This recollection by Mike mentions outdated disciplinary strategies and may be uncomfortable for some to read re: paddling. It is not graphic nor violent in detail. Mike has been reflecting on his school experiences and this story is part of his childhood.
If I told you I once knew a boy who was kept in a box, would you believe me?
I was in the 4th grade at the time, attending elementary school in Kentucky. I don’t remember the name of the school, this was around 1979 or so but I do remember its overall faultiness in design, in operation, and most importantly, basic human decency.
Bad ideas, like hope, spring eternal. My school fawned over the idea of ‘open space learning’, i.e., no walls, no doors, no so-called artificial barriers to learning. Only dividers of the kind seen in public administration buildings separated one classroom from another, and this included the library. No one could concentrate due to the background hum of muted voices and foot traffic. It was like trying to meditate beside a busy road.
This was considered cutting-edge at the time.
Worse was the school’s idea on student discipline—paddling.
The paddles were big wooden ones, thick, balanced, some with holes drilled into the business end to decrease wind resistance when used. Memory is foggy, but I don’t remember a day when I didn’t hear a student being paddled for an infraction. Whap, whap, whap, a muffled sound but ominous, like a bump in the dark of night. You pretended not to notice, your classmates did likewise, and your teacher continued with the day’s lesson.
Unique to our class was the refrigerator box in the upper right corner of the room, near the teacher’s desk. One side was open; the top had been removed and inside was a desk. Here one of the students sat, day in, day out. He was enclosed on three sides. He could not see the blackboard. He could not see us or the teacher. He was like a veal calf in a crate.
I’ll call him Sam. He was a freckled, dirty, small, disheveled boy permanently clad in an outsized, faded olive green jacket. Sam took no part in day-to-day classroom business; he neither received nor completed homework; he did not ask or answer questions; if we were lucky to watch a film, he just sat in the dark and slept.
The teacher was a flighty, histrionic, fitful woman prone to outbursts. Why was she in education? Your guess is as good as any. I don’t recall her paddling anyone, including Sam, but she did grab and twist wrists and arms if she felt provoked. I was a new student from Michigan and learned this the hard way when I forgot an assignment—she grabbed my arm, pulled it behind my back, and snarled something in my ear.
I started to cry, until the girl next to me said: don’t bother, kid, it doesn’t do anything. Utterly matter of fact, no contempt, no hostility, just patient, weary resignation too old for someone so young.
(My mother visited the following day after school, leaned forward on the teacher’s desk, and politely informed the teacher that if she ever touched me again, she would break the teacher’s arm. Mom was small but fierce when it came to defending her own).
Autistics discern patterns, but they also notice deviation from said patterns, and this commands their attention. Sam was so far outside my experience, such a glaring oddity in our classroom, that I had to know why.
The teacher put him there because he’s stupid. And because he stinks, is what the other students told me.
Logic, fairness and justice are very important to autistics; no, we’re not Commander Spock, Vulcan Lawyer at Large, but we were all here to learn, and keeping one of us in an education-proof cardboard Bastille was highly illogical.
My solution? I invited Sam to my house after school, and we rode the bus home. I reasoned that if we could possibly clean him up and outfit him in better clothes, he would no longer smell. Made presentable, he would be accepted by the others, and the fridge box would go where it belonged, into the trash.
I don’t much remember Sam’s visit; I think my father was out of town on business. My mother was nonplussed but polite and offered Sam a bath. Sam declined out of embarrassment. We had sandwiches and Kool-Aid, awkward talk and uncertain silences, and before long Sam asked to go home.
What I do remember clearly is Sam’s home—if you could call it that. It was a mirage out of the Dust Bowl, a two-story, paint-peeling, drunken angle of a house on a barren, dried-out, weedy lot. Tar Paper covered parts of the sunken roof; cardboard replaced glass in several of the windows. No lights were on, there was no sign of welcome or color or life, not a sound but the crunch and grind of the car’s wheels slowing on gravel.
This wasn’t a home or a house. It was barely even a structure. But Sam bolted from the back seat when my mother stopped, and he ran—sprinted—toward it without a glance backward and disappeared inside.
When our mutual shock and dismay subsided my mother said quietly, I don’t think we should do this again, Michael.
I might have only been ten at the time and autistic, but I knew what she meant.
