For thousands of years academe has been understood as a bastion of reason, the place in which one’s rational mind is one’s instrument. But what does that mean for those of us with atypical (some would say “impaired” or “ill”) minds who work, learn, and teach in this location?

Ableism contributes to the construction of a rigid, elitist, hierarchical and inhumane academic system.

– Margaret Price, Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life

We currently live in a society in which one single disability can be linked to any other disability in a negative way. But could we live in a society in which the accessibility we create for one person can also lead us to broaden and expand accessibility for all?

– Jay Dolmage, Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

For autistic^[1] students, whose sensory sensitivities, communication styles, and learning requirements differ from those of their neurotypical peers, the mainstream classroom can be an overwhelming environment. Many educators often lack the awareness, sensitivity or training required to identify and support autistic students effectively. Misinterpretations of autistic traits frequently lead to these students being unfairly labelled as “problematic,” leading to feelings of isolation, anxiety, and distress. The pressure to conform and perform according to rigid academic standards can take a toll on autistic students’ overall well-being. For me, the classroom was more like a battleground than a safe learning space where I constantly navigated confusing social rules and fought inner anxieties. Despite achieving good grades, I could not fit in. More than my struggle to fit in with my peers, I could not handle how my teachers treated me.

In this essay, I aim to present a few of my experiences as an autistic student who repeatedly faced trouble with teachers in school. Through this article, I would like to bring attention to the important roles that teachers play in the classroom and their tremendous potential to impact students’ well-being. By sharing my story, I hope to spark conversations about the need for more empathy and inclusion in educational settings.

“The pressure to conform and perform according to rigid academic standards can take a toll on autistic students’ overall well-being.”

Before carrying on, I would like to mention a few things: I make no claim that my experiences are representative of all autistic students in India (where I am from) or anywhere else. However, there are some broad similarities between my school experiences and those of various other autistic individuals from across the world. In this personal essay, I identify and discuss three main areas that I struggled with in school using specific examples. These were also major factors as to why I eventually left mainstream schooling and chose homeschooling instead. 

i. My sensory differences and sensitivities got me into trouble

In primary school, I loved wearing my dark blue sweater all the time. Regardless of sunshine or rainfall, I wore it over my school uniform every day. I told my parents that I felt cold without it. I told them I didn’t like my short-sleeved school uniform and that the long sweater sleeves protected me. But that was only half the truth. The real reason was the texture of the fabric. How it felt against my skin. The sweater hugged me tight and felt comfortingly rough to my touch. It was consoling to have it on me and I didn’t mind that sometimes it made me sweat. 

 Understandably, my teachers thought this was weird and called me out many times. Sometimes, I was forced to remove my sweater in class. Their orders were often served with ridicule over my odd habit. This hurt me deeply. More than my peers’ curiosity about my unusual choice of clothes, I felt attacked by teachers who often said hurtful things to me in front of the entire class. No one, including my family, knew of autism, or suspected that I was autistic. It was worse that I did not know how to process my teachers’ remarks and blamed myself. Countless times, I took their comments so personally that I tossed and turned all night in bed, worrying my teachers hated me.

                                                               

In the fourth grade, my desk was under the fan. My classroom sitting place was arranged by my homeroom teacher, who gave each student a “permanent” desk for the entire year. Every morning, all students came to class and took their places at the same desks. As if these desks were our tiny houses, we’d move in and move out of them every day until we finally bid them farewell at the end of the academic year. 

I didn’t like it under the fan because it left me overstimulated—the fan’s constant hum and whirring, the downward currents of air hitting me directly all the time left me distracted and frustrated. But it felt like such a silly thing to be so bothered about. When my father tried to speak to the teacher about changing my place, she felt affronted – misjudging that we were complaining about her instead– and used this instance against me many times. She agreed to change my place. But later on, she often snapped, “don’t go complaining to your father!” in backhanded ways at almost anything I said. I observed similar kinds of passive aggression in many teachers throughout my school years and felt forced to stay quiet and endure it.

ii. Everyday injustices bit into my flesh

One of the most damaging incidents that happened to me in school was in the sixth grade and it involved my science teacher—a heavyset bespectacled woman with frizzy, gray hair. 

Illustration by Betsy Selvam

When I was 11 years old (before I knew I was autistic), I suffered through a depressive period that left me wanting to die or disappear off the face of the earth. It was an early existential crisis that began due to my feeling severely alienated from everyone around me, such as my family and peers. I was too different, and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t find purpose or meaning in anything. Unable to find the will to go to school, I stopped for an entire semester. When I finally returned to school, I found that everything was the same, except for me. I had changed a lot internally. Externally, I had lost so much weight that I looked ill. However, everything at school was exactly the same. From the red Gulmohar trees to the dusty scent of my classroom, everything was the same, except for me.

“I had changed a lot internally. Externally, I had lost so much weight that I looked ill.”

As things got back to normal, I caught up with my studies. In science class, my science teacher asked me to attend a special ‘remedial’ class with her after school in order to catch up with everything I’d missed during my absence. Unwilling to attend this class, I turned in a letter from my parents saying I was being privately tutored at home. She seemed to take offense at my turning down her generous offer. Since then, she frequently tried to undercut me in class. 

One day, during the science period, she spotted me writing something down during class. She shouted out my name, asking me to stand up and hand over the notebook. The entire class went silent and gawked at me. Making me walk to the front of the class, she scolded me for not paying attention in class. To add insult to injury, she brought up my semester-long absence and how I’d refused to join her after-school classes. She loudly announced this to the class as if she’d offered me redemption, and by refusing it, I had gravely sinned. Then she said she’d have slapped me if I were her own child. I was forced to stand outside the classroom for the rest of the hour as punishment. 

