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Thursday 17 May 2012

"Are you thick or what"?

desperately trying to write as fast as i could to beat the blackboard is an abiding memory for me - no matter how hard i tried i never managed it. I would spend my time in class lost and bewildered hoping the teacher didnt ask me a question.

Miss Foot's class was ok that was for children like me the the slow ones, the ones who couldnt keep up in class. I finally managed to conquer my tens times table there - it took such a long time to understand that 2 x 4 wasnt 6

Even Now just typing this fills me with a sense of shame that I couldn't learn like other children that I was too thick to learn. I would feel so overwhelemed and demoralised when once again my work was lost in a sea of sngry red pen.

Even now 30 years later the cringing misery when my grammar and spelling is corrected, I make a joke of it and say oh im dyxlexic while inside that voice says "are you thick or what"?
I want to say NO im not i clever I am - look at me I have something to say its important. But the memories of the taunts and the sound of that blackboard being moved before ive finshined coping fromt he board haunt me.

Im not sure what promted this post today - perhaps its the feeling that no matter how hard i try, I will always feel slightly excluded unable to articulate my thoughts and that sense of being inferior and not quite intelligent enough to belong with  the clever kids eats away and saps my confidence...

Its my issue i know that, in the 70's there wasnt a test for it you were labelled slow and if you were unlucky put in the class with the other slow kids. The kids whose work was never chosen to be displayed on the walls, the kids other kids teased and picked on...

and now all these years alter just as we thought we had turned a corner a whole other generation will be in my position - the govenrment calls it progress lets target our rescources ont he children who need it most. Kids like me the slow the learn ones, the cant spell for toffee ones will get thrown away like yesterdays news, left behind trying to copy it down before the blackboard moves.






9 comments:

  1. *hug* a dip in your self esteem today? We all have days like that. I love you and think you're clever. You can draw naughty pictures on the blackboard when the teacher turns their back :P xxx

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    1. Thank you :) yeah one of those days better out than in xx

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  2. Your post broke my heart. The education system is only just now starting to learn about how to best educate students with different learning styles and different ways of expressing their intelligence and creativity...and sometimes I wonder if it will ever fully "get it". I hope so, because no one should have to experience what you did.

    I hope you're feeling better now...

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  3. Thank you for a lovely comment - i agree and the news that this government want to remove nealy half a million children from getting help just condems them - appalling in this day and age.

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  4. Aah, and there it is... after all the work and all the study... after finding a place and achieving so much, its the voice of the little girl who never seemed as bright or as intelligent, thats what they said... And how they enjoyed that... the tears of shame and the tears of frustration and the incessant feeling that somehow what ever is achieved will never be quite good enough... All so familiar... I didn't get diagnosed as dyslexic till I was 32 despite being tested when i was ten they said i was lazy... and my folks never had much in the way of high hopes for me and my teachers told me to get a job in tescos... How wrong they where :) I think they would be surprise about all the stuff I'm up to now... Your a star, once again highlighting a very serious flaw in this governments strategy, and just let them try to fail my son, like they did me and my partner who is also dyslexic... Dxxx

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    1. Thank you Debbie, I hear you - iwasnt diagnosed til i was 39 and my son 18 - although i mentioned it when he was 6 at school it wasnt picked up. Becasue i dont fit the classic form of dyslexia they call its a specific learning disability...they failed him too. Fight hard lovely, makes me so angry that so many children will be left confused and unable when there is absolutely no need

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  5. I so agree with you. My Son has aspergers and is visually impaired. He will not qualify for the new 'all singing, all dancing' assessment and it looks as though we will loose the limited ability we have now to monitor progress and access needs. It will be left up to teachers and schools. It's just so 'hit and miss' and could so easily end up with people blaming the child and / or the teachers.

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  6. i felt this so much. My brother was slow and wasnt bothered but i felt so much that i wasnt thick but i just couldnt get maths sorted. I was tested for dyslexia but i could read and write ok if very messy. I came from a broken home so i didnt have any parental support or anywhere to do homework. My life consisted of school and looking after my dad who was mentaly ill,taking the place of a missing mother,doing all the housework,cooking and cleaning after a brother who was only interested in computers games.It wasnt until i was 14 that i broke down and confided in my maths teacher. He spent his dinner hours for 2 years teaching me basic maths to get me through my gcse's.He tried out some new tests on me that showed i was calclexic/miscalculous (discexic only with numbers). He taught me tools on how to work out problems in his own time and i craped through my exam with a pass. These days that sort of one to one tuition would not be allowed.I now watch my 3yr old and 4yr old to make sure they are not following in my footsteps. What help will they get,will they too fall through the system like my brother and half brother.The futere doesnt look bright to me.....

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    1. Oh my goodness I hear you and feel the pain leaping off the page. I totally understabd, Ive never been tested for maths but id bet money im the same as you. I can do some buts of maths link long division but fractions and percentages leave me baffled.
      What a brilliant teacher, you're right the children who dont need masses of help but enough to keep them going are so often failed. and I worry will be failed even more, storing up bigger problems later on.

      Makes me so mad. thnak you for sharing.

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Happy to have thoughtful, funny or imformative comments..abusive crap will be deleted