Mike Minnis is a guest blogger and client. His books can be purchased on Amazon. Visit his website at: www.michaelminnisbooks.com/index.htm
If I told you I once knew a boy who was kept in a box, would you believe me?
I was in the 4th grade at the time, attending elementary school in Kentucky. I don’t remember the name of the school, this was around 1979 or so but I do remember its overall faultiness in design, in operation, and most importantly, basic human decency.
Bad ideas, like hope, spring eternal. My school fawned over the idea of ‘open space learning’, i.e., no walls, no doors, no so-called artificial barriers to learning. Only dividers of the kind seen in public administration buildings separated one classroom from another, and this included the library. No one could concentrate due to the background hum of muted voices and foot traffic. It was like trying to meditate beside a busy road.
This was considered cutting-edge at the time.
Worse was the school’s idea on student discipline—paddling.
The paddles were big wooden ones, thick, balanced, some with holes drilled into the business end to decrease wind resistance when used. Memory is foggy, but I don’t remember a day when I didn’t hear a student being paddled for an infraction. Whap, whap, whap, a muffled sound but ominous, like a bump in the dark of night. You pretended not to notice, your classmates did likewise, and your teacher continued with the day’s lesson.
Unique to our class was the refrigerator box in the upper right corner of the room, near the teacher’s desk. One side was open; the top had been removed and inside was a desk. Here one of the students sat, day in, day out. He was enclosed on three sides. He could not see the blackboard. He could not see us or the teacher. He was like a veal calf in a crate.
I’ll call him Sam. He was a freckled, dirty, small, disheveled boy permanently clad in an outsized, faded olive green jacket. Sam took no part in day-to-day classroom business; he neither received nor completed homework; he did not ask or answer questions; if we were lucky to watch a film, he just sat in the dark and slept.
The teacher was a flighty, histrionic, fitful woman prone to outbursts. Why was she in education? Your guess is as good as any. I don’t recall her paddling anyone, including Sam, but she did grab and twist wrists and arms if she felt provoked. I was a new student from Michigan and learned this the hard way when I forgot an assignment—she grabbed my arm, pulled it behind my back, and snarled something in my ear.
I started to cry, until the girl next to me said: don’t bother, kid, it doesn’t do anything. Utterly matter of fact, no contempt, no hostility, just patient, weary resignation too old for someone so young.
(My mother visited the following day after school, leaned forward on the teacher’s desk, and politely informed the teacher that if she ever touched me again, she would break the teacher’s arm. Mom was small but fierce when it came to defending her own).
Autistics discern patterns, but they also notice deviation from said patterns, and this commands their attention. Sam was so far outside my experience, such a glaring oddity in our classroom, that I had to know why.
The teacher put him there because he’s stupid. And because he stinks, is what the other students told me.
Logic, fairness and justice are very important to autistics; no, we’re not Commander Spock, Vulcan Lawyer at Large, but we were all here to learn, and keeping one of us in an education-proof cardboard Bastille was highly illogical.
My solution? I invited Sam to my house after school, and we rode the bus home. I reasoned that if we could possibly clean him up and outfit him in better clothes, he would no longer smell. Made presentable, he would be accepted by the others, and the fridge box would go where it belonged, into the trash.
I don’t much remember Sam’s visit; I think my father was out of town on business. My mother was nonplussed but polite and offered Sam a bath. Sam declined out of embarrassment. We had sandwiches and Kool-Aid, awkward talk and uncertain silences, and before long Sam asked to go home.
What I do remember clearly is Sam’s home—if you could call it that. It was a mirage out of the Dust Bowl, a two-story, paint-peeling, drunken angle of a house on a barren, dried-out, weedy lot. Tar Paper covered parts of the sunken roof; cardboard replaced glass in several of the windows. No lights were on, there was no sign of welcome or color or life, not a sound but the crunch and grind of the car’s wheels slowing on gravel.
This wasn’t a home or a house. It was barely even a structure. But Sam bolted from the back seat when my mother stopped, and he ran—sprinted—toward it without a glance backward and disappeared inside.
When our mutual shock and dismay subsided my mother said quietly, I don’t think we should do this again, Michael.
I might have only been ten at the time and autistic, but I knew what she meant.
Mike Minnis is a guest blogger and client. His books can be purchased on Amazon. Visit his website at: www.michaelminnisbooks.com/index.htm
