Rant I: Public School Horror Stories

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My first, most vivid experience with the unfairness of public school and the idiocy it can inflict on parents was in a Private school, actually, a
very conservative, very "Christian" environment.

And when I say Christian I mean, in this case, God help you if you so much as sneeze funny in class, because the Vice Principal was a BIG BIG MAN who liked to hit kids with paddles. Really great role model for perhaps pedophiles, not so much for us.

Anyway, he had a two strikes means paddling policy. You get sent once to the office, for whatever, you get a warning.

The first strike I had was fidgeting, I think. Fidgeting a little, because it was first grade, and I was still getting used to stuff. Really heinous, I know. We had a sub that day and her solution was to send me to the office. I was terrified, but I got the standard warning. Another trip meant that I got paddled. All I had to do was keep my nose clean. Easy, right?

Wrong.

The vice principal's son, and his friends, one day, decided to dogpile on me, crushing me to the point I couldn't breathe. I bit... someone, I couldn't tell who, to get them off of me. Because I have this addiction to breathing. Again, I'm a horrible, horrible person.

The teacher in her wisdom sends us all to the office. The son of the VP and his friend? They get off scot-free. Me?

I got paddled in front of a female administrator, one of the most humiliating and painful experiences of my life.

And the icing on the cake is that he got permission from my parents to do it. My mom said God told her to let him paddle me. I was, am, and always will be that this is a lie of the highest caliber.

Suffice to say, I hate the vp. I hate him, his son, I hate the school I went to that hired him, and nothing would please me more than to learn that he's come down with something painful and incurable. I owe to him my ravenous hate of pedophiles and child abusers, nothing more.

Oh, to all you parents out there- want to make your kid really lose trust in you and never feel like they can really confide in you ever again? Turn them over to a complete stranger with a paddle!

Anyway, that was my first experience with unfairness. It did not, and still does not, seem fair to me that some pedophile with a slab of wood should get to wail on me because I bit someone with the sole purpose of getting them off of me so I could breathe.

There were other incidents in that school- in second grade, I was stuck with an utterly incompetent teacher who used group punishments liberally and was more concerned with punishing than actually teaching, but the paddling is the one incident that stands out in my mind.

I can hear the cries of 'forgive, forgive' already. Let me refute this by saying every time I have forgiven, I have regretted it. Immensely. Maybe it's just me, but my forgiveness has always seemed to be interpreted as permission to increase the abuse. Hence I only forgive when I am reasonably sure the offender isn't going to take that as a sign they can go right back to attacking.

Next series of incidents came in fifth grade. Fortunately in this school, paddles were not used. However, it seemed every twitch, every facial expression, every errant breath seemed to draw either the verbal and physical wrath of my peers, or the overreactions of my teachers.

Did you know yawning is disruptive behavior? I didn't. Fifth grade taught me a lot of things.

More to come. Kinda sleepy now.

Yikes-what a bunch of nut jobs. School is where we first learn how powerless we are. Sad.

I'm sorry for your experience.

For what it's worth, private Christian schools and corporal punishment is not a bad thing when it's handled correctly.

First, paddling should only be done AFTER a parent has been informed and been involved in the discipline process. No child should be punished for defending himself/herself and the stories from each side need to be told.

Second, there is no excuse for a bias in who gets punished and who doesn't. That the son of the VP got off is not acceptable. Your parents should have demanded equality in this matter...especially since you say they were the aggressors.

Third, when did this happen? I say that because if nobody knew of AS when this happened, it's no wonder that your symptoms were interpreted as misbehavior. I hope schools are wising up and realizing some kids don't do what they to out of a lack of discipline.


Personally, I support corporal punishment in the schools. I see the war zones they become when the staff can't do anything to enforce discipline in the classroom and the school district won't allow students to be expelled. The good kids suffer the most from the bad eggs being kept in class.

