Allison Howard – Walking heart

Chasing pippies series  – The car battery, part 2

You know a lot of the time I often wonder…. No, worry, about how I look to other people. The worst of it comes during the week dealing with drop off at my child’s school. Mostly because we are always running late and 80 percent of the time I am dragging my reluctant child to the class room door in tears or recoiling in fear. Whilst all the other mums are standing around, child free trying to organize where they are going for their morning coffee. 

Look, I am not horrible, I do sympathize with her, as I was not pro-school during my childhood either. But it is a part of life, I had to go, and so does she. This may seem horrible, but I cannot home school, for lots of reasons but mainly because, if the only thing I took away from COVID lock down and remote learning was, that there is absolutely no way I can teach anything scholastic to my child at all. Why? Well in short because I do not know how to. 

Let me elaborate, the only reason why I am writing to you now is that for some reason I enjoy reading and writing. As a child I would escape daily into whatever book I was reading. Every word, tale, story and adventure was so incredibly exciting I couldn’t pull myself away. Because I loved to read words, it was only natural that I became fascinated with writing them. I love crafting my words together, it is something that brings me control and safety in my mind, and in a strange way I find it meditative. I do this despite my incredibly bad spelling and atrocious grammar. Look, I understand there are rules to this thing I love to do, but I could not tell you a single one. And as I am being honest, I have to really think and struggle to understand the difference between a noun or a verb, and lets not even go to math’s, I still have no idea what the a percentage really is.

So yes I am not equipped to teach my daughter anything concerning school. I can teach and demonstrate gardening, baking, sewing and art, not a worry; with this I would be able to produce one of the most accomplished young ladies society has ever seen, for a Jane Austen novel that is. But unfortunately, we are not in the early 18th century are we? 

So, how did I end up like this? Well, I just wasn’t taught. Now, I could get into the nitty gritty and say I didn’t listen, I was disruptive, I daydreamed probably 95 percent of the time, but really, I just wasn’t taught. Basically, I was the child that was too hard to manage; and as I grew, my residency in the too hard basket became a permanent one, even to the point of me believing that this was my fault, and all through my life I have often wondered why I was like this.

Now, as I am older and investigating my own child’s behavior towards school, learning and exploring what is behind it all. I have come to the conclusion, that I just simply was not taught. You see, my behavior was indeed disruptive in the classroom and if I wasn’t joking around, I retreated into my own head so much that I actually sat through a complete fire drill and didn’t even notice. Yes that really happened, I was left in the library whilst everyone else had their head counted, not one teacher came looking for me, and as the class all piled back into the building a friend informed me of what I missed out on. At the time it was funny but lately I have been thinking that it actually wasn’t, and an interesting foretelling of my educational future.

My behavior in class was a clear indicator that I didn’t know what was going on. Any teacher worth their salt today would understand that I was struggling and my acting out was because of this. Now my parents, knew there was a problem with their daughter, but also received the same treatment that I have had with my own child’s school, the only difference is that I now know what is affecting my child. Back then my poor parents had to accept the teachers uninformed personal opinion, and there was nothing else they could do but try and figure out what was going on by themselves, and attempt to rectify this on their own. This was one of the many reasons why I ended up in boarding school, my poor parents thinking I would get a better chance at a private school.

You see, unfortunately, back then, there was absolutely no, or at least minimal, community knowledge of dyslexia or dyscalculia let alone ADHD or Autism for girls. The concept of masking and hiding this disability was just not around, or at least unheard of in the little country school I was attending. And I truly believe my parents meant well, they tried their best with the limited information they had. 

However, it wasn’t all bad, there was a glimmer of hope for me as I entered high school, an American School teacher on exchange detected there may be an issue with my capacity to learn and encouraged my parents to investigate. So off we went for a day of testing which came up void of any “condition” just a deficiency in my short-term memory, that’s all, and I was given an extra 30 minutes for tests or assessments and sent on my way. No suggestion of different learning approaches or why I might be having trouble retaining the information. Basically, I just had to concentrate better, which would have been great if I knew how to do that. 

Another hint of my non neuro typical style was that as I entered the senior part of high school, we were all given an aptitude test which would then supply us with what would be the best career pathway for us after we leave school, i.e. teacher, tradesperson, lawyer, Doctor etc. Everyone was so excited to get their results back, even me, you see, at that point I really wanted to be a marine biologist, so as I was handed back the test face down, I prayed with all my heart and butterflies in my tummy, that I would flip the page over and get scientist, and as I turned the page, there it was, nothing, just the red words typed “could not be quantified”.