This incident took place in the morning. I remember having no choice but to survive the rest of that day in school, pretending that I was not completely shattered by humiliation and a deep, throbbing ache in my heart. My classmates’ sympathy made me feel worse. This instance did so much damage to me that I felt choked and flogged and impaled all at once. For the rest of that academic year, I bore the embarrassment and shame of it like a scarlet letter. Even as I passed on from the sixth to seventh grade and then eighth, the sting of this episode never softened.

 I attribute not only my sensory sensitivities but also my emotional sensitivity to my autism. While these traits nurture my creativity, they also make everyday life harder. As any autistic will tell you, sensory difference is a double-edged sword. Here, I believe that this incident affected me much deeper emotionally than it may have affected another student without my autistic sensitivities. It is also true that another autistic student may have reacted differently under the same circumstances. But, it had a devastating effect on me. This incident single-handedly sank me back into the depressed state from which I’d been struggling to get out of. 

 My parents often said that being unfairly told off or punished by teachers were commonplace occurrences; that most students let such things roll off their mind like water off a duck’s back. However, I was unable to do this. I was commonly accused of making mountains out of molehills. I could not let go of common injustices. They bit into my flesh and got under my skin.  

iii.  Social hierarchies flew over my head

Implicit rules about chains of command and social hierarchies were lost on me. Hierarchy blindness, in my case, was very real. It took me a long time to see that people had a predetermined ranking order regarding most things and they got upset when it was disturbed. I also saw that this extended to personal relationships, not simply established societal systems/ institutions. So, in the classroom, my role as a student was to remain submissive to my teacher; the cultural norm was to take anything the teacher said with silent respect, never to argue or disagree. However, I didn’t understand why I had to quietly tolerate my teacher’s verbal and physical harassment of me, merely because she was my teacher. 

For instance, in the eighth grade I was hit and reprimanded for using a pencil instead of a pen in my worksheets. The dressing down that I received was out of proportion for such a minor infraction. I didn’t know that I necessarily had to use a pen in class. It was ridiculous and painfully anxiety-inducing for me to witness the teacher fly into a rage as she accused me of disrespecting her and flouting rules in class. Not backing down – and still haunted by the punishment I’d endured in the 6th grade – I pressed on, arguing that this was never a hard and fast rule. Other students in class were taken aback by my behaviour. How could I argue with a teacher like that? It was seen and held as a mark of disrespect. Similar incidents left me disheartened and exhausted to the point that I cried almost every day at having to keep returning to school.

As a result, the classroom climate felt oppressive to me. Although I was friendly with my peers and even found some close friends, the politics of adolescent friendship and group dynamics quickly wore me down. I did not feel any sense of belonging in school. All of this pushed me further toward homeschooling as a better alternative for myself. 

Neurodiversity in the Front Row

Throughout my schooling, my autistic differences were grossly misunderstood as deliberate rudeness or a lack of effort by educators. Unfortunately, my negative experiences with school and teacher interactions overshadow any positive school experiences I had. This is why I think it is important to talk about school. In sharing my experiences, I would like to highlight the need for educators and educational settings to embrace neurodiversity. This is a call to action, a call to educators to lead with empathy.

“This is a call to action, a call to educators to lead with empathy.”

Thomas Armstrong, in his book Neurodiversity in the Classroom, suggests that when educators integrate the concept of neurodiversity and positive niche construction in the classroom, students are more likely to succeed and thrive. This strength-based approach shifts focus from forcing conformity to promoting inclusivity. Neurodiversity urges an acceptance of neurological diversity as natural variations similar to biodiversity or cultural diversity in human beings. Positive niche construction is a way to create supportive environments attuned to the needs and strengths of students. Taking inspiration from biology and ecology, this approach attempts to adapt the environment to the student, “Rather than putting kids into separate disability categories and using outmoded tools and language to work with them…” (Armstrong 11). A few components of positive niche construction include strength awareness, environmental modification and enhanced human resources, among others. Through such practical methods of adapting learning conditions to suit neurodiverse students, we can build less restrictive, positive niches to cultivate students’ strengths. 

Young people deserve safe learning spaces where they can discover their real potential and grow up to reach it. If that sounds too idealistic, then perhaps, simply a safe place where they can learn about the world. A place they may look forward to rather than fear. I believe that the responsibility for creating such places lies largely with educators. 

References

Armstrong, Thomas. Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs Succeed in School and Life. ASCD, 2012. 

Dolmage, Jay. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. University of Michigan Press, Project Muse, 2017. 

Horgan, Finbar, et al. “A systematic review of the experiences of autistic young people enrolled in mainstream second-level (post-primary) schools.” Autism, vol. 27, no. 2, 25 June 2022, pp. 526–538, https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221105089. 

Nicole Baumer, MD, and MD Julia Frueh. “What Is Neurodiversity?” Harvard Health, 23 Nov. 2021, http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-neurodiversity-202111232645. 

Pesonen, Henri V., et al. “A socio-political approach on autistic students’ sense of belonging in Higher Education.” Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 28, no. 4, Dec. 2020, pp. 739–757, https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1852205.

Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2014. 

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^[1] This piece uses identity-first language (e.g. autistic person) instead of person-first language (e.g. person with autism)