However, discipline needs to be handed out wisely...knowing as much of the facts of what happened as possible and not playing favorites on who gets punished and who does not.

And....I know what it's like to get blamed for stuff I did not do and have administrators who had their own biases in determining guilt/innocence (got paddled for "feeling up" a girl in class [didn't happen] and she changed her story twice right in front of the administrator; administrator in question was a ditz who felt girls could do no wrong).

Public schools don't even teach you anymore. They pass everyone now, regardless of how small a grasp of the material you have. They pretty much give out A's and don't ask anything out of you. Great way to prepare kids for university or the work world...

Eventually, yeah, they did get me systems for christmas to replace the stuff I lost, but I would have been really happy with an apology. Some acknowledgment of a mistake.

Anyway- back to high school horror stories.

I could sum up the whole of my high school experience in three words- painful and meaningless. But that doesn't explain how I got to this point, does it?

Early in 9th grade, I learned that getting a marker thrown at me was my fault because I made a joke about my career goal being an evil genius, complete with overdone evil laugh. Of course, I got punished by having to write an apology, the thrower got off scot free, I was grounded from the internet for two weeks (which didn't help my grades), and they pressured me to throw away my card collection- that's another thing. My parents seemed to have this thing about anything that gave me joy- if it wasn't causing me to contemplate suicide or wearing me down, it had to be evil.

High school was just one huge disappointment and agony after another. Projects flunked because I didn't credit something right, even though they would write "you have an excellent project, but x, x, and x, therefore, FAILED." And they WONDERED why my motivation went down the toilet. My only rational conclusions from these experiences were that

a. I was ret*d to the point of inability to function
b. My teachers were utterly incompetent
c. Any pretense of aiding me had been dropped.

Looking back on it I have to go with C. It really, really says something about an environment when a Tornado drill or bomb threat is the highlight of your day. Let me say right now I never, ever, ever planned to hurt anyone at my high school, although I am convinced that at least a few people wanted me to go ballistic. But nevertheless, tornado drills and bomb threats- things that stopped the lectures and the whining and the constant fear of twitching wrong and having a teacher call home- were godsends.

On the subject of teachers calling home, here's a fun fact- generally, when a teacher prefaces something with 'we're concerned' it is not concern for your welfare but that there will be a moment in your life where you are free of the effects of their lies.

Teachers called home about me with some truly bizarre stuff, outright, blatant lies, and of course, my parents would gobble it up without a second thought. One incident was in math class when I had some scratch paper that had a math formula jotted on it that I'd forgotten during a math test. They called home to say I was cheating. My parents bought it, albiet I'll give them the credit that they wised up fairly quick. They still didn't apologize for not hearing my story. Well, dad pretended to hear my story, but he replied, as to every defense, "Not buying it".

I have a lot to say about that phrase and my dad's wonderful contributions to my outlook on life. I will get to them later- I have very few nice things to say.

Back to the topic at hand, the most bizarre accusation I ever got was that I said, in an ominous voice, "The demons have been unleashed" to a teacher. I do not, for the record, have any memory of saying anything resembling that, but I will concede there is the chance that my sanity was wearing thin around that point. However, I am certain I said nothing of that bizarre nature, nor anything resembling that.

If you're wondering whether or not my parents bought it, or if they listened to my side, then you clearly haven't been paying attention, but the answer is yes, and no, respectively. Again, they eventually dropped the issue when they realized the information was iffy at best, but, yet again, no apology.

Oh, yes, I can hear the question in the audience- "But Crazyrob, why didn't you ask these teachers to take their grievances up with you directly?", I hear you ask?

The answer is- I did. Multiple times. I pleaded with them, telling them I did NOT need people calling home with all manner of imagined slights and evils to ruin what precious hours I had away from the hellhole that was high school. And they would agree, but somehow, conveniently find ways to circumvent that agreement. They would say I left too quick from class and they didn't have a chance and they were concerned so much they were willing to risk ruining several days for me over a potentially non-existent issue. They would 'forget' the agreement and promise to remember next time, 'next time' of course meaning 'oh good, we've found a way to hurt you'.

