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Re: Put In A Box

Re: Put In A Box2010-09-06T21:10:06+00:00

The Forums Forums Most X-treme! Pain Put In A Box Re: Put In A Box

#95236

Patte Rosebank
Participant
Post count: 1517

@DaynaB, you’re one more example of the damage done by an educational system built on the assembly-line model. Trying to hammer everyone into the same round holes will cause serious damage to any square pegs unlucky enough to get dumped in there. We think differently. We learn differently. And, boy, do we feel differently. But nobody in charge has the time or resources to find out what we really need, and give it to us. Or even to protect us from harm at the hands and tongues of all those evil round pegs.

When I was in Grade 2, if a kid cried in class, our teacher would send the kid out into the hall. I now see that it was so the kid could pull him/herself together. But, since she never explained that, and since she also sent kids out into the hall as punishment, it always seemed like the kid was being punished for crying. Which is a great way to teach kids to bottle up their emotions—or else. Whether deliberate or not, her actions seemed heartless. And we respond more to how things *seem* than to how they actually *are*.

It sounds like your teacher, in separating you from the rest of the class, made you feel like you were being punished. Like you’d been put in a pillory, where everyone could see you, and know that you were bad. Not just that you’d *done* something bad, but that you *were* bad, unworthy of mixing with the other kids. If she’d only taken the time to talk to you and your classmates, and explain how this was to help you, not punish you, she would have spared you so much unhappiness.

She might even have discovered it was actually harder for you to concentrate back there, so she should have moved you up to the front of the class instead. That way, you wouldn’t have been able to see all those other kids, so you wouldn’t have been so distracted by them. You might not have even needed the cardboard screen. Looking across rows of people is a huge distraction. Now I know why I always sat at the very front of the classroom.

If only she’d taken the time…

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