Kids on the spectrum don't belong in mainstream school

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Ignoring worked for me. I had no choice but to ignore, since I was too socially oblivious to respond to bullying or know that it was bullying. Bullies prefer victims who respond and know that they are being bullied, so natural ignorance worked for me.

In the intentional autistic community within an already existing community that we are planning in a year and a half to two years, we will be starting with one huge house where room and board is provided, plus one other family on the same block who is raising 2 autistic kids. But the ten year plan entails hundreds of autistic brothers and sisters living with and/or near each other, supporting each other in our strengths and weaknesses. I visualize shared homeschooling, utilizing free online education, mentorship of our kids [and each other] by and for each other. We hope to partner with ARC, as well as building home based and partnership businesses.

We aim to educate our NT neighbors with our awesomeness [ homemade cookies, clean yards, monthly open house events, etc] that will be one of thousands of acceptance snowballs growing in size throughout the world.

Our kids will be both partially protected from, and exposed to the NT world. They will know what it is like to be treated as valuable human beings rather than a school playgrounds punching bag.

Intresting so essentially you have to not react at any point, I suppose obliviousness could be somewhat beneficial in those situations in that case. My problem was I think they figured out if I was 'ignoring' id still eventually react if they kept at it, and probably get in trouble from the teacher with them laughing at me behind her back. 'ha ha you got in trouble cause we made you upset' type crap.

I have abit of knowledge into the education system besides being a student because as I mentioned in my last post in this thread my mom was a teacher, but in addition to her so was my aunt(her & my mom are both retired & sub now), one of my cousins is a teacher, & wife of one of my cousins is & they were all at different schools & taught different grades. That said the school system at least in the public sector highly discourages individuality. Administration has lots of guidelines & requirements that teachers have to fallow & the result is that teachers have little room for discretion & have to teach & treat all kids the same. Kids are expected to learn & test in the same way. Some singing comedians I know of used to be teachers & were fired because they taught students in a nonmainstream way because they noticed their students learned better that way; a more famous one is Stephen Lynch who was fired for teaching the kids by songs.

Learning disorders like dyslexia(which I have) & hyperlexia are common amongst us Aspies as well as things like ADD/ADHD & all these things affect how we learn & test. The result being that Aspies & nonAspies with those disorders tend to NOT learn & test the way the typical NT does or the way administration guidelines require/restrict teachers to teach & test. People with those things tend to struggle in school because of it & when people struggle in school they are less likely to not go to college & more likely to drop out of high-school. They are also more likely to have low self-esteem & developed Leaned Helplessness which I also have; the theory is that those who continue to struggle & fail despite their best efforts start to believe that their efforts are useless & quit trying, here's a clicky link to an article about it.

It's common knowledge & various studies have proven this, that those who don't go to college & more so for high-school dropouts, have problems finding employment. Learned Helpless & low self-esteem also cause people to have problems finding employment because we limit ourselves believing that we cant get lots or any jobs or that we're unable to do many or any jobs when we might could get them & do them well. Problems finding employment cause people to become dependent; dependent on family or friends, dependent on Social Security program(like SSI & SSDI), dependent on welfare programs(food-stamps, housing assistance, food banks ect).

My point is that for those of us on the spectrum with learning problems or school problems & NTs with those things is that the mainstream school system is failing or has already failed us.

At the moment this is not an issue as the children in her class are all around 8 yrs old. She also has an aide who keeps an eye on her and one other child.

Interesting perspectives. My guess is the bullies grow tired if the victim shows no response to verbal taunting. This was indeed my experience at school. I ignored bullies taunts and they grew bored,. Only once I had one particular bully who used physical violence on me and that persisted till I moved grades.

Since my brother and I are closer to the NT end of the spectrum, our doctor advised our parents to enrol us in mainstream schools with support from school teachers and external therapy to help us better integrate into mainstream society, versus going to a special school. I didn't declare I was on the spectrum when applying to university.

None of which will prepare you for life. In fact, it'll make it much worst in regards to your interaction with others and possibly cause mental illness.