To any would-be teachers in the audience, if you want a student to pray to whatever deity they believe in for terminal illness on your head, or drive them to insanity and possibly pulling a columbine, by all means go behind their backs about issues and exaggerate them. That may not do it immediately, but it sure helps to make a student feel like they're in some sick 1942 parody.

Before I move on to further atrocities, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about progress reports.

Innocuous sounding, isn't it? Progress. Report.

Here's how progress reports work. You have three weeks at the beginning of a semester. You're assigned a lot of homework that is a pain to keep track off in total. You are also given steeply weighted quizzes and maybe a test.

Mess up on something like I did and your progress report grades look like crap. And then your parents ground you.

TL;DR progress reports, if you made any mistakes early in the semester, amplified those mistakes. Now, here I will admit that as the years progressed, I lost the ability to keep giving as big a flip as I had in the past about filling out all the busywork in mad all-night self-torture sessions only to turn it in and get grade gouged on the most trivial things. Suffice to say this did not help with progress reports being any less painful. My point is- I knew I was having trouble. I didn't need additional reminders to stomp me into the ground.

A progress report of this kind helped to ensure my senior year was also one of my worst. Bad progress report meant my parents confiscated my computer and restricted my access to it by putting it in my room. They swore they wouldn't snoop around on it, but of course, they did, taking thr spam emails I got to be indicators of browsing into the most vile corners of the internet, and then claiming that they weren't snooping to my face, even when they had called me in to rant at me about it. The loss of easy access to my computer pretty much guaranteed a downward spiral, and I am unsure if that wasn't the point- to somehow make me more miserable than I already was by denying me both the tools I needed- NEEDED- to make good grades, and a means to relax.

Funny note- after I barely graduated from college, they didn't 'remember' doing this, and were pretty shocked when my brother confirmed they had in fact taken away my computer for my entire senior year. Again, no apology.

I can hear the groans of disbelief. I can see your eyes rolling, fellow aspies.

"He's got to be exaggerating."

No. My parents took my computer, put it in their room so I could only use it when they weren't needing privacy or asleep, and never seemed to really stop and consider the reprecusions of their actions. Of course, there is the possibility that they DID know, in fact, that they were damning me to a long, hard, hellish year, and they either didn't care or found my struggling funny, but I'm going to be polite and assume it was just incompetence.

But there was one glimmer of something approaching not pitch-black in this- failing one subject I needed to graduate and taunted by the flunking teacher, a counselor pulled me aside and told me that I could take a test to replace the failing grade and graduate on time.

I should say right now that this sort of person- the counselor who really means well, the religious kid who asks if you're okay sitting alone, the friendly librarian... these are the major reasons I didn't get a firearm and start shooting into crowds, because I knew that if I so much as grazed these kind saints in hell, I could never forgive myself.

I've ranted long enough. I'll conclude the public school horror stories with some words on college next time.

G-sus.. What a bunch of pricks with their heads shoved up in their asses.. In my opinion those people don't have the right of existance, but since usable amounts of antimatter is still billions of years away my opinion can't be made concrete (:wink: )
What spikes my curiosity the most is that it is all on a christian school. Is the VP not scared at all to go to hell sooner or later?

I'm pressed to think my parents sometimes suffer from what is best described as severe lapses in judgment. That's the kindest theory I have as to the matter.

Anyway. College.

Graduating from High school my parents did make up for many of their things, I will admit, by getting me a new, very efficient laptop. This did not ease completely the baffling I was left with from the 'restricted computer access' all my senior year, but it was, I must admit, a very generous, very welcome gift.

But really? The best part? After the graduation ceremony (I would have gladly just had the diploma handed to me along with a restraining order), we went to Bennigans, and that's when it hit me.

I was never going to have to set foot in that school again.

