau99. But if several children do it, it means that it's not that uncommon behaviour, either.

I have grown up during childhood and I have not seen kids lying on grounds, eating crayons, eating their boogers, and eating paper. I don't even remember that in my special ed class either. I heard of one boy in my school who ate his boogers but I never saw him doing it. So I thought it was unusual behavior. I guess the kids in my school were a little more mature than that or I didn't see them doing it.

What that teacher was totally wrong. But so is all the hatred directed against her against by most posters on this thread. I don't know what was in her mind when she put Alex in front of the other children in his class and asked them to vote on him - whether she was feeling at the end of her tether and did it without thinking it through. I hope she has remorse for what she did and now realises that it was wrong. But she should be shown mercy, humanity and understanding. I do not believe that she should be fired and banned permanently from teaching.

Tory_canuck wrote:

She is not those things and she does not deserve contempt and disdain from everyone else. As for disbanding her union, that sounds like a fascist action to me. Much too extreme for a Tory, though not for one on the far right. Her union has never condoned hatred against autistics. If the same thing happened in a school in Canada, I don't think any Tories there, except perhaps a few extreme right wing ones, would advocate disbanding a teacher's union if it stood up for its members' employment rights.

A few people have used this thread to express their anti-union and anti-teacher right wing prejudices.

When this event happened about two years ago, Bev posted an eloquent and thoughtful article on her Asperger Square 8 blog rejecting the hatred and witch hunt directed against the teacher. I do not have the URL for it with me.

That shows you how far some people will go. There's no excuse for that kind of behaviour. Unfortunately, it is more common than you think. Once, there was a huge fight in my neighborhood between two neighbors and the same sort of thing happened, one of the neighbors started a petition and tried to get everyone in the town to sign it. It was thoroughly ridiculous and made quite an impression on me. People will go to great lengths to cause other people psychological anguish.
When I was in school they wanted me out but knew they couldn't get away with a
"petition drive", so they didn't try that. They stuck to other tried and true methods such as exclusion, humiliation and bullying. There wasn't ever a rally of support for me, either.


That's wonderful they reacted and responded appropriately. We need more of this all over the world in situations like these. They should be taken seriously and not tolerated.


Sadly, again, it's more common than you realize. Teachers can be the ring leaders and actually encite this kind of thing if they view a pupil as a chronic discipline problem or a disruption to the class. When I was a kid there was a boy in my first grade class whom I'm pretty sure was autistic and the teacher was very unkind. I thought the way she responded was absolutely insane. It's another incident in childhood I'll never forget. The total lack of compassion or sympathy.

The problem with teachers unions is that they protect bad teachers and stop reform. For example, they wanted open up some online high school program here for kids who could not for whatever reason attend regular school(such as bullying like some you guys may of experienced or family matters such as work or having a kid) but the union threatened to strike and thus killed it. They're not out for the students at all, they're about the teachers and flexing their partisan political influence. You expect these folks not to indoctrinate your kids with their own political views but how couldn't they?

I'm definitely all for tuition-free online schools! I think it's a fabulous idea. We need them all across America so everyone has the opportunity to get a high school diploma. Online schools are the way to go.

Sack her. Better, stand her in front of various people selected to give the same mix of haters:supporters that the kid had to put up with, and get an authority figure to stand there and ask the questions.

I'm all for poetic justice; it's why I want an area where NTs can experience the equivelnce of how society treats Auties.

Amazingly, I never did. Not once. My wife simply doesn't believe me.

Growing up I used to watch "Skippy". Sonny, a 10 year old boy, lives with his family at a ranger station, and only attends school via radio. I always thought him so lucky! It seemed ideal to me.

Online schools should be made available for everyone with Net access.

am I the only one who noticed this part of the article?

Barton didn't return to the class and finished the year in homeschooling, and has since been diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome, which may have caused his behavior.

he was diagnosed with autism after the incident, not before it.

I am not saying that is an excuse for her behavior. But you can't say that she was out to get an autistic child when no one knew he was autistic in the first place.

She incited the class to give contempt and disdain toward the boy...what goes around comes around.


A few years ago, the Alberta teachers Union went on strike and disrupted the education of many students, and as a result, those who were unable to pick up the slack after the strike for what they missed because of the strike, did not graduate that year, and had to repeat their courses.The teachers Union had the teachers go on strike because the teachers wanted pay raises.Teachers here are already highly paid, and get the summers off paid.Many people I know here in Alberta think the ATA should be disbanded because they tend to use the kids as pawns to get teachers their pay raises.These same unions also protect teachers who do bully children or abuse them.These unions only have one thing in mind....protect the teachers and their paychecks...and to hell with the students.We dont need unions to protect teachers.....they already do have protection in regards to employment.....its called employment law and statutes, human rights statutes, and of the course, the charter of rights and freedoms.

Maybe they knew he was autistic but it wasn't made official until after the incident.

Whether or not it happened because he was autistic is irrelevant, IMO, anyway. No child should have to put up with that sort of abuse.

Here is the article to which I referred in my previous message:
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/200 ... posts.html

I said in my previous message that the incident in which Alex Barton was treated inexcusably badly happened about two years ago. Actually it took place in May 2008.

Reminds me of when my classmates on school camp held a mock Big Brother and had all these people voting, and I was the first one voted off.

Plus they read out a list of the reasons why they voted me off.

Ah, memories...

To me it makes no difference that she didn't know he was autistic. Suppose he wasn't autistic at all? Would it somehow be less horrible a thing to do to an NT boy? She incited the class to scapegoat a child. This is a horrible thing to do regardless of a person's neurology. If the boy really was nothing other than an ill-behaved NT boy, it would still be horrible because it is a cruel thing to do and it reinforces the most base and evil impulse in human nature which is to cast out the outsider or outside group. She didn't do any favors to those other 5 year olds either. They are in school to learn, among other things, how to behave in society. She just taught them the worst possible lesson they could learn and it will be hard for other adults in their lives to undo the damage.

Suppose he really had been NT rather than autistic? Sometimes children who are abused or going through something traumatic at home will act out in class. But did she stop to think about why he did what he did? Somehow I doubt that anybody who would incite 5 year olds to scapegoating would think that hard and searchingly about the life of the person they want gone. I have no doubt he disrupted the classroom and made teaching difficult. But she solved that problem in the worst possible way. What she did was only one step removed from organizing a lynch mob. She should not be teaching.

I also don't think they should either. But if the teacher didn't know the student was autistic, then you can't say the teacher did it because the child was autistic.