The young people failed by society's tyranny of the norm

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/02/young-people-learning-disabilities-failed-society-schools


Jamie Oliver has dyslexia; his education was provided by a teacher quoted as saying, ‘to be honest, I never thought he would go far'. Photograph: David Loftus

Christmas in my family is always a bittersweet affair, divided as it is between my dad, my mum, and my severely autistic brother's residential care facility. This year we were updating his photo album with pictures of him engaged in various college-mandated activities when my mother paused on one of him wielding a spade next to a massive pile of manure. He does not look especially happy, as anyone in that position, special needs or not, is not wont to look. It's a big pile of poo, after all. "That's my boy," said my mother wryly, "shovelling shit".

I thought immediately of this when I read Jamie Oliver's comments this week about his own special needs education, provided as it was by a teacher who is quoted in Oliver's biography as saying "to be honest, I never thought he would go far". Oliver is dyslexic and has only just read his first book now, in his late 30s. His view is that "fifty-odd per cent don't leave [school] with five GCSEs, A-C … in my mind we're half crap at education".

Research by the Prince's Trust, meanwhile, has revealed that young people with fewer than five GCSEs are four times more likely to turn to drink or drugs to deal with mental health problems. Those with few qualifications are twice as likely to be prescribed antidepressants, and a third of those who struggled at school say they regularly cannot afford to pay their bills. In short, it's looking as though society has failed a generation of children, many of whom will have been suffering from learning disabilities, diagnosed or undiagnosed.

My brother's education has been a battle, most of which has involved convincing the powers that be that he has potential at all. From the speech therapist who said, when he was three, that there "would be no point teaching him to speak because he'd only talk rubbish anyway", to the social workers who, eventually, we took to court to secure the care and education he deserved. Manure aside, he's in a brilliant place now, but for how much longer we do not know. It seems that, once the young person reaches adulthood, whatever their "mental age", the education system wanders off. We might need to gear up for another battle. It's a feeling with which many parents and families of children with special needs would be familiar; it can feel like a constant fight.