I hear stories of people's lives every day. That's my job. But not everyone has this privilege & perhaps you don't know why I keep banging this drum. I'll tell you a few reasons why I won't shut up about neurodiversity and self-directed education. 1/
When I talk to neurodivergent adults, they tell me about the sense of wrongness about themselves which they learnt at school.Why was everything so confusing?Why didn't they fit in?Their conclusion was, because there's something wrong with me.What if that just didn't happen? 2/
When I talk to neurodivergent kids they tell me how hard they find it being at school all day with no space to get away. They tell me they come out of school & almost explode with all the tension they have been holding in.What if we just let them leave before it's too much? 3/
When I talk to adults with a PDA profile (and when I examine my own experience) they tell me that they love to learn, but being made to do so took away all the joy. They say that for them, being told what to do is toxic. What if we just stopped telling them? 4/
When I talk to kids who get a diagnosis of ADHD, they tell me that they just need to move so much that they want to run up and down the corridors.They tell me that they learn best hanging upside down or swinging. What if we stopped trying to make them sit still? 5/
When I talk to dyslexic adults, they tell me that already by the age of 7 they felt shame at finding things hard which others seemed to find easy. They tell me that they had 'extra help' and it made them feel stupid. What if we just stopped comparing children by age? 6/
When I talk to many people, they tell me that they felt powerless at school, and as if their opinions didn't matter - 'but that's just how it is' they say. Many still feel powerless now. What if we stopped rewarding compliance? 7/
Many of them tell me that their diagnosis was relief because it was a much better explanation for their difficulties that the ones they had found for themselves - 'I'm stupid. I'm weird, It's my fault'. But years of misery came first. What if we trusted them from the start? 8/
What if education started with each unique child and was a process of helping them discover how they learn best, what really excites them and how to interact with the world? What if we trusted children to express their needs in the way we (hopefully) trust our babies? 9/
From the outside, it's an inaccurate and clumsy process, trying to predict what works best for each child. Research tells us about groups but not about individuals. We are left trying to guess what will work, because we're planning from the outside in. It often takes years. 10/
Surely it's more efficient to allow each child to be the expert on themselves, and to nurture that from the start.Mistakes are fine.They will never learn anything more useful than to understand themselves.Allow them to make real choices, and build diversity into the system.11/
My hope is that today's children will not need to see me as adults to talk about how much they dislike themselves &how they still feel the shame they learnt at school. My dream is that a respect for individual difference could be an integral part of education.12/
But that isn't just going to happen. It won't happen through 'reasonable adjustments' to a standardised system. We need to rethink how we educate, starting with each and every child and where they are, right now. It's the only place we can begin. 13/
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