EVER.

"But that means... no more progress reports."

"that means... no more lie-calls to home."

"That means... I don't have to deal with those teachers"

Have you ever been suddenly unable to stop smiling? You know what I was feeling then. Pure, undiluted joy. Sure, I still wished for all manner of mishap on those who had given me hell and the lack of being on my side from my parents hurt, but I was HAPPY.

I was free.

But that couldn't last forever, could it? Because in the fall of 2004 I had to start college.

But something was... different. I didn't feel the onsetting dread that came with normal new school years. The 'DANGER DANGER DANGER' sense was no longer there. This baffled and confused me- why wasn't my 'school panic sense' kicking into high gear?

The answer came on my first week of class.

"Holy &%$#. Holy %$#@. What is this place? No one cares enough to harass or bully me. I have reasonable amounts of time to get from class to class. There's no one examining me every five minutes for a reason to call home. The teacher is actually... teaching. I'm... able to get things DONE."

The realization no one gave enough of a damn about me in college to give me grief was one of the happiest thoughts in my entire life.

So yes, public school imprisoned aspies, there is hope.

Stay alert. Trust no one. Keep your tape recorder handy.

Don't give the nazis a reason to keep you from college.

It kinda baffles me as to how any parents could throw their kid to the wolves like that.Mine always took my side, even if it was "iffy".My parents were not perfect but they tried their best.I only had a handful of bad teachers, but was lucky that when things went sour, my parents were always there to advocate for me.That is one of the reasons I sounded harsh toward you parents and suggested when your parents grow old, stick them in the darkest dingiest old folks home (aka waiting to die warehouse for old people),and hope when they die, they left you enough on their will.When you stick them in the old folks warehouse, make sure you have them labelled as not legally capable, so they cant change their will out of spite for being put in the old folks warehouse.When they complain about the conditions, tell them everytime that the staff said things were ok and that you believe the staff and don't buy any of THEIR LIES.What goes around comes around.

The thing is while the evil side of me does want to be a vengeful man of retribution, my father and mother have provided. They haven't been good counsel in times of hardship, or sided with me when it counted, but I can't deny they provided. They still do, while I'm trying to get a job, and they're paying for my college, so...

I... try not to be bitter about the times it felt like they rubbed salt in wounds and made a few of their own just for laughs. I try to focus on the (admittedly) large number of good things they've done. But let me assure you- incidents like being called a deadass and a dumbass over being late in getting a class schedule together or calling a college about a very vague job selection they may not be able to help me with?

After I spent three months up in Axton, VA looking after my grandmother?

That sort of thing has my blood boiling, and I don't think it's unfair to say it would enrage other people.

There's a lot of other things besides just 'throwing me to the wolves' that have left me bitter, especially towards Dad. I'll get to those in another post.

One thing I will say in favor of Catholic schools is that there was no paddling. That seems to be mostly a Protestant thing in the South or Southwest. We just had your standard passive-aggressive verbal abuse from teachers. But I did get a good education, and only had 2 or 3 truly bad teachers in my life.

I never have any respect for those who inflict corporal punishment on children. That means they're brutes who are either too cruel to negotiate with children or treat them with respect, or too stupid to control their behavior without violence. Physical punishment was only used in my house when one child did something deliberately that seriously endangered another child. Also most adults seem to get a sexual thrill out of paddling children, which is why they use God as an excuse for everything to justify it.

Your mom reminds me of my father. If I didn't have my mother to stand up for me and advocate for me and give him the boot to protect me and my brothers, I would honestly probably be dead, because my dad is that much of a selfish idiot.

There hasnt been hitting of any kind in ANY Canadian School for years.It IS AGAINST THE LAW and was for a long time for a teacher to even slap or push or physically assault a student in any way or form.

If a teacher hit a student with a paddle here, they'd be charged with assault with a weapon as well as possession of a weapon for the intent of causing bodily harm under the criminal code of Canada.