Not talking = withdrawn?

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Has anyone been called withdrawn and untouchable for not answering when prompted to talk about something or when asked a question? Even though you were not withdrawn but paid attention actually?

Today I realised my former teachers would have meant THAT when they said I didn't deserve a better grade for social cooperation. That often I didn't answer when being asked a question and that I'd stop in the middle of talking.

I think that it is plain wrong to assume that a lack of verbal response automatically means a person is withdrawn and does not participate in whatever is going on.

Edit: To clarify: I was not talking about being quiet or not paying attention in class. I intended to write about how a lack of verbal response should not be equated to being withdrawn and being declared as uncommunicative.

Totally mute people aren't uncommunicative just because they can't talk either, are they?

I got this a lot when I was in school, I prefered to sit at my desk and draw rather then talk. People thought I was weird.

I got told that I preferred to work alone (funny how they never asked me but just told me) - but really it was just that they would tell everybody to pair up and I'd never have to skill to avoid being the one that got left out. Too shy to complain maybe, but I felt left out and was angry when they said that as if it was my choice.

I think teachers get huge workloads and some of them cope by fobbing off responsibility onto the students. They said my son was failing to participate in the class, then when the social worker visited them, she noticed they'd made him sit at a desk that was facing away from the action (some kind of punishment), which, as she said, wasn't really giving him much of a chance to participate. At a parents' evening all I heard was "he must work harder" but when I asked how his social confidence was going, they couldn't answer. I doubt they'd even thought about his education being about social matters.

Mainstream schools are too preoccupied with materialistic targets and in doing that they miss the point. I've a lot more hope for Montessori schools, used to think the same of Steiner schools but the one I saw had its problems. Some teachers care, but I think a lot simply don't, they're too busy surviving and looking after their own interests.

My grade-point average also went down because I didn't answer questions nor participated in classroom discussions. The teachers were never remiss in reminding me about that.

I always participated in class discussions. they weren't really discussions though, more like my monologues

I sat at my desk and drew pictures while at school too.
I attempted to talk with others around me (drove the teachers crazy) and I also wanted to talk for the pictures I drew.

I don't think the teachers called on me to answer very many questions, most the time I wasn't paying attention to them much anyway.
I can't recall ever being called "withdrawn", have been called crazy numerous times. Now I bet I am called withdrawn but no one ever confronts me about it.
In college I had one class with an instuctor that made a big deal about interacting in class and stated that he wanted us to participate and would be graded on it. By then I had more of my act together, was much more mature acting and not nearly as distracted. I did make a huge effort to participate in that class.

I was regularly hiding at the back by the time I was 12 - it took the maths teacher 6 months to niotice I hadn't been doing my homework. I got a reputation as a clown, and luckily some of the other kids admired my work, so school wasn't entirely bad. And some of the teachers were a lot better.

What 99.9% of people on this board don't realize is that not talking and communicating with others is being withdrawn.

There is something called awareness that most people on this board do not have.

The fact we don't and often times are unable to communicate with others makes us dysfunctional.

Not understanding something does not make it untrue.

I'm perfectly happy just sitting with people and not talking. I get a social buzz from just doing that.

I also think messages that do not need words(like annoyance) shouldn't get them!

You can convey emotion quite well through other means then talking.

just because I don't talk doesn't mean I'm somehow not paying attention. I don't have as many eye-contact issues as other aspies, can't people see that I'm LOOKING at them and nodding?

Sheesh!

I get sick of it even though I could see it being funny in their perspective. I'm the opposite when it comes to socializing, I don't prefer to be alone but around people. But I guess I wouldn't want to be around me either as poor as my communication skills are.

Quiet people are well able to look after themselves Irish Proverb

There is more hope for a stupid fool than for someone who speaks without thinking. Book of Proverbs - Bible

SPEECH IS SILVER, SILENCE IS GOLDEN - "The value placed upon saying less, rather than more, as reflected in this proverb can be traced as far back as the early Egyptians, who recorded one such saying: 'Silence is more profitable than abundance of speech.' The current proverb was rendered for the first time in the Judaic Biblical commentaries called the 'Midrash' (c. 600), which gave the proverb as 'If speech is silvern, then silence is golden.' The poet Thomas Carlyle quoted this version in German in 'Sartor Resartus' (1831), and soon after, the American poet James Russell Lowell quoted the exact wording of the modern version in the 'The Bigelow Papers' (1848). Perhaps more familiar in the shortened version 'Silence is golden,' the saying has been quoted in print frequently during the twentieth century."

"Wise Words and Wives' Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New" by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993).