The tests result came back with no career path. At first, I was shocked but then I made a joke about it all, “Wow, I can even fail the test about my future, that’s a new one ha. ha. ha. ha. ” Even though I laughed with the rest of the class about my results this did unnerve me. What a horrible thing to have happen, and with this I was squashed right into the bottom of the too hard basket. All perceived education opportunities evaporated before me. During the subject selection process, I decided to ignore the test results and requested that I do science, with this I was dragged into the principal’s office and told that “it was just not in my best interests” to do this, as I would fail. So instead, I requested to do the arts program of which I was refused stating that I could not draw (Yes this is true). My last attempt before I gave up was that I really wanted to do philosophy, and again I was refused as there were not enough students interested to run the class. No one ever asked the question, how can we support you in this? 

So, what did I do during my final years? Well, not much really. I had the bare minimum to see me through year 12 and pass which was great for government statistics and the schools KPI’s, but not really great for me. At the time it was fantastic all my friends we jealous of the freedoms I enjoyed, as 2 days out of the week I didn’t have any classes in the afternoon, I had free “study” time in the library, no teachers and only half interested librarians to watch over me. So, basically I was able to do anything; I was supposed to do homework and study (LOL), but in reality all I did was read what I wanted, wrote in my diary, and eventually boredom took over so I just snuck out and went shopping, met up with the Melbourne High school boys, took up smoking in the botanical gardens and ate at Hungry Jacks. I was getting an education just not an academic one if you catch my drift.  

So, there I was at the end of my school journey with no future career and barely anyone interested in me, the upside to this was that I could do whatever I wanted. And I did just that, with absolutely no guidance what so ever thanks to the generic test, boarding school, and no parental/adult supervision I got up to so much mischief, that today, it curls my hair to think of my child doing the same as me. 

And this is why I am so animated about getting my daughter the right education and obtaining the pathway she wants and deserves. You see the problem with the education system I faced and what my daughter deals with today, is that it is too old and outdated. Society has moved too far away from where it used to be, to still retain its relevance. Life and technology has moved too fast for the out dated education system that we have today and the teachers know it. I feel that this is why I am getting so much resistance from my daughter’s school, as they know the architecture of the old system is under threat and they are scared. Because for the first time in their whole lives these teachers have no idea what is going on. And with this I will be generous and welcome them to my side of life. 

You see the problem with me and my daughter is that we just don’t fit into the “cookie cutter” that the current education system has, and right now the cookie cutter is broken. And as I fight to get my daughter the help she so desperately needs, without squashing her into the too hard basket I have lately started to wonder, what if I wasn’t molded? What if I wasn’t told? What if I wasn’t labeled? What would have happened if someone just saw me and encouraged me grow? But it is too late for me now, what’s done is done, and even though school was tortuous and the teachers horrible, I did have fun, and I did learn a few things, it just had nothing to do with school. Maybe that is what the universe had in stall for me, I don’t know. You see, If I was as obedient as a good school girl should’ve been, paid attention and studied properly, I might be somewhere locked in an office pod, dreading the up and coming 11:30 progress meeting, but instead I am here sitting writing to you, beneath a canopy of beautiful gum trees under a golden autumn sky watching my puppies sunbake on soft green grass. In a lot of ways I feel I am the lucky one.   

As I ponder my journey, I feel (hope) that we are on a precipice of a new way to learning, and I sympathize with the teachers entrenched in the old ways. Not knowing or understanding can be a scary thing. So as a person who is used to this feeling, the only advice I have is, don’t be worried, it is not as scary as you think, if you take up the freedom of no boundaries, it can even be liberating, because without the rules anything can happen, the scope opens up. Today if we decided not to worry about the rules and how we all look, we can abandon the old cookie cutters and let the biscuits come out on their own. I don’t care who you are, everyone knows no matter what shape a cookie comes in, if the recipe is good they will always be amazing. 

These thoughts have inspired my latest illustration titled “The Smart Cookie Factory” which really bares no explanation if you have read this article, of course 🙂  

I will leave you now with the famous lyrics by Pink Floyd – 1979 just confirming that my chain of thought is not a new one, not one little bit. 

“We don’t need no education.

We don’t need no thought control.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom