Having heard that I am the world’s foremost authority on genius 10-year-old girls attending high school, Blamer S recounts her disheartening tale:
Twisty,
I’m sending this in your direction, not so much because I expect you to break off photographing wonders of Austin wildlife to read my issues, but because even being in the cybervicinity of a brain that understands will help keep me from driving into Luby’s cafe- with high school boys attached to the bumper.
I have a daughter. That alone is enough to make the world of patriarchal peril keep me up at night.
Last year, as a nine year old, N started attending the local high school and found the honors classes to be a good fit. The child who never found a place to fit in started singing over her chemistry equations. I, having been to high school, nodded happily and sent her to karate class where she learned how a tiger’s claw to the groin can be a useful move.
Something happened this year, now that she’s 10. You caught that, right? 10? Because it seems that every creep in the school has decided that 10 year old girls are just their thing.
She was asked to prom. She was stalked in the library until the librarian set up a sign-in system to nab the cretin. She was asked out to the school dance, and had little balls of crumpled paper thrown at her until she opened one up and saw it was covered with hearts.
Guess what the counselors’ responses were. “But she’s sooo cute!” “She’s adorable.” “Wow! She’s a heartbreaker.”
No. She’s 10. She likes cats, dogs, and ponies. She does not like sausage talk, date talk, or rape videos posing as music videos. She has a prepubescent body and a heart to match. And she’s sure as hell not responsible for male reactions no matter how fucking “cute” she is. 10. Jailbait.
Yesterday one boy cornered her and spewed vile stuff during a day long classroom and field trip. While the teacher removed him from the classroom three times he did not stop the next time he came back in. We’re talking gross, sexual stuff, nonstop. He has Aspergers and didn’t pick up on the subtle cues like, “Get out of here until you control that mouth.” Oddly enough, I don’t feel that’s my problem. The idea that kids get to go to school in a harassment free environment doesn’t have an asterisk with fine print saying “except in cases of cute 10 year old girls and older guys with issues.”
Yet the upshot is that N is supposed to deal with having this kid around, because removing him would disrupt his education. Plus, he can’t help himself being a male with impulse control issues. And don’t forget, she’s so cute and all. She just needs to learn to deal with it because she’ll be getting that response all her life.
This morning the counselor asked if I wanted to talk about it some more, as though talking was supposed to relieve some feminist tension I have about her beauty. I want a restraining order.
Thanks for listening, or at least not letting me know if you just deleted this.
S
I’m confident that the Blametariat will have some trenchant remarks on this development. For my part, it seems an ideal moment to plug my highly unpopular views on the American public school system. Those views are:
Smash it!
Public education in this country is a hideous joke. The American public school system is nothing but male dominant culture’s incubation system. It is purposely designed to imbue its inmates, through equal measures of patriarchy-centric curricula and atavistic social structure, with chauvinist doctrine.
The result? An underclass of docile, barely-literate labor drones who will serve the interests of the megatheocorporatocracy. If the system, with its permanent ‘underfunding,’ inadequate instructors, politicized curricula, and perpetually ‘improving’ test scores, did not precisely meet the demands of the megatheocorporatocracy, it wouldn’t be compulsory, and it wouldn’t exist (note that for upper class elites, it doesn’t).
Unfortunately, it works perfectly as a delivery system for culture-of-dominance brainwashing. Products of this indoctrination emerge* with no thought but to replicate the insidious nuclear family model, which locks down their dependence on women’s unpaid domestic labor, on cheap crap from China (i.e. ‘Third World’ oppression), on foreign oil, on genetically-modified, drugged, tasteless, and crappy food, on bleak, depressing jobs, on religion, on ‘the government,’ on porn, on drugs, on ‘medicine’, on xenophobia, and, by happy coincidence, when their kids are old enough for it to be a godsend, on the public schools.
Not only that, but the bizarre conceit that imprisoning children in concentration camps for 6 or 8 hours a day somehow ’socializes’ them** can only proceed from insanity, and taxes to the utmost the obstreperal lobe’s highly unstable containment field.
The end.
Oh hell, I forgot to offer a solution. I’ve been told that if I don’t come up with happy-ending scenarios to counteract the dispiriting hopelessness of my depressing posts, I am nothing but a nattering nabob of negitavism. So here it is:
Home-school those kids!
Can’t home-school?
Overthrow patrirarchy! ¡Vive la revolución!
____________________
* If they emerge; those who don’t are sucked underground, to populate the megatheocorporatocracy’s equally lucrative criminal branch.
** See post title.
I’d be happy to have my husband homeschool my kids when somebody dies and leaves me a verrrrry large trust fund.
And who, exactly, usually gets to do the homeschooling? The same people that get to do the home care of elders, the home care of small children, etc. of course!
This is why teachers need the summer off. Between indoctrinating children to be barely literate labor drones on one hand and brainwashing them into radical socialism on the other, we’re plumb worn out.
That being said, S should strongly consider the legal route. The school administration is ignoring a clear-cut case of sexual harassment so a restraining order and at least the threat of a lawsuit would be completely appropriate.
That is obscene. 10 years old and those guys think she’s fair game.
Child molesters and perverts; just because they’re high schoolers doesn’t mean they’re not pedophiles.
S,
WHAT
THE
FUCK?!
What is WRONG with those school administrators? How can they possibly find it acceptable that your daughter is stalked into the library? So much so that it became apparent enough that the librarian took action? Is there any way that you can press charges, either within the school system or outside of it?
How can ANY teacher or counselor consider sexually approaching a 10 year old acceptable behavior? I don’t give a rat’s ass about Asperger’s. That boy should be suspended.
Twisty, unfortunately home schooling doesn’t take in the need for one or two paychecks within the home. We have no idea if S is a single mom or not.
Good luck, S.
As the mother of a 10-year-old, I know what I would do:
Have my attorney set up an in-person meeting that includes:
- the school counselor
- the principal
- the school board member who’s responsible for the geographical area where I live
- the school board president
- the teacher
And I would invite my attorney to explain to them the dreadful expense and publicity that a sexual harassment suit would cause the school.
If that doesn’t work, I would quietly contact a reporter at the local newspaper and/or TV station and explain to them what an interesting story idea this is, with broader implications than just my own child’s issues.
But quietly just expect my child to deal with it? Oh hell no. NO 10-year-old is emotionally or socially equipped to deal with this. I know grown women who would have difficulty in dealing with this situation. There’s no reason the child should have to develop a dislike of school, ulcers, or other signs of stress just because the school system fails to provide a safe, neutral learning environment. It’s inexcusable to let the disruptive elements run the school.
Where does this child live? This definitely falls into the “shit I would not put up with” category.
Interesting how a local school enrolled a boy with Aspbergers. They caught the boy with a knife, and didn’t tell his parents. The boy had a history of violent outbursts, and was highly obsessed wih guns and knives and murder methods.
Earlier this year, he went into a restroom and murdered the first person who came in with a huge knife.
So tell me about his right to an education again? Why does that right have to include unchallenged harassment of other students?
He has a right to an education that should be guiding him toward being able to function in society. That may or may not mean a mainstream classroom. My husband has a kid in his classes that really cannot handle the environment but is still there and NOT learning what he needs to learn academically or socially because of the level of denial among the parents and administration. His presence doesn’t even serve HIS needs, yet he is free to destroy the learning environment without sanction because his particular brain damage problems mean he is not capable of understanding the “I do something stupid and get punished” equation.
I think restraining order or lawyer meeting is the best route - there is precident for harm by obsessed kids, and it will certainly get the school’s attention. Having a lawyer contact the school about a restraining order might have a similar effect.
This girl is a child and the boys who are stalking her are just plain sick. That this very obvious fact is not recognized by the school counselors is just more evidence (as if we needed it) that society is a very dank, rotten environment for children to be raised in — or for anyone to live in, plain and simple.
Sick, sick, sick. I am so tired of children not being allowed time to be children before they’re expected to become dutiful slaves of the pornocracy. Cats and ponies are much more healthy interests.
I second the idea of homeschooling, but I’m all too painfully aware of how much time and energy that such a solution would require on the mother’s part. It just may not be possible, althoug if you look around online, there are groups that pool their resources to homeschool. Then you have to worry if their methods agree with what you want for your child, of course, but at least the molestation problem is lessened. (I won’t say vanishes, because it never does for women.)
And Twisty is absolutely right about school. Why anyone thinks that setting children into dark, nasty-smelling schoolrooms and sitting them in rows while a boring grown-up drone on about things that do not interest them is an effective way of teaching eludes me. There are some good teachers out there; I’ve had a few in my time. But they were always the ones who broke the rules, threw out the books, and addressed the students as if they were people and not puppets. Education in this country is a sham. I’d rather we go back to some sort of system of apprenticeship — without the built-in patriarchal heirarchy, of course. That way children could actually try things out and learn practical skills, maybe even learn to reason out problems and think logically. I suppose that’ll have to wait until after the revolution.
There are men who don’t have “asperger’s”?
Dear Blamer S:
I agree with Carolyn above, though I have another option for your attorney, if you wanted to pursue it. The local school district has some rather stingent requirements about the types of services they are required to provide your child: protection from sexual harrassment, particularly at her age, is certainly one of them, as are educational opportunities commensurate with her abilities (thus her advanced placement, I imagine).
If they are unable to provide appropriate services for her, you can obtain those services privately and pursue funding for them from the local district. It will probably require a court hearing, but my understanding is there are attorneys who actually specialize in this type of case. Though it’s another example of monied people having a greater range of options (not everyone can afford an attorney), it is something I’ve seen people with less means succeed at as well.
Not pursuing these options in a case like this enables the school district to keep on providing the least amount of service, protection and education they can get away with. At the very least, the threat of such an action will probably result in moving the asperger’s kid to a more appropriate venue (or setting him up with a one-on-one, or something). I’d have a hard time sending my daughter back regardless.
Anyhow, this sometime lurker just thought to mention it. Good luck.
Actually homeschool can be done in a two paycheck family. Home education can be done in so many creative ways–once you get out of the public school formula you will find kids can get all their daily education in just a few hours. There is also online schools that families can use. That’s the beauty of home education–it can be molded to fit your family’s needs. It may be harder than just sending them off to someone else to educate, but then why have kids if you just hand them over to someone else to raise and educate.
And yes I do homeschool–mainly because having gone through the System–I know I could do a better job. Not to mention keeping my kids from the insanity the PS system seems to enjoy dishing out to young, impressionable minds.
However, I do belong to a nuclear family and I do not work outside the home (although I am working on opening a business that I can do from home—and no it does not involve jobs you find advertised on hand written signs or in classifieds)–so it IS easier for me to homeschool with out having to rely on child care from an outside source. I think if enough two income families got together they COULD work out situations for child care during working hours, esp. if shift work was available. In any case, I do think it’s workable if one thinks outside the box.
I’m not a parent, and I sadly sympathize to some degree with everybody involved, so I don’t really have anything useful to add to the general blamery.
However, some all-girls private schools with very high academic standards offer scholarships. S, is such a thing available for your little girl?
I believe in inclusiveness and giving everybody a chance; I do, really. But I think in your shoes, I’d be looking around for this option rather seriously.
The governments of Nunavut and some areas of Australia have complete home school curricula which isolated families have been using for years.
Whenever anyone tells me my little girl is beautiful I shudder. Because most people measure beauty by porn-worthiness rather than something higher.
I think she’s not beautiful enough to draw too much attention. I hope and pray. She’s not blonde, which is an American signifier for slut - thanks, Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe! And she seems very strong willed.
But the way things are going, I expect by the time she’s ready to go to school that gang-rape will be compulsory as gym classes, and grade school girls will be graded on their porn skills, rather than book learning.
Sniper, I trust you’re not indoctrinating anybody. Maybe we can bring it down from the inside!
This is one of the many, many reasons that I plan to homeschool my boys. I don’t want them being “socialized” in an environment where this kind of behavior is considered acceptable. They are young yet, but if you want to call preschool years homeschooling then we are doing it. On a single income. And that single income being my own as I am a single mom.
I am lucky in that I have pieced together an income from a few different sources that do not require me to pay for much childcare. I can take my kids with me to one job (as an in home CNA) I have some work-at-home writing gigs, and then I take care of a little boy too on the side. And then we don’t live on a whole lot of money. So, it is possible, though not easy to homeschool on one income. I can’t gurantee that I will be able to do this forever, but I am going to try as long as possible. Perhaps by offering my services to other families who want to homeschool but can’t. (I am a certified ex-teacher who has worked in the public schools. This being the number one experience that brought me to homeschooling. There are a lot of us ex-teachers out there doing it.)There are a variety of ways to homeschool and still have some kind of income.
There are a lot of excellent teachers out there. Well meaning and highly skilled and really trying to work miracles in a system that doesn’t support them. But I agree with Twisty, the over-all assembly line approach to education that we provide here is not about getting the best out of each child, it is about producing worker drones in cheapest way possible to tow the megatheocorporatocracy (did I get that right?) line.
As for this little 10 year old girl, I agree about getting the lawyers involved. And then the press if need be. Nothing scares the school system more than a parent who knows their rights and is willing to fight for them. Good luck.
I’m here on a mission of mercy from the folks in question, who want to let you know she found a VERY responsive counsellor who is taking this most seriously indeed. This particular incident is under control. However, not wanting to lose the opportunity of gaining all the collective wisdom of the blamers, said parties would like to redirect your brains to the following questions-
1. What is up with males that they feel entitled to view every female in their visual range as mating material, regardless of age?
2. How do they stop #1 so she can live a regular life?
3. Seeing as #2 is about as likely as Dawkins finding God, what should they do from here on out? Shall they make up a standardized form to send home to the budding pedophiles’ parents? Shall they hire body guards?
4. WTF?
Blamer S,
I have to wonder what state you are in (assuming you are in the US). My partner is a behavioral therapist that actually works with boys like you describe, and she would _never_ tolerate the dismissive attitudes of the school in this case. Even the most developmentally disabled person can learn to control and manage their own behavior. In California you can request that the boys counselor set up an IEP (Individual Education Plan - that’s what it’s called in Calif) with the school to address his behavior problems. I assume that no matter what state you live in, this boy has a counselor that is paid for by federal and state funds, therefore you can demand that the school contact the counselor and set up a plan for how they intend to manage his behavior.
BTW, Ms. Kate, disciple is effective, punishment is not, especially for people with developmental disabilities. They have to learn that their actions have consequences, but positive behavior support is the most effective way to truly change behavior.
No matter what, good luck S!
Dear Whoknows,
There is no ‘regular life’ for female persons, if by ‘regular’ you mean ‘free of male oppression’. Our position on the sexbot continuum precludes it. This is why I always suggest revolution. It is the only thing that will eliminate the sex class.
Hi S,
Throwing in some encouragement for homeschooling here.
I had to withdraw my daughter at the age of 10 from public school, and for the very same reason as what you are now experiencing.
She was being violently stalked and harrassed by male schoolmates *of her own age*. Now, this was back in the 70’s. 1978.
I was then a single mother living in poverty. At that time, homeschooling was a very marginalized phenomenon, restricted to a few hippies and “eggheads”- academic types. It was also illegal except under very particular circumstances. (I’m in Canada).
Since then, I have observed that homeschooling in the USA has become massively popular with the Xtian Right because of what they denounce as the sinfulness and liberal bias of the public school system. This leads me to seriously imagine that you will not face the obstacles that I did in implememnting homescooling. In fact, there are vast networks of support and interaction in the realm of homeschooling.
Our daughters have a right to their childhoods, and an unmolested journey through puberty. At 15, my daughter opted to re-join the mainstream world, and spent the next 10 years discovering to her sorrow what that world was all about.
The time that she was able to spend in peace, privacy and safety in her own home during the years from ages 10 to 15 have served as a bedrock upon which she has been able to build her life, and to survive many harrowing experiences along the way. (She is a bit of an adventurer). She often thanks me now for having done that for her.
Don’t think that she is home-free when she gets to University. That’s where my daughter encountered the worst of her experiences.
I bless you both.
Sniper, I trust you’re not indoctrinating anybody. Maybe we can bring it down from the inside!
I’m pretty basic with the reading and writing and whatnot, but I try to devote as much time as possible to the Godless feminazislamosociohomosexual agenda.
I was finally brave enough to say out loud, to anyone that would listen, that the American public school system is highly overrated and based on an archaic industrial model created only to make more efficient factory workers (now known as modern office drones in cubicles).
People were shocked, bothered, infuriated, and I was accused of being a bad mom. So exhilarating was THAT, that I furthered my conviction by allowing my daughter (14 at the time) to leave school. Just leave and stay home. I had to sign a form saying I was homeschooling, but I am lucky to live in a state with pretty lax homeschooling criteria (NM — they’re just happy if the kid doesn’t end up in the juvie system).
I don’t homeschool; I work full time. She is free to do whatever she feels like doing, go to the library, rent videos, read, ride the bus from one end of town to the other. She is home by 6pm every night and as a family we honestly enjoy each other’s company, she is media savvy and has not been mentally sexualized like other girls her age (she is now nearing 16). She is still very much a goofy funny kid that gives me glimpses of mature adulthood more and more these days. And although the powers that be do not allow her to take the REAL GED test until she is 16 years old, she took a couple of preliminaries last year and got above 90% in both.
Fuck the school system. I work in academia and the patriarchy is alive and breeding here, believe me.
At 10, this little girl is still young enough to buy into the messages that this is something SHE causes, especially if those are the messages she’s getting all day at school. Kids believe that they make things happen in ways that adults realize aren’t actually possible, so adults don’t always notice a child taking on personal responsibility for a situation she finds scary or threatening. That’s why child victims of trauma are given constant messages that nothing they did caused the traumatic event and that nothing they might have done could have stopped it.
She needs to be encouraged to externalize all of this; to realize (1) that she’s being forced to deal with things that are other people’s garbage, and that (2) that is an unacceptable thing people to do, and that (3) adults will address the problems because (4)a 10 year old can’t be expected fix them on her own and “getting used to it” is not an option (see #2).
If there’s a college or university near S, she may be able to enroll her daughter as a special student. As a homeschooling parent, I’ve found that even community college is a much less dangerous learning environment than high school for girls of any age.
Happy to hear you sing it for homeschooling, Twisty! After our older daughter’s first day at kindergarten, which occasioned her tragic overnight conversion from adventurer to minx, her dad and I concluded exactly what you’re saying: “The American public school system is nothing but male dominant culture’s incubation system.”
Maybe I’m an elitist pig, but as time went on, we were shocked to realize that we were worried not just about the warehousing, the brain-numbing curriculum and the exhausted guards — er, teachers — but the smallest victims: the kids. Most of ‘em were so soaked in toxic gender-typing, religiosity and consumer-crap worship that they truly constituted that most stereotyped parental terror: The BAD INFLUENCE! We winced to think of our two tender sprouts having to slog through all that toxic sludge quite so early on.
So of course after happily homeschooling through elementary school, the older girl suddenly got sick of being “weird” and chose to go to junior high and high school — to our chagrin. But those early years did help, I think. At 22 she works as outreach and education coordinator for a pioneering feminist women’s health clinic (Plug: Check out Women’s Health Specialists for an inspiring story of 30 years of radical feminism in action, speculums and all).
And every kid’s different: Our younger daughter homeschooled all the way through and loved it, including her fights with the fundie kids.
But class counts plenty: In our poor, rural small town, 95% of the homeschooling parents (they are legion here in Jesusland) are fundie Christians with a huge social network as backup; the rest are wives of the few professionals in town.
Being neither, Ed and I were lucky to cobble together some part-time and at-home jobs to stay afloat over the years, but most people aren’t so lucky. In America today, homeschooling is largely the domain of the religious fanatic and the wealthy. I’m leery of the charter-school voucher solution because it could sap funding from inner-city schools that need it the most. It’ll take a revolution to create the social structure that enables homeschooling to be a viable alternative for every parent. For that, as for a lot else, IBTP.
This a tough one and something my wife and I have been struggling with here in Austin for the last couple of years. We’re not the only ones. We hear the same things from a lot of parents.
The public school system is definitely f’ed. I went to private school until attending UT for college and my wife went to public school in the DC area.
We can’t afford private school for our own kids (a boy and a girl), so we’ve tried out a couple of charter schools as alternatives and ended up at a public school. They’ve all got problems. We’ve considered homeschooling, but aren’t sure that we could pull it off. The jury’s still out on that one.
I did want to point out the the upper class elites avoiding the lowest common denominator public schools by going to private school gets them a better education, but doesn’t save them from the patriarchal indoctrination. I’d say it’s as bad or worse at private schools from my own experience.
This does seem to leave homeschooling as the only viable option if you want your kid to get a decent education these days and many more people seem to be turning that direction.
One thing’s for sure. If you are in the system, you have to advocate and push like hell for your kid b/c the system isn’t going to look out for them. They’re not going to protect them from the advances of mental defectives and they’re not going to go out of their way to challenge the bright kids.
As a professional in education, I’d go for the revolutionary route. It really is the only way to go about it.
In the current system (damn the patriarchy!) it is very difficult to access an educational environment that is not what Twisty so aptly describes OR to have the resources to homeschool. Of course, money always seems to be the solution for these kinds of problems. IBTP!
As for blamer S and her daughter, I say raise some hell, put a restraining order and sue the pants off the school administrators and counselors. Every time that happens, your daughter’s sense of self is being stolen- fuck the boys educational opportunities! We are talking about something so personal and fundamental as one’s humanity. All these years later, I still remember the sexual harassment I went through during my own schooling- your daughter (and any and every other woman on this planet) does not deserve to have those. In fact, all of us have the right to be protected from that.
Once again, the Twisty Law would prove useful.
I agree with Carolyn Bahm, above, who suggests legal intervention. I might also consider including the boy’s parents so that they know that they could suffer legal consequences for the actions of their child. If that doesn’t work, I would second the homeschool and girls-only school options. (Depending of course, on your financial situation and personal beliefs.)
It must be difficult, now that your daughter has found some small bit of peace and happiness, to consider moving her out of that space. I’m so sorry that you are in this situation.
Klutch, I also went through the NM PS system. I agree wholeheartedly with your solution for your daughter. I learned nothing in high school, except how to combat boredom with drinking and drugs. Anyway, if you’re near a CNM or even UNM campus, you might consider enrolling your daughter in a class or two that she’s interested in. Even a continuing ed class would be helpful if you’re interested in keeping her college-tracked. (A big assumption, I know.) That would’ve saved my life at that age, but my parents, both HS dropouts, didn’t know enough about the university system to exercise that option.
Although he wasn’t specifically talking about patriarchy, Louis Althusser was spot on some 30 years ago when he pointed out that “the Church has been replaced today in its role as dominant Ideological State Apparatus by the School. It is coupled with the Family just as the Church was once coupled with the Family.”
I’m skeptical of institutional education, but just as much I think one throws the baby out with the bathwater when they categorically reject socialized education broadly conceived. I don’t think Twisty is quite going down this alley though, as she admits: “Can’t home-school? Overthrow patrirarchy!”
I know people with Asperger’s. That is not Asperger’s. That is something else in addition to Asperger’s.
The people I know with Asperger’s are female, and they would never act like that. Meanwhile, there are lots of men without Asperger’s who act like that all the time. The kid’s particular syndrome is irrelevant.
“I did want to point out the the upper class elites avoiding the lowest common denominator public schools by going to private school gets them a better education, but doesn’t save them from the patriarchal indoctrination. I’d say it’s as bad or worse at private schools from my own experience.”
No shit. I didn’t mean to imply that prep schools are patriarchy-free. I should know; I went to one for 12 years without ever coming into contact with a single book written by a person of color. But the cafeteria food was definitely better!
I was homeschooled. Secular homeschooled. Very important distinction to make: there are many godbags who are not to be trusted with homeschooling. I heart John Taylor Gatto, too - recommend “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” as follow-up reading to this post.
Yeh sure Erin. Except it is ADULTS who are causing this child’s problems. Adults.
Having three daughters who have struggled through the patriarchy that is the public school system, I can empathize. My youngest daughter has been told by countless high school boys that they want to fuck her. Nice. We are constantly hammering home in our lesbo-centric family that this is unacceptable behavior. We have reported one boy to the high school administration who explained to him that he was not to be seen near her, and to his own mother who remarked that “he couldn’t help it if she was so pretty.” This particular 15 year old boy already has a baby by a 13 year old girl who has since dropped out of school to care for this child with whom the boy has no contact.
Here’s my assvice: take legal action against anyone and everyone who refuses to protect your child.
My (and many other peoples’) fantasy: Voluntary learning centers, where people of all ages can meet to hear lectures, work in groups, meeting with teachers & tutors…
“How can ANY teacher or counselor consider sexually approaching a 10 year old acceptable behavior? I don’t give a rat’s ass about Asperger’s. That boy should be suspended.”
Yeah, I have aspergers, I don’t sexually harass people of any age.
“Sick, sick, sick. I am so tired of children not being allowed time to be children before they’re expected to become dutiful slaves of the pornocracy. Cats and ponies are much more healthy interests.”
No-one should be a dutiful slave of the pornocracy. Can we please not use “protect teh innocence” type language? I would have liked not to be sexually repressed during childhood, stalking is an entirely different matter, what is happening to this child is stalking and objectification.
If someone had done this to me at the age of ten I would have insisted that the school get them away from me and the other children. In fact there is someone at my college now who harrasses people, they always walk up to women and talk to them when they haven’t met before and have no interest.
Remind me again - why do people bring children into this violent, miserable world?
I will admit, public schooling for me beat child labor or having my mother kill me.
I was homeschooled between the ages of 9-11 and I loved it. My mother was terrible at enforcing an education so I spent all my time reading- I lived opposite the public library. When I got to high school age my parents decided that I needed to go back to school as my mother (who was our educator) barely had a highschool education herself and didn’t think she could give us a decent standard of education. This is actually a serious consideration for some parents, especially if you have ambitions for your children to ‘have a better life’ (i.e. go to university, get a graduate job, be middle class etc).
On the Aspergers issue, my partner worked in a public school in Scotland which had a unit for children with autism (many had aspergers). The idea was that the autistic children would be mainstreamed over time and had special support in supporting this goal. It was the school’s strict policy that children could only be in mainstream classes if they did not hurt or harrass other students.
“As for this little 10 year old girl, I agree about getting the lawyers involved. And then the press if need be. Nothing scares the school system more than a parent who knows their rights and is willing to fight for them. Good luck.”
They are the child’s rights, not the parents’ surely?
“I was homeschooled. Secular homeschooled. Very important distinction to make: there are many godbags who are not to be trusted with homeschooling.”
Precisely, the difference is a deeply important one, homeschooling must never be a veil for inescapable religious indoctrination.
You’d think the rule of not hurting or harassing other pupils should apply to all pupils, not just those with Aspergers/Autism, FA.
How about reducing the size of schools? Large schools with large classes are very impersonal and alienating.
She’s still got to know that there are adults on her side (family, friends, attorneys if it comes to that). Kids are used to accepting things from adults without question. If a scared or traumatized kid doesn’t learn that there are both responsible and irresponsible adults — and she learns to distinguish between the two by learning to question authority — the world is a much more threatening place.
To be able to question authority at that age (particularly in an environment in which she is the youngest and probably the smallest and least strong), she’s got to know that there are adults who have her back. A lot of grown-ups get mad when kids don’t automatically accept what they’re told, and the anger of adults in authority can be terrifying to children.
You give the same messages to children who are raped by adults: that adult/those adults hurt you, which is wrong; there are adults who will actively work to protect you and keep you safe. The comfort for the child is in the distinction between adults/groups of adults, which takes her out of the equation of who is in charge and who is at fault. Her only other option is not to believe that any adults can really help her, at which point she’ll take on the responsibility by herself. No 10 year old can adequately care for her own safety AND her own mental health at the same time.
This reads to me like a case of “you don’t belong here” suppression harassment. I don’t think it’s about attraction as much as the fact that skipping ahead grades threatens these boys’ ideas of their own intelligence. It sounds as if the other girls in the school are only dealing with the normal level of harassment, whereas this is above and beyond what’s normally pater-approved.
This is not better, though. If anything, the fact that these boys are clearly threatened by the presence of someone who is younger, female, and clearly much smarter than they means that this is an actively dangerous situation. I wish I had advice beyond “make the school do something”, but the description of the situation makes me frightened and makes my skin crawl.
Hubby and I were both identified as gifted. We have 2 gifted boys. I hate the whole “gifted” label thing. My favorite quote is that normal is a setting on a clothes dryer. It’s difficult to rear a gifted child. Gifted girls (and women) have an especially hard time in our society.
There is nothing that the antiquated public school system hates more than accleration. School administrators grant accleration only grudingly, then blame the accelerated student for any problems, including their own omissions. It sounds like that’s going on here.
The situation is further complicated because gifted education is not federally mandated. Most states fail to require and fund gifed education. When public gifted education does exist, it is typically underfunded and underutilized. Parents are forced to fight for any accomodations. Often, acceleration is the only option.
My own parents refused to accelerate me. I was a small girl and already a year younger than all of my classmates. They realized the situation and tried to protect me. Instead, I was stuck in a working class public education system until I was 17, which I hated.
If hope that you have some local resources, If you need more resources, try:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/
You can contact me privately if Twisty would pass on my info.
Good luck!
my fave memory from my public education days was in middle school choir when the music teacher/choir director would make 6th/7th grade boys dress up like women and stuff balloons down their shirts while performing some stupid-ass song I can’t remember. It was horrific, and after telling my mom about it, she raised enough of a stink to have the performance dropped (the teacher had been doing this schtick for years). The choir director was a woman by the way, and this was the early 1990s. Looking back, it was even more fucked up than I thought it was while it was happening. Gar.
I taught art for a few years in a large urban school district, and while I am trying hard to devote my career to poor kids, i’m not sure if doing it via public education is the best route anymore. Though I know more than a few people who went to school to be teacher because they wanted to start a revoultion. we’ll see about that…
As the adoptive mother of a teen boy with multiple behavior issues I’m here to tell you that it is possible for boys like him to attend public school and be safe but it takes loud, continuous, strident advocacy on my part, with liberal amounts of threats from my lawyer. Every state has to provide every child with a free and appropriate public education (fape law) and every school has to come up with a plan. The schools don’t want to because plans are costly. My son’s school told me when he was in first grade to just keep him home - he wasn’t ready for school. I had my lawyer call a meeting and he’s been in school ever since. He has a safety plan that the school staff are required to follow and it says in his iep that staff are responsible for keeping him safe. I’ve told staff repeatedly that I consider them at fault if he hurts another child because the safety plan works great — if they follow it. As soon as they get lazy, he goes out of bounds and hurts someone (in his case, very mild - for instance, he’ll grab a kid’s arm or throw a pencil or fall down in front of someone to try to trip them — but neverthelss, not ok behavior in school or anywhere else.)
Get a lawyer on your team, call a meeting, put everything in writing. As the tax payer employer of public school personnel, you and your child have rights. And you have a responsibility to exercise those rights, imo — not ok to just let it go — stand up and make a BIG NOISE!
Too true Delphyne.
I didn’t send my boys to school, and I worked, so we never sat around the kitchen table doing workbooks or anything. We did what’s called “unschooling.” I just surrounded them with books and art supplies and musical instruments and interesting people, gave them a library card, computers, and bus fare, and said go find things you feel passionate about and learn what you need to know to do them; holler if you need help from me. Long story short, the older one graduated from UC in two years, Phi Beta Kappa with highest honors, and is now supporting his fiance while she attends grad school. The younger one opted to go to high school but dropped out, graduated from Harvard, and is now teaching self defense classes to women and doing volunteer work at a sexual assault center. Both excellent young men.
But back to ten year old girls. It’s funny because I’ve been on a kick lately, watching movies with strong smart defiant rebellious pre-teen heroines, mostly in the 9-12 year old range. Because I’ve decided I want them to be my role models, girls who’re still at an age where they are passionate about their own lives and interests because they haven’t yet been indoctrinated to believe that their worth lies solely in their ability to be desirable to males. Movies like Whale Rider, Carol’s Journey, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Antonia’s Line, and that hippie homeschooling classic (actually they all contain some degree of homeschooling), Off The Map.
So anyway I’ve been watching and watching, and the gentle Netflixians send me new recommendations every day, and I watch. And here’s the thing that just bowls me over: here are these feisty, smart, amazingly resourceful young heroines who know exactly what they want to do, but inevitably they’re forced to spend 95% of their time and energy fending off a deluge of patriarchal bullshit. Wars, rapes, imprisonment, restrictions, men who can’t treat them like human beings. Every single one of these kickass strong girl movies is really about how she has to bang her head repeatedly against the damn patriarchy in order to survive, much less do her thing. It is to despair.
Please, Blamer S, keep us posted on your daughter’s situation. She is my new hero du jour.
Thanks for that smack down of the current state of public education, Twisty. Delphyne astutely proposes a great solution–smaller classes. Of course, that requires funding and more teacher. While we’re at it, let’s pay the teachers what they’re worth.
It doesn’t matter if you propose the perfect solution, Twisty, because society (a/k/a the patriarchy) doesn’t want to fix it. We’ve got to funnel the $$$ into war mongering.
As a disclaimer, I’m a former math teacher.
Nick says:
This readsThis reads to me like a case of “you don’t belong here†suppression harassment to me like a case of “you don’t belong here†suppression harassment.
EXACTLY!!!
I have 2 minutes, being a stressed-out single mom - my son is “on the Asperger’s continuum” and I have been really troubled by the villification of Asperger’s. Asperger’s is expressed in many ways. My son has a very hard time reading people, but he’s aware of it and works very hard to figure out the appropriate responses to different situations. He’s one of the sweetest kids ever. Doing the right thing is incredibly important to him. (I explained political lobbying to him recently and he was horrified that it was legal.) He’s only just 13, but has spearheaded several fundraisers at school in the last 2 years to benefit Kiva and Heifer. He’s brilliant, and full of compassion, and is easily moved to tears by injustice. Why people are cruel to each other is mysterious and confusing to him. He’s been bullied horribly by non-Asperger’s boys.
Asperger’s does not equal asshole. I’ve known lots of total asshole men who do not have Asperger’s. Quit with the Asperger’s crap.
a great soundtrack to this discussion could be rage against the machine’s “take the power back”
the public school system, secular private schools, and religious schools ALL include mandatory patriarchal brainwashing on the curriculum, and what happened to that 10 year old girl coulda happened at any school. (although at an all-girl school, at least a girl could avoid being sexually harrassed by boys her own age)
the disgusting thing to me, in this situation, was the negligence on the part of this little girl’s public school to take any action.
oh, and to add something new, no one else has pointed out yet that home schooling, other than sometimes being economically unfeasable, is also a bad situation for children whose parents specifically want to brainwash their kids with religious doctrine.
i agree with twisty’s bottom line. the only solution is revolution!
Nick: “I don’t think it’s about attraction as much as the fact that skipping ahead grades threatens these boys’ ideas of their own intelligence. ”
By the time high school rolls around, boys have had ample time to interalize the message of the pornocracy: attraction = nail that = dominate it. There’s little distinction between aggression and sex in our culture, of which S’s kid’s situation is a case in point.
In not any particular order:
My journey through public middle and high school was the most miserable time of my life.
My mom read to me and my siblings for years, and my dad showed us math or looked things up in the encyclopedia when they came up at the dinner table. That gave me a head start; home schooling on that level is within reach.
I learned some math, chemistry, biology, latin, computer programming, and carpentry in school. That part was good.
This site helps me deconstruct what I learned about gender there and everywhere.
Beavis and Butthead are real.
“Asperger’s does not equal asshole. I’ve known lots of total asshole men who do not have Asperger’s. Quit with the Asperger’s crap.”
Hey Patti, for what it’s worth, this is an Asperger’s-friendly blog. If anyone has villified Asperger’s, I must have missed it. Is it possible that you take exception to S’s inclusion of Asperger’s as a descriptive detail about her kid’s harrasser? I give S the benefit of the doubt and trust that she alludes only to that one kid, for the purpose of illustrating the competing interests of the two special-needs parties; nowhere does she suggest that Asperger kids as a class are psychos.
None of the pyschos I have known — and I’ve known plenty — have had Asperger’s.
No argument here. I’m just pointing out what I think is expressing itself through harassment here, that the equation is running the other direction: dominate it = nail that = attraction. The impetus is domination.
Of course, I may not be telling anyone here anything that they didn’t know.
Also secular homeschooled! Up until I got to college (at 21, when I was good and ready to leave home, and grown-up enough that I had mimimal response to peer pressure).
Like Klutch, my parents had stuff to do, and essentially taught us (my sisters and I) by telling us where the library was, answering our questions and letting us generally do what we felt like doing. We didn’t have ‘class time,’ ever. We had some chores, and occasionally my mom would collar us and insist that we learn basic math, but honestly, looking back we mostly just did whatever the hell we wanted, almost all the time. (With, again rather like Klutch’s situation, understood policies of always being home by dark, looking after the younger ones, not burning down the house, etc.)
And somehow we all turned out to be functional adults, some of whom have graduated from college and some of whom chose to pursue other things, and all of whom are doing OK and can manage to hold our own in a conversation despite tragic early lack of ’socialization’.
You don’t necessarily need formal schoolin’! Not even formal homeschoolin’!
The impetus is domination.
Expanding on myself here, this is a repudiation of the counselor, “But she’s sooo cute!†“She’s adorable.†“Wow! She’s a heartbreaker.â€
It’s not happening because she’s cute. It would almost certainly be happening no matter how pedophile-attracting her looks were. It’s a matter of these boys trying to show her that her place is not here.
A 17-18 year old boy asking a 10 year old girl to prom is, if not harassment for intimidation, then pedophilia that needs to be addressed clinically–or both.
Man. The school district wanted to skip me several grades when I was young and my parents forbade it. I always sort of resented them for that, but no more! BTW, gifted high schoolers are allowed to take classes at colleges and community colleges here (California) are especially welcoming– or at least they were a decade or so ago when my youngest sister took almost all her main HS courses at a junior college. You might check that option out, and at least get her out of the classes in which she suffers the most.
High School is a nightmare that most teenagers have a hard time getting through. Enrolling a 10-year-old in one is child abuse to begin with.
A moment’s recollection will remind anyone that the net impact on anyone’s life, caused by all levels of schooling, is more social than educational. So you’re eliminating a curricular mismatch for a far more damaging social mismatch.
Skipping kids ahead is a dumb idea. What is it in aid of? So they can make a million dollars and retire before they’re 30? I say leave the kids in an age-appropriate grade, and let them satisfy their curiosity at the library.
I have to agree that the academic achievement at all costs is a patriarchal idea. I’d have been terrified to be put in a secondary school when I was ten. It was pretty damn scary at twelve.
They have to learn that their actions have consequences, but positive behavior support is the most effective way to truly change behavior.
1) my brother is Aspy. He NEVER did this shit. That sort of harassment isn’t a feature of Aspbergers per say, but fixations are common. I do remember my mother sternly lecturing my brother about “not bothering Francy any more because he liked her”. If the little girl in this case is a fixation and the boy’s only role models are inappropriate, guess what happens? Add in the “he’s disabled” cop out and things get fun.
2) I’m sorry if I equated discipline and punishment. I don’t in practice, nor does my husband. Many baby boomers with kids older than mine seem to have made that mistake big time, resulting in neither discipline nor punishment and now their teens are horrendous! I remember when I was pregnant seeing the kids of people I know and standing around with friends my age and saying NEVER! and “the word NO works okay!”.
My husband disciplines his students, he doesn’t punish, but one student with brain damage is incapable of making that fundamental connection between action and consequence. Positive behavior building would be a nice thing to be ABLE to do, but try to pull that off in an already disrupted class of 25 students, many of whom scored
a small note for schools and school adminsitrators, though. I’ve seen the inside of school workings, too, and every student has a right to be there with an education plan that works for them. if a school is trying to get out of this, it is in some real sense illegal. But its not that they are just being cheap, trying to skimp on helping out kids who obiouvsly need it. Give the people in schools enough credit that on average, they also see that someone needs this kind of help, and that an expensive educational plan would accomplish this. but for every extra dollar they spend on that, they are literally taking money away from some other ids’ education. there isn’t enough to go around, and so taxpayer or not, at least recognize the dilemma of doing right by one kid in the case where that entails having to do wrong by one (or three, or five) other kids. they don’t get enough funding.
this is by no means a defense of letting any high school kids treat anyone like this, much less a tenyear old. and other commenters are right, this is not a case os asberger’s causing it, and even if it is, letting him get away with it only compounds the problem for him, too. but the school system is imperfect in a way that asserting one’s rights to have extra considerations and procedures in place for one child means there are literally a couple other kids who lose their rights to get basic features of their education. the money is a zero sum game.
(continued) less than the 5th percentile on standard exam and several others of whom have obvious but unidentified and unaddressed developmental issues and NONE of whom have parents who want to deal with it. That’s why they put them in a Catholic school because MaryMagic will solve all their problems!
And monkeys will fly out of Mary’s butt!
3)My children are in a (horrified gasp) Public School where this shit is NEVER tolerated. They were hassled on the bus and in the bus line because my elder son comforted his younger brother with a small kiss. The homophobic little dipshits who harassed them lost bus privileges for a week and their parents had to come meet with the principal for a little talk about innappropriate behavior likely seen at home not being tolerated at school. The teacher who was supposed to be supervising the line was also disciplined for not intervening in an obvious teasing situation.
Well, as a faithful blamer currently working at an inner-city public school, close to getting my license to teach high school social studies, I sort of want to cry right now after reading some of this. I honestly don’t think the answer is giving up and everyone home schooling. Very few of the parents in my district could even begin to consider that as a viable option. I’m going for option #2 - staying and fighting. Smashing the patriarchy from within!
Am I the only one here who actually had a positive, relatively trauma-free PS experience? K-8 I went to tiny private Jewish schools; my largest grade before HS was 17 kids, and until I switched schools for 8th grade, there was no “dating,” no dances, no separate activities for boys and girls. Perhaps the fact that the school sought to create a gender-equal environment in which to impart a traditional religion led the school’s founders and staff to more closely examine the messages they sent about gender and equality than do most schools.
When I started a public high school, I thus had far less exposure to the terrifying gender socialization that most schoolkids (including my younger siblings) get in PS, but I managed to avoid being too caught up in it by 1) being as obnoxiously obvious about my feminism as the football team was about their footballism, and 2) being a rabble-rouser who got 2 teachers suspended for sexual harassment of other students and got in students’ and teachers’ faces when I thought they were out of line or wasting my educational time.
I was lucky enough to be in a good school (high grad rate, high college attendance, low violence), where many teachers actually responded to students’ intellectual interests, but I think the most important tool that I had for surviving HS, and later law school, was an understanding of the systemic nature of patriarchy. This understanding helped me to separate what happened to/near me from how I understood myself, and it gave me a context in which to view my activism as part of a massive struggle, thus reducing the sense of isolation that I sometimes felt.
So how about we infiltrate public schools and instead of the “sex” or “abstinence” lessons that kids get, we replace them with lessons on the systemic nature of patriarchy?
Smashing the patriarchy from within is all fine and good (and I would also pick that option) but when the battering ram you might have to use is a 10-year-old girl, well, I’d opt for what’s best for the girl and not what’s in the best interest of eradicating the system. The first concern should always be for the safety and well-being of the child.
That said, I would like to ask the writer of the letter if she’s spoken to the child about these options. I mean, I know she’s ten, but perhaps she’d like to have a say in her defense–that is, whatever tact you decide to take in defending her.
And, geeze, while I’m at it, get off the gifted and skipped ahead kids already. I am one of those gifted, skipped ahead kids, and, like delphyn, began HS at 12. It wasn’t that scary for me, and I was glad to be finished with the system and living on my own and supporting myself financially when I was 16. Not skipping ahead kids who can deal with it is really just damning them to extra years in a hellish system. “Age-appropriate grades,” my shiny gifted ass. I was reading at a third-grade level in kindergarten, so tell your story walking.
I’m a huge proponent of the homeschooling/unschooling/deschooling movement myself. Barring that option though you should definitely take out a restraining order.
Another vote for John Taylor Gatto - his essay “Against School” comes up if you google it. I’ve had great discussions about it with my community college students.
This is why I am going to be a high school teacher. (if they let me)
A social studies teacher at that. I only have one more semester before I work on my credential.
I am going to unbrainwash as much of the brainwashing as I can.
Teach them youngins a thing or two.
“Smashing the patriarchy from within is all fine and good (and I would also pick that option) but when the battering ram you might have to use is a 10-year-old girl, [etc]”
If you’re alluding to my response to Sniper, Virago, you misconstrue my meaning; I was suggesting that radical feminist teachers subvert the public school system from within. Not little girls. And I was also joking.
Ah, I now see, Virago, that you were responding to HistoricUpstart. Sorry.
I have two ‘gifted’ daughters, on of whom is advanced in grades. I’ve been wondering about the home school options, in part, not because of the other kids but because of the teachers who admit to being threatened by a smart girl. One thing I can’t emphasise strongly enough is that your daughter needs to know that she has advocates and champions all around her for support. She’s only 10 (mine also) and needs to feel the pressence of a safety net.
Also I strongly agree with Carolyn; you need some hefty legal muscle and possibly (though I hate to say this) publicity muscle. I’ve found that sympathetic reporters with their head where it belongs can be very powerful allies.
You are in a very unique situation and it may call for some very different approaches to your daughter’s education but there are tons of excellent web sites for support of very advanced kids. My first instinct in reading your note was get her the hell outa’ there and begin legal action immediatly. Hell, if she needs to go private because of what the school has allowed, let the bastards pay for it.
Charles asked: So they can make a million dollars and retire before they’re 30?
No, I don’t want my kids to be adults at 16. There’s a local community college that they can attend while I guide them.
It may seem freakish to some, but by the time my kids are 30, tney may have multiple degrees. I have 4 degrees and hubby has 3 degrees.
The goal is not $$$. In fact, many so-called gifted people choose to pursue academic pursuits rather than more profitable careers.
Freakishly yours,
LB
I would also like to point out that I’m not promoting elitism here. My parents both dropped out of high school. I am the first person to graduate from college in my family, let alone the first person to earn a doctorate. I’m the product of the public school system, too.
When you encounter teachers and administrators who think it’s appropriate to teach 5 year olds to sing songs about sucking the eyeballs out of little birdies and drinking their blood through straws, well homeschool can look like the only viable option.
In my experience, you can persuade them to stop this week’s outrage, but for sure there will be another one next week.
It took far more time and energy for me to fight the school system than it did to homeschool. If you start early, before the school system convinces your children that learning is a chore, homeschooling is not that difficult. The kids do most of the work.
In the ideal world, schools would be drop-in centers instead of prisons, if they weren’t great places, no one would drop in.
Twisty, thanks for one of the best assessments of the state of our schools that I’ve seen.
I am currently in shock at S’s story.
A 10 year old girl?!?!?!
A fucking 10 year old girl?!?!?!
What the fuck is the matter with the fuckwits in this world!
It is inexcusable that her “cuteness” is used to legitimise that crap.
What about disrupting HER education?!?!
Although, I guess, if she’s pretty or whatever, that’s all she’ll ever need, huh. Psch!
It’s all bollocks.
Grr.
