…intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering.
Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilitie
neuronormativity = a set of norms, standards, expectations and ideals that centre a particular way of functioning as the right way to function.
neuroqueer = subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from neuronormativity.
The contemporary classroom is a temple of neuronormativity. Every act in the fight for the right to learn differently can be a neuroqueering act (based on Nick Walker’s Neuroqueer Theory, 2021). We suggest fundamentally neuroqueer learning spaces that enable “freedom of embodiment” and “cognitive liberty” are needed. We need learning facilitators to be ‘space holders’ so children’s bodyminds are allowed to live and learn authentically. Our Cavendish Space is an incubator and catalyst for neuroqueer becoming.
We are asking: How can we transform and liberate the expectations of neuronormative education and create neuroqueer learning spaces?
We are suggesting: A neuroqueer transformation = unlearning, collaborating, creating
Transform and Liberate Neuronormative Education
How can we transform and liberate the expectations of neuronormative education and create neuroqueer learning spaces?
A neuroqueer transformation = unlearning, collaborating creating
Education
Unlearn
Teachers need information and knowledge to UN-LEARN their training, discover new possibilities and become neuroqueer facilitators of education
⬇
Collaborate
Trust from settings to allow educational facilitators to have autonomy of their students learning journey and follow their lead
⬇
Create
Freedom to create neuroqueer learning spaces
Family
Unlearn
Educating families on different possibilities for learning – it does not have to be the neuronormative way
⬇
Collaborate
Valuing community networks so they can foster empowerment and share stories and knowledge, validate experiences and create connections
⬇
Create
Providing resources for families to give back agency and autonomy so they are equipped to advocate
⬇
Child happy, curious, full of wonder & free to learn in an embodied way that suits their bodymind
Neuroqueer Practice in the Primordial Spaces
Caves
Space for quiet reflection, introspection and self-directed learning.
“A private space to transform learning from external knowledge to internal belief. Home of reflective construction”.
Campfires
Space for learning with a story teller.
Education facilitators need to actively subvert neuronormativity. They need to embark on their own transformative neuroqueer journey so their re-storying can inspire neuro-cosmopolitanism.
Watering Holes
Space for being with peers and social learning.
Community enables thoughts and ideas to expand rhizomatically. Embracing unique strengths expands creativity into new horizons & a collective flow full of potential.
Let’s neuroqueer learning spaces, however we can. We must to survive.
The burden of neuronormativity is weighing our children down.
We would argue, however, that it is the narrow scope and uniformity of the system, (accessible to a limited number of students only), which has actually failed them. The current system is not working, and neither is it fit for purpose or preference. In 2020 the independent journalism UK-focused charity, Each Other, reported that ‘Government statistics show that permanent exclusions have increased by 71% in the UK in the last seven years.’ Young people and their families are also voting with their feet against is. An article in The Guardian newspaper reported in November 2021 that local councils in England were reporting a ‘34% rise in elective home education.’
Embodied Education: Creating Safe Space for Learning, Facilitating and Sharing
“Mass school refusal among neurodivergent children is an early form of resistance to neuronormativity.” –Robert Chapman
Mass school refusal among neurodivergent children is an early form of resistance to neuronormativity.
Robert Chapman
The number of autistic young people who stop attending mainstream schools appears to be rising.
My research suggests these absent pupils are not rejecting learning but rejecting a setting that makes it impossible for them to learn.
We need to change the circumstances.
Walk in My Shoes – The Donaldson Trust
Take a walk in our shoes. The video below is a powerful and moving account of what we go through in school.
This powerful animation reveals that the barriers and solutions lie not within the young person, but in the school environment, its ethos and in peer and teacher relationships and attitudes.
Erin’s experiences shine a light on issues beyond her control that could be resolved by others; by listening and by showing they care. She could not have done more. Telling young autistic people struggling to attend school to be more resilient is profoundly inappropriate, if what you are really asking is for them to keep going under circumstances they should not be asked to endure. We need to change the circumstances.
Walk in My Shoes – The Donaldson Trust
The term ‘school refusal’ is linguistically weaponised; it implies intent and choice. It swiftly and subtly frames the child as having taken an active, conscious decision to reject school. This misnomer apportions blame and responsibility to the young person while simultaneously diminishing their genuine distress.
