blanket rules

Listening to RNZ and a report talking about how schools are failing the neuro divergent.

There are different kinds of people – I don’t know if this is genetic, due to neuro divergences, or upbringing. This doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they exist. There are just people who are happier if the world is governed by a series of rules, rules for all… the box ticker. The person who is really good at health and safety!! There are people who the idea of breaking a rule, that they might not know, is dehabilitating, paralising. Perhaps they are the easily interpellated as they need that structure. It is hard for these people to see that such rules can exclude others. Unfortunately, they seem to rise up the pyramid.

This is what I have noticed as a nanny and working at Everyone Out. Most children can accept different people different rules, different kids = different rules. For example, children I nannied knew I did not allow them to sit on tables, so they only did this in front of their parents. At the briefing at EO, kids will accept that some children are excused from this (age, ADHD etc) and in fact will behave differently, make allowances, themselves with different people… the trick here is making sure that none of this comes with a value judgment. We have a few kids who can not cope with this at all – I see this as a handicap and try and find ways of looking at how they feel, need recognition of being good, feel that that the other person is getting away with something that they want to get away with, is it a power thing (both powerless – victim of the rules vs powerful – wanting to hold the power of the rule over another person).

Schools can’t do all these shades of grey. Especially the bigger the school. They gave the example of a school not allowing a neuro divergent child to wear earphones at assembly. I can only see this as a misunderstanding of the nature of people or a power trip.

The reason that EO works for the neuro diverse is that we read what the parents have told us, talk to the parents and just accept the child as is and help the other kids to do the same. We have space and allow the children to choose how to spend their time.

Schools run on a deficit model – for example: structured literacy for all is one, the cure to make all kids learn to read from 5. Early intervention is to fit into the current model. If we were to choose to let children choose for themselves when to read and focus on oral language, there would be a lot fewer children needing intervention, and we could focus on using the different strengths that kids have within the group. We should be able to let children teach each other to read… This is what happened when literacy started to be more widespread – it was a matter of equalising the power from the control of the elites – church and government. Whereas now the power is going the other way – the powerful inforce reading.

Are some teachers drawn to teaching due to power?

I saw that a kid who attempted to bully me – called me names to my non responce – has become a teacher. Does he remember the event in the same way as me? Does he remember it at all?