I think I didn’t like the association of Asperger’s with the whole scenario - it seemed irrelevant to the real story, but like it was significant to the teller - like when people mention how old and wrinkled someone is, or how fat. I’m sure I’m oversensitive about it.
I’m often led to think about my raising sons in the context of this blog. There was a recent “all men are assholes, end of story”. My older son is often an asshole, very similar to his biological father (my college professor), who was not involved in his raising. My younger son has pretty much no asshole in him. I think of the adult men that I consider to not be assholes, and they’re all men who very much have not fit in to the general scheme of things, men with learning disorders who have been brutalized by the “real” guys while growing up. My younger son goes to private school, as my ex can afford it and has agreed to pay for it. The school has a no-harassment policy, is supposed to be a place to be safe to be who you are. They’ve achieved this for the girls, but not yet for boys like my son. The other boys would never treat the girls like they have treated “N”.
Feh. I went to public school and all I got out of it was the ability to read, write and operate a pocket calculator. I had to do jr. college and community ed to learn to type and other marketable skills.
Just teach everyone to read, adults, too, and whatever else they want to learn. 12 years of slavery is stupid and stupid-making.
“Why anyone thinks that setting children into dark, nasty-smelling schoolrooms and sitting them in rows while a boring grown-up drone on about things that do not interest them is an effective way of teaching eludes me.”
Ahh…but as Twisty has so eloquently pointed out, it is a *very* effective way to teach them to be drones which is exactly what the public schools are designed to do.
In addition to John Taylor Gatto, I highly recommend Grace Llewellyn’s books on unschooling or non-schooling or however you want to term “allowing your kids to learn what and when they want.”
Making learning a chore is a sure-fire way to kill the human’s natural love for it. That’s exactly what our schools are for and they do it extremely well.
All of this does not address, of course, the issue that N enjoys her classes and has every right to be there if and when she so desires.
i would guess that the reason the school has done little or nothing about this is that they simply don’t want a 10 year old girl there, and the sooner she’s harrassed out of the place, the better for them.
having slogged through the nightmare we call “the gifted childhood”, the main thing that got through to me is that the educational system we have now, and the administrators who run it, are not in the business of ‘educating’ young people to their full potential. they are in the business of, as Twisty said, creating mindless labor drones. your 10 year old daughter does not appear to be on an unremarkable path to labor drone-hood. this teenager with a learning disability probably is. they’ll pick the future drone over the exceptional case every time.
the fact that she’s a girl probably isn’t helping, either.
from the standpoint of the boy or boys who’re stalking her, it probably comes from the same place — they’ve zeroed in on someone who is “different”, who probably “thinks she’s better than them”. and they’ve decided to do the school’s dirty work, to shame her away, preferably into drone-hood, but y’know if she ends up in some silly private school or special program or something, sure, whatever, as long as she’s out of their hair.
there’s something fascinating that happens to girls around this very age, and i’m interested to see how it manifests in your daughter’s case. around the time puberty hits, all the wonder and fascination and brilliance and interest in intellectual pursuits starts to get beaten out of girls, in order to fit them to the ‘drone’ mold. and a lot of that is done through things like prom, makeup, clothes, boys, etc. and most high school boys will mainly encounter girls who’ve already undergone this process. so i also think an exacerbating aspect of this, from the guys’ point of view, is that she doesn’t act “right” for a high school girl, who is supposed to be far more interested in prom than chemistry.
in my own experience as a gifted kid, the one thing that helped when i faced situations like this (from boys closer to my own age, but no less traumatic), was the summer programs i attended with other gifted kids who were around my age, and then ultimately a transfer to a magnet school for my own age group. mainly in discovering i wasn’t the only 12 year old girl who’d rather read sci fi novels and explicate sonnets than put on makeup or talk about boys, but also because most of the boys had been through comparable levels of bullshit and weren’t nearly as mouthy as the boys at my other schools. i don’t know where you live or what your circumstances are, but something like this might be a much better fit for your daughter than simply skipping her ahead.
“I think I didn’t like the association of Asperger’s with the whole scenario - it seemed irrelevant to the real story, but like it was significant to the teller…”
Actually, I think it was totally relevant to the story seeing as it was the school’s excuse for not protecting N. Hopefully S can now clearly see that it is just as lazy an excuse as “boys will be boys.”
i should also add that i started getting behaviors like the above when, as a kindergartener, i was skipped ahead into some first and second grade classes. the girls didn’t much care; it was the boys who intimidated me into fear and confusion and hatred of my new position — mainly via proto-sexual harrassment, including being branded a “dyke” at the age of 5 or 6. needless to say my time in second grade reading and spelling was short.
Twisty, yes, I also think that teachers and parents should, must, absolutely have an obligation to direct a portion of their energy to smashing the system from within or without. Just smash it. (Whatever rises in its place can’t possibly be any worse.) I, in my time as an elementary school teacher, tried. It killed me to see it from within, that system. Killed me dead.
Anyone who thinks public schools can or should be rehabilitated should sign up at their nearest public elementary school to sit in on classes for a week. No matter how low your expectations, you’ll likely still be shocked at what passes for education these days.
I am a long-time veteren of the IEP (individualized educational plan) struggle, and I am still in that system, but have mostly won that war. I would like to point out that, in the US, fape (free, appropriate public education) only applies to the disabled, as narrowly defined by the IDEA laws, no one else has a right to that under the federal laws as they exist, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) notwithstanding. There may be state exceptions to this scenario. NCLB, as I understand it, makes a provision for schooling of kids in underperforming school districts. Some parents of disabled kids find it easier to enforce compliance and get things done using ADA instead.
In every case, disabled, underperforming schools, gifted, unexceptional, there is under-funding of breathtaking proportions. The laws pay a lot of lip service, but not much money.
It can be a regular part=time job to navigate and fight for your kid, and an almost impossible task to do without knowledgeable help.
to add to what OM just said, i’d also add that you’d be surprised which states actually have perfectly good options for “gifted” kids — you generally have to sift through a lot of BS to find out about them and get access to them, but it’s not as simple as civilized blue state = good, icky red state = hopeless.
i grew up in Louisiana and am an alumni of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a school that is extremely well-funded and open by a very transparent application process to any student in the state (if you are lucky enough to hear of the place). Mississippi, Arkansas, and several other states at the extreme bottom of the public education barrel have comparable high schools.
I wouldn’t bother with the school. I’d go straight to the police and press charges of pedophilia and assault.
shit, i’m not an alumni, i’m an alumnus! wow, that gifted education was so worthwhile, wasn’t it?
opoponax,
you’re an alumna. plural alumnae.
a male is an alumnus, plural alumni.
I date from the compulsory-Latin days.
Dear S.
I have a son who is highly gifted but with special needs (motor skills issues) I have found that lawsuit threats are the only way I can get public schools to provide the minimum in what is required. In my case the issue is not sexual harassment (kid’s a boy) but economic discrimination- they never expect the poor parents to fight back.
First- know your school district’s policies. Your daughter has a right to be safe and it is a failure of the school that she is not