So, with refusal emphatically ruled out, what, then, should we call this? ‘Anxiety-based inability to attend school’ is nowhere near as snappy, even though this is much more accurate, and I have insisted on it being written in some of our daughter’s key documents. Much less clunky and equally accurate is ‘school-induced anxiety’, which has gained traction on social media in recent years and is the preference of most young people and their families. Importantly, ‘school-induced anxiety’ shifts the cause of the anxiety to the setting and removes the notion of fault from the young person.
Mental Health and Attendance at School
My daughter – one of thousands struggling with school-induced anxiety – has lost half of her precious childhood to experiencing acute and sustained fear on a daily basis and viewing herself as a failure.
Mental Health and Attendance at School
There is much debate around the appropriateness of the term school refusal. This gives the impression that someone has a choice around whether or not they want to go to school. For many autistic young people, it is not so simple, and might be more accurately described as school phobia. They are as able to return to school as an arachnophobe is to allow a spider to crawl over their hand.
School Phobia/Refusal — Children and Young People — Autism Understanding Scotland
Many autistic people are highly driven, and really want to succeed, but if school becomes unmanageable, it does not matter how much we want to learn, we just can’t go. This can be for many different reasons including, but not limited to:
- bullying
- lack of staff understanding
- inaccessible environment
- work being either too challenging or not challenging enough.
Often it can be a mixture of some or all of the above. Tackling the root of the problem is essential for settling an autistic young person back into school, and it is important that the young person feels listened to and valued.
If it gets to the stage that the young person is unable to manage school, there are some dos and don’ts to bear in mind:
- Do recognise that when an autistic young person tells you they are anxious it may have taken them a huge amount of courage to approach you. They have spent time thinking about the words they are going to use, the order to put them in, when is best to approach you, they will have worried about whether or not they are going to be taken seriously – coming and saying “school makes me feel anxious” is an enormous step for some young people, so it needs to be taken seriously.
- Don’t be dismissive. We know that everyone feels anxious at times, but many autistic people have high levels of anxiety nearly all the time. We often need more help with it than others.
- Do realise that high anxiety = more sensory sensitivity. The more anxious we are the more heightened our sensory processing is. This means that it may not take much for us to become overwhelmed with sensory input
- Don’t treat it like truancy. Showing us absentee reports will compound that anxiety. Telling us how much we have missed is not useful and something we already know.
- Do ask what can be done to make school more accessible. Not “what one thing can we do?”, ask about all the things that have made school difficult in the first place, and ask how you can work together to make things easier. Our Environmental Checklist and Sensory Profile may help with this.
- Don’t assume that what has helped one other autistic young person will help another. All autistic people are unique in our abilities, sensory needs, how much social contact we need, how academic we are and so on. Treat us as individuals and recognise that your autistic young people may teach you more about what it means to be autistic than you already knew.
- Do speak with the autistic young person about where they are most comfortable. Do they prefer working in the mainstream classroom, a quieter area with fewer students, the library, computer suite?
- Don’t dismiss ideas out of hand. Just because it has not been done before does not mean it can’t be done.
- Do ask how they are physically. How are their fine motor skills? Would typing be easier than writing? Do they need jotters with bigger lines to accommodate bigger writing? Do they need more time to get changed after PE? More time with exams? Do they need support from CAMHS or a counsellor?
- Do check for co-occurring conditions. Autistic people can also have dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, Ehlers-Danlos, depression, eating disorders, and many more things we can list. All of these can have an impact on whether or not we can attend school
- Do deal with bullying. Autistic people are often bullied. Being fundamentally built differently means we are often viewed as easy targets for bullies. If you have a zero tolerance approach to bullying, ensure that is acted upon. Autistic people should never have to build resilience to bullying.
- Do help us to “own” our being autistic and any accompanying quirkiness. Many autistic adults report that when they started to become more accepting of their own differences, they felt much better about themselves and boosted confidence. We cannot change the fact we are autistic, but we can learn to embrace being autistic.
- Do check that the workload is appropriately challenging, and there is enough support to complete it. Check that we understand the point of doing the work. Due to our anxiety and need to do well, we may benefit from a little one on one time with a teacher regularly to ask questions, have work checked halfway through, or just check in emotionally.
