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School Years--When It All Started Going Wrong

Third grade marked a turning point in my life. Although I had had some difficulties in school prior to third grade, it was in third grade that my life took a dramatic turn for the worst.

Even from infancy there were signs that marked me as being somewhat different. Most babies are bubbly and smiling. Instead, my baby pictures show me as somber and puzzled, like I was trying to make sense of things and didn't know how.

When I entered school I had no idea that I was different from other children. How could I? I had no other frame of reference. But I soon learned that I was--and that the difference was not good.

Kindergarten, first and second grades were not too bad for me. I had a teacher for first and second grade that I really liked. I still think of her fondly. If all my teachers had been like Mrs. Fitzgerald, I think my life would have turned out much differently. But my third grade teacher was a person who should have never have been allowed to continue teaching. I do not know how many lives she ruined, but I am sure they were many.

It was no secret that Mrs. Wickers (and this is her real name) was a cruel, sadistic teacher. Every year she would select a victim and then encourage the rest of the class to pick on him or her. Worse yet, if you were a younger sibling, you also were targeted the following year. There was talk that she had driven one of the boys who lived on my street to the state hospital. Yet nothing was ever done that I know of. I was the first in my family to face Mrs. Wicker's wrath. It was not long before I was having almost daily meltdowns in her class.

So began the trips to the doctors, to the psychiatrists, to the counselors at Child Guidance. Nobody said "autism" or "Aspergers"; instead they said "emotionally disturbed", "ADHD" and "perceptually disordered." My classmates had other names. You probably know them all. They put me on Ritalin and, when that didn't work, phenobarbital. The phenobarbital made my meltdowns even worse. It took them months to figure out the connection, and by then I was pretty close to being sent to the state hospital myself.

This is how they handled children like me back then. The summer between third and fourth grade I was sent to a special summer school session that was held in a school for the retarded. Of course this was something I had to keep secret, because if word got out that I ever attended this school then I could forget about ever being accepted. I did not understand why I was being sent there or what they wanted from me. I remember having to play games for rewards. But the problem was, I was only interested in one or two of the toys they offered as rewards. I didn't want the others and I didn't see the point of making me do something I didn't want for something I didn't want. But I soon learned that what I wanted was totally irrelevant.

The first day of "class" I was walking with my teacher past a row of cubicle-like boxes. I asked, "What are those?" Instead of explaining that they were time-out boxes, she said, "You'll find out." And I did--that afternoon. I committed some infraction and found myself locked in one, without even understanding why. You see, it was not necessary to explain things to us "special education" kids. Even now, I have difficulty working in an enclosed cubicle. But, again, it is not something that I can tell people about; when I have, their reaction is disbelief, because this is not something they've ever experienced or heard of. The lesson I learned that summer was "do what you are told without complainng or else something bad will happen to you." So I've learned to endure. At least one side of my cubicle is open so it doesn't feel so confining.

In fourth grade I was sent to special education classes in a school on the other side of town. I still didn't understand quite what was expected of me, and I was struggling with the effects of the drugs they were giving me. But I must have done something right or more likely they had all given up on me, because I was back in the regular classroom the next year.

And that was it. No "learning support", whatever that is. No nothing. When I needed help, when I could have used some help, there was nobody around. It was you are on your own kid, sink or swim and we don't give a damn what you do.

It scares me the way the schools are pushing behavior control drugs on "problem" students when we know very little about the long-term effects these drugs have. I don't know if the epilepsy I developed as an adult had something to do with what I was taking. I don't know if there are any "time bombs" in my body. The irony is that I now work in preclinical pharmaceutical research so I am very much aware that there may be consequences down the road that we don't know about. Yet there have been few long-term studies of these drugs. And illegal drugs especially scare the s**** out of me. The mind is precious. Freedom is precious. Don't throw it away.

Comments

I had some similar educational experiences, but nothing that drastic. I had good and bad years on and off, but I did get dumped after 5 years of going to a learning disability math class into an gifted class of pre-algebra, at the end of eighth grade. I would have failed except the teacher quit and we had an endless string of substitutes.
 

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