Soulmate Gem
Soulmate Gem
Photo: Anete Lusina
School is a joy for some, OK for some, and a decades-long trauma for others. Some people's school experience is as traumatic as that experienced by people with post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Read More »Some people's school experience is as traumatic as that experienced by people with post-traumatic stress disorder. Here, I create an example and at the end, offer takeaways for a wider range of people. On the first day of preschool, Mo freaked out at the thought of his mother leaving him without her. That was a frightening first half-hour after which he calmed. But his fear resurfaced when his teacher insisted it was nap time and he had to lie down—he wasn't tired. He wanted not only to stay awake but to run around. The teacher wouldn't let him. It scared Mo that he wasn't even allowed to stay awake during the day. Worse, it wasn't his parents telling him; it was some stranger. Not a good beginning for Mo's decades in the schools. Like many bright kids, Mo knew the alphabet and even read some words by the time he entered the first grade. But like most classes in recent decades, they weren't grouped by ability but mixed. Making it worse for above-average students, most teachers feel external and internal pressure to focus on the low-achievers, to close the achievement gap. So Mo had to sit through two years of lessons teaching kids to read in the way that weak students need to learn it: phonics: vowel sounds, consonant sounds, short-a, long e: diphthongs, digraphs. And when it came time to actually read, Mo, who could read The Cat in the Hat cold, was pressed into indentured servitude: He had to painstakingly help weaker students struggle through. "It. ... was ... a ... colb ... no ... cold ... and wet ... bay. "No, Johnny it's 'cold and wet day.'" Mo couldn't still for this and so started reading ahead: "No, Mo, stay with your reading partner." Such strictures frustrated Mo more and so he developed a habit of doodling and, horrors, getting out of his seat to look out the window, and okay, poke other kids. Mo's parents had waved goodbye to their bright-eyed preschooler. Now they say hello to their dulled first grader. As bad, they say hello to a child whose teacher said needs to be evaluated for hyperactivity and Ritalin. Mo's academic boredom continued off and on through elementary and middle school but perhaps more worthy of your time is to mention that, while verbally assertive, Mo was physically reticent, a dangerous combination when dealing with some pre-adolescents. So Mo was often bullied by seemingly heartless, even sadistic boys, and ostracized from the "in" girls' tight web. Capstoning all this, perhaps because Mo was slightly delayed in acquiring secondary sex characteristics—deeper voice, facial and body hair—gay boys often came on to him and when he said he wasn't gay, they insisted he was. High school brought a new set of problems. This time, the academics were sometimes too difficult and certainly seeming more irrelevant. The new Common Core curriculum, heralded by educators and politicians as raising standards for all students, was perceived by many students as filled with hard irrelevancies.
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Read More »For example, here are the first-listed objectives in the Common Core Standards for 9th-grade Algebra. Mo's most common thought throughout much of high school was, "Why do I need to know this? If I become an engineer or mathematician, I could learn that in college but I know I don't want to do anything with all this math in it."
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Read More »Alas, after a year of being able to find no better job than barista, Mo reluctantly returned to school. Unfortunately, demotivated, the supposed 1 1/2 years Mo had to finish took him three years but finally—and $165,000 in debt—Mo graduated with a major in sociology and minor in American Studies. When asked how he felt about his journey through school, Mo said, "It feels like two decades of waterboarding." Now tortured by insecurity, the imposter syndrome, and memories of the 20 years of school trauma, Mo has become the stereotype; Uber driver, video games, girls, drinking, pot. But beneath the stereotype and the standard explanations—genetics, parenting, peer pressure, irresponsibility, and fear of failure—may lie an under-discussed explanation: school-induced post-traumatic stress disorder.
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