Bingo! Schools don't fail... they do exactly what they are designed to do. I'm not some crackpot either: I know MANY teachers and principals and they will all say the exact same thing off the record. They really do care about the kids but the system is designed to make kids as alike and easy to control as possible. School taught me NOTHING about the legal system, how to buy things at a store, how to date, what citizenship/residency is (THAT was a real eye opener). They did teach us how a "stranger" (pedophile) generally operates and signs to watch out for but not how far more dangerous relatives and "friends" can be and in many cases I was taught blatant lies like how the natives where I lived all went extinct. What a learned on my own about *how* they went extinct absolutely shocked me.

I know a lot of recent High School/College graduates and they are almost universally emotionally crippled and unable to act of their own accord and have little idea how the world works and their role in it. Sounds a awful lot like most released prison inmates doesn't it? I actually joked about how I would have felt more comfortable wearing an orange jumpsuit to school as it would be lined up with how I felt school was both a mental and physical holding cell.

I also don't agree, in some cases yes mainstream school is not the answer. But special schools can also hinder children who could go to mainstream school.

I can't imagine how my friend would be now if he were made to go to a special school like my primary school were wanting him to do which on their part was them just not willing to deal with his problems, it would have segregated him even more, and he may not have had the opportunities he got from mainstream school.

it is sometimes difficult to tell whether mainstream is the best idea, but to be honest NT children get bullied as well, you have kids who are overweight, have ginger hair, so many shallow physical differences , that kids pick up on and they get bullied for it. Shy children, children who have a stutter or who are different in anyway will get bullied.

I have a friend who was bullied out of 3 schools before she got to college, she was NT but was overweight and had a mole and glasses, as well as low self esteem, the kids picked her out straight away, 3 different schools, its terrible.

Another thing I thought about is that if we want acceptance and understanding eventually about autism then having all people on the spectrum in special schools is just going to make ignorance worse. We can't change peoples opinions about autism if it is hidden. We would be segregating our selves further.

there is the same argument about whether people with downs syndrome should be in mainstream school and I think in some cases that's also a good thing.

when I was at school we had some people with various disabilities and as far as I could see there was general acceptance, you can't expect understanding and acceptance from people without them being exposed to people with disabilities and other problems.

Funny how the obese kids and the severe shutterer never got picked on where I went to school as they were the bullies. Maybe they figured the best defence was a good offense and joined the mob against me. I had a 250+lb girl call me the ugliest person she has even seen and offered to pay me to drop out of school and with a LOT of money at that: she even flashed it in front of me so she was serious! When I laughed at her and pointed out how big she was (she could barely fit in the chair and was hideously ugly herself), the remainder of the class turned on me. How dare I "bully" a bully?? Yet another idea of how "fighting back" doesn't work.

I have only ever seen one kid who ever got picked as much as me and he was the biggest "wimp", "geek" and "nerd" I have ever been in my life. He also fit the Asperger stereotype to a "T". I've never heard of anyone getting bullied for weight, skin colour or especially hair colour. One of the "cool" kids even had a serious genetic deformity on one hand.

well it does vary, and it does make sense that the people who are overweigh or have other insecurities may become the bullies, but it is true that these people are also bullied mercilessly, I am only saying what I have witnessed.

I think it may depend on the area. Where I went to school at, bullying was never that bad, it was only teasing and making fun of someone and calling them names. Then we move and I didn't see any bullying because we lived in a small town. This one girl however went to my school and was in my brother's class and she is NT but she is in a wheelchair, her family moved and she went from being accepted to being shunned because of her disability. I say it must depend on the area. Some kids are more cruel in areas than in other areas and some kids are tamer in other areas and in a different area, no one really bullies.

In my experience that can end up being pretty bad when its constant, its from most other classmates and it goes on regardless of how many schools you move to constantly being teased, made fun of, and called names can be harmful....just curious though what is your definition of bad bullying, only physical stuff?

Special school as it was called always had a stigma.


However if a child knows they are on the spectrum and they understand why their communication difficulty's make them a target and they understand the role an Autism school can play maybe the wishes of the child should be taken into account.