Learning for All

My mind is more intact than most people realize. I am actually a pretty smart guy. Really smart, actually! But mainstream education didn’t help me. As a matter of fact, it probably hurt me more than anything. All of the efforts in my early childhood were well-meaning, but I could always sense that the goal was to change me. And that there was something wrong with me. That doesn’t exactly make a small kid feel good.

I am no longer a small kid. I am a large one, a teenager. And I can at last communicate. And though I don’t yet know what I want to do in my life, I for sure want to keep learning. I want to fill my mind with knowledge and deep thoughts and ideas! I want to stimulate my brilliant mind. And I want to be an active contributor to discussions and literature and the disability community with my own ideas.

How can I get there from here? I ask myself this often. And I think that the answer is a beautiful broad mountain pass. By that I mean that it is not a narrow set of options that everyone must follow. It is a range of choices that can be shaped for each individual’s needs. In an ideal world, the education system would incorporate such adaptable approaches. And there would be more resources to support it. But this doesn’t mean that individuals can’t try to forge their own paths. It takes money and time and energy, not available to everyone. But for those of us who have these privileges, we don’t need to be limited to societal pressure about education.

All I want to achieve in my life does not require degrees or test scores. But it does require me to learn. And I want to be part of a movement that show that learning is an adaptable process that should serve us. It doesn’t have to traumatize those that are not neurotypical.