Neurodivergent Education: Assimilation or Alienation
Our education system doesn’t work for SO many people. Here’s why, and what to do about it. By Rye Donaldson
Introduction
A cramped room packed with clusters of desks, bright flickering LED lights embedded in the ceiling, walls covered in a mayhem of shapes and colors. A slightly-too-loud voice droning on, a pair of kids giggling somewhere to the left. The rapping of a table-mate’s fingers on synthetic wood, barely out of sync with the constant ticking of the clock above your head. Only an hour more. Then 50 minutes, then 45… it’s never going to end. Your sock is bunching in the wrong place, the tag of your t-shirt rubbing your neck. You can’t move, you can’t speak, you’re stuck. There is so much unbearable noise, filling your brain like TV static. In conventional classrooms, neurodivergent students are commonly seen as a problem. Maybe they act in ways teachers don’t understand, or are unable to meet expectations and comply with rules. People think it’s a behavior issue—that they’re being difficult on purpose. The students are told to ‘fix’ themselves, that they’re distracting, disruptive, lazy, or disrespectful. What those people are not seeing are the real reasons behind these behaviors. As Efsun Alper Sweet, a drama teacher and mom of neurodivergent kids, put it, “what can be seen as a disruptive behavior might be a stim for someone to be able to soothe themselves, to actually regulate their nervous system.” It’s not just a misunderstanding on teachers’ parts, though. The reason these behaviors are considered a problem in the first place has to do with the education system itself. School is meant to be a space for learning, and yet it expects a vast variety of neurodiverse people to learn at the same rate and in the same way. The education system was
built by and for neurotypical people, and neurodivergent students are forced to put in so much extra unnecessary effort just to stay afloat. When they are unable to meet these ridiculous standards, they are unfairly blamed for it. Behind shiny diversity statements and supposed devotion to teaching, the modern education system’s true oppressive and assimilative nature is revealed. This system needs to change, and fast, for this pressure to conform throughout childhood is detrimental to neurodivergent students, and by extension, the equality of our society as a whole.
History of the Education System
Before discussing the specific challenges neurodivergent people face in the education system, it’s important to look more generally at the creation and history of mass education in America. There is a deep-rooted structure in schools that forces assimilation towards the dominant culture, or that of the white, heterosexual, able-bodied and minded, middle and upper class men. In “Neurodiversity and the Deep Structure of Schools”, Peter Smagorinsky writes, “normate policies established through their power have governed who is considered acceptable in the school setting, and who is deemed disordered.” This meant that anyone who did not change to fit that dominant culture would be looked down upon—including neurodivergent students. This was because in the US, schools began as a way to take a country of diverse people from different cultures and backgrounds and mold them into one national culture. The general mass education system, created around the mid 1800s, followed the belief that “the most urgent task of a rap