- Do ask about personal goals. What does your young person want to achieve? Where do they excel? Give time to work on personal goals. Allowing time to focus on writing, photography, football, whatever it is that the autistic young person does well will help.
- Do consider who should be at the meeting. Lots of input from different professionals could be useful, but will it make the young person less likely to contribute? Who is the young person comfortable with? Where in the room are they best to sit? Is it a good time of day?
Most importantly, be patient and don’t blame. Meetings to sort these issues out may take longer than others, you may need to have several meetings about it. Ensure the young person has access to school work and that all options are explored.
School Phobia/Refusal — Children and Young People — Autism Understanding Scotland
“I think our children have been holding a mirror up to us – the life we are asking them to live, the expectations on them, the pressures on them.” This isn’t just an argument about attendance – in part, it’s about the nature of childhood itself.
Ellie Costello of Square Peg in ‘Children are holding a mirror up to us’: why are England’s kids refusing to go to school? | Schools | The Guardian
DIY: It’s inherently part of surviving.
In the DIY tradition of punk and disabled communities, let’s hit thrift stores, buy lumber, apply some hacker ethos, and turn the compliance classroom into something psychologically safe and comfortable to a diverse team of bodyminds engaged in experiential learning.
The most important message I got from punk, was the DIY ethos. The DIY ethic. It’s inherently part of surviving.
Don Letts, SHOWstudio: Stussy – Talking Punk with Don Letts and John Ingham
For practical examples of how to create Cavendish Space on any budget:
- Creating Cavendish Space on a Budget – Stimpunks Foundation
- Classroom UX: Designing for Pluralism – Stimpunks Foundation
“So if you can’t do the expensive stuff — you can still do the effective stuff.” –Ira Socol, co-author of Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools
“Everybody always has a building project,” I finally said.
Because every school should be changing all the time. And should be changing with a purpose — moving from adult centered teaching spaces to child centered learning spaces — moving from static environments to flexible environments — moving from controlling design to inspiring design.
Every school needs a building project every year, because you don’t need contractors and bulldozers to change a school environment — you just need commitment.
So if you can’t do the expensive stuff — you can still do the effective stuff. So here are four things you can do to change your school’s space.
How Will You Redesign Your School Over The Next Six Months?
In addition to building and transforming and iterating, we need to deconstruct.
Deconstruct With Zero-Based Design
We need to deconstruct, dismantle and un-learn as part of the neuroqueering process to lift the burden of neuronormativity that is weighing our children down. We are exploring the idea of an embodied education. We are exploring how learning spaces may impact neuroqueer learning potential and radical cognitive and somatic liberty.
Inspired by Ira Socol, who suggests Zero-Based Design as part of this process which means children will be no longer be trapped in your past. It will enable us to:
“Reimagine the Learner Experience.
Reimagine the Learning Spaces.
Reimagine How Professionals Learn”. (Ira Socol)
Zero-Based Design. It means you do not keep your kids trapped in your past.
What would you do if you had to justify and defend every school rule? Every school procedure? Every school tradition? And you had to do that before every new school year?
Zero-Based School Rules. Zero-Based School Procedures. | by Ira David Socol | Medium
If you had never seen a school, never heard of a school, never known of formal education…how would you choose to get our children from age four to age 18? or age 22?
If you had never seen a school, never heard of a school, never known of formal education…how would you choose to get our children from age four to age 18? or age 22?
What would you create for that very complex task? What would your community build? What would your society want?
The heart of Zero-Based Thinking lies in that deceptively simple question. It seems simple — but indeed it is very, very difficult to remove what we know, to break the ties of experience that bind us conceptually, to the system we have inherited.
The road to Zero-Based Thinking begins with observation. But not observation limited to — or even primarily within — schools. Go outside, watch kids, watch humans. Watch them learn when you are not interfering. Watch them learn in parks and coffee shops, on playgrounds and playing fields, in museums and in stores, while riding on buses and trains, while playing with legos, while watching the tide come in. Learn to watch learning. What does a four-month-old do? a four-year-old? a 14-year-old? a 40-year-old? Keep your mind blank and observe. And then begin to imagine…
Zero-Based Thinking in Education — What? Why? and Sort of How… | by Ira David Socol | Medium