A Swedish girl who made a speech at the U.N. yesterday has been diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. If this was my kid, I would be really proud of her. (It seems her parents are proud of her.) But the system is not. Why? Because she has “I won’t sit down, shut up, and do what I am told” syndrome. I will refer to this as WSDSU syndrome.)
When you exhibit any signs of WSDSU you are branded as ADHD or some other nonsense label that permits people to drug you. I have been concerned by these labels lately because I have an “autistic” grandson who should have been diagnosed with RAS (really annoying syndrome) but is being drugged instead. He won’t do what he is told, so special education and drugs for him please.
My company has been working on teaching cybersecurity lately. When you work with cybersecurity people you can’t help but notice how weird they all are. When you ask them about there childhood, you find that were all diagnosed as autistic, ADHD, dyslexic and who knows what other nonsense and sent to special education.
Special education has one purpose: to get all the WDSU kids out of the regular classes so they won’t annoy the teacher and all the other kids who all have WPATA syndrome (will pay attention to anything syndrome.)
My contempt for all this nonsense was reinforced the other day my someone I have been hanging out with lately in Montreal. I asked him to write down one story he told me the other day. He put it in a blogpost about 10 minutes after I asked him to write the story down. You can find what he wrote here:
He told me that he failed kindergarten. Why? Because he
could not tie his shoe laces. He also could remember his phone number. He also could not count up to 10.
So he was put in a class for students with learning disabilities. He never learned the multiplication tables in school. He said he had a difficult relationship with teachers because he wouldn’t do what they wanted.
Despite all the terrible things he managed to get a PhD in computer science and is now a full professor.
You can succeed if you have WSDSU. My grandson will be just fine. On the other hand, having WPATA might well harm you because you will believe anyone in authority who says anything.
Perhaps it is time to stop telling every kid how to act. I realize that 30 kids in a classroom who are doing whatever they want to do would be difficult for teachers to manage. The obvious conclusion in the era of the internet would be to eliminate classrooms. But we can’t do that because…. I forget why. (I have CRS syndrome.)
