Went to school. Was labled “retarded” fell through the cracks. Hardly could read and write when I graduated.

I was pissed. Didn’t attend graduation.

Went to college. Had an awesome English teacher. Got me up to speed.

Proved everyone wrong. Being stubborn was a blessing.

I was in elementary in Canada early 90’s. My school was weird. There’s a large Mennonite community in the area where I grew up so a large percentage (more than 50%) of the kids in this school were Mennonite. For those unfamiliar, these are similar to Amish. Such farmers with strong religious views, most of them were “old order” meaning they grew up in homes with little to no electricity. They also finish school at age 12 regardless of progress. This meant that they were exempt from a lot of the classes my tiny public school had to offer. No French, computing, or Sex Ed. A lot of them were also in special Ed. I’m not going to sugar coat this. It’s forbidden from them to marry outside of their culture and only like 4 families came to the area. So there’s a lot of disabilities as a result of inbreeding with that community.

All this to say that my school had absolutely no clue how to deal with my undiagnosed autism. But they seemed to have decent funding due to the much higher needs.

I was in special Ed via French exemption status. This means I never learned french. I’d instead be placed in a room with all the Mennonite kids often in a corner trying to read. Eventually I was put into some kind of program. A neurologist should come by and do experiments on me. Nothing weird, just testing my fine motor skills. They (falsely) diagnosed me with “elementary tremors” a pediatric doctor upped this to a “retardation caused by mild down syndrome” (extremely wrong) after years of that nonsense they decided to use this crazy new fangled technology to give me a leg up with writing. I was given a Macintosh computer. I had a desk with tiny wheels and my 4th grade self had to wheel this from class to class (including “portables”). Of course this was pretty obsolete tech even for its time. My parents got me an Alpha Smart which was way better. By 6th grade I had a personal support worker to help get me caught up. I failed grades 3-6 but was ‘placed’ into the next grade anyway and never made to repeat anything.

Highschool was very different, no Mennonite, so way less funding. It was still a French exemption class but there were only about 5 other students in the class. It seemed to be less about education, or assessment of my condition. It was some watching videos and doing some analysis. It was mostly just a time to catch up on homework. Often there wasn’t even a teacher present.

30 years old now. Was put in Special Ed at age 9. Dysgraphia + What at the time they called ADHD, but my current psychiatrist and therapist believe is actually ASD.

Special Ed means different things in different places. In Brazil in the very early 2000s it meant I attended school with all the normal kids, but would stay in the afternoon for a bunch of mandatory extra stuff.

Consequences… ? Enh. I mean. I never learned how to properly study, given I had tutors for every subject and so was basically always in class. To this day I’m not sure how one studies on their own. Had quite a hard time through college, when I had to figure this shit out on my own. Still managed to graduate eventually.

But like. Some people who were in Special Ed report, like, major emotional trauma from it. That really wasn’t a thing for me, I guess I got lucky? At most I have an irrational dislike of colouring pencils because of all the colouring books they made me fill in, in hopes that would “cure” my dysgraphia (fat load of good THAT did).

I got emotional trauma from bullying, but I was already being bullied before being put in Special Ed. And it didn’t get any better or worse until I like. Changed schools.

Does alternative school count? We were made to feel like it was some sort of “special ed” in the derogatory sense.

Everytime I look in the mirror I just see myself as dumb. I hated it and would frequently ditch school because they wouldn’t let me out of the program until I walked out during the state test.

I walked out because they had to read every question and answer and I asked nicely to take it somewhere else because it was distracting. They said no so I said I’m going home.

I hope no one ever has to go through special ed at a school like mine that just made you feel dumb and didn’t care.

The worst of it was when I’d sign up for after school programs to hangout with friends and actually do something for once but then I’d be told I can’t even if I did all my work. Just because I was in the special Ed program. Those fuckers literally isolated me for no reason.

In general my school just sucked tho. I was able to go to into the trade school during my 11th grade year. I went for IT and the teacher there even said he can guarantee a scholarship for me if I keep up my performance next year. But then I got pulled from the trade school because I didn’t have enough gym credits at my highschool. I had a 11:50 2 mile and 5ish minute mile. I always participated in gym to so I don’t know why or how I didn’t have the credits until I was told I didn’t change into the correct color shorts. I was never told about it once during gym class.

Honestly it ruined my life in significant, permanent ways. The social ostracization that happens by being in different settings, prevented me from learning a lot of basic socialization skills until my 20s.

I’ve struggled my whole life to ‘catch up’ to people my age, so many of my friends are not in my exact age bracket, instead being in mid to late twenties instead of forties and most are surprised to find I’m as old as I am because I don’t look or act it.

It took me three decades to get out of poverty and have my first career job.

0/10 would not recommend.

Im 18 and have been in special ed just about my entire life. Almost the entire time I was treated like someone with no future, I was constantly thrown with a bunch of special ed kids with completely different needs. Nearly every time I have complained about it I was called ablist (specifically by neurotypicals).

For a couple years at least, it sucked. It felt lonely in retrospect because most of the other students in the class were nonverbal. Any attempt to socialize with the teachers just lead to them telling me to “mind my own business”. The teachers were also just assholes in general.

No idea what I was a part of, but it is special Ed adjacent.

I was forced into a program in Jr. High because I had behavior issues (of course nothing was done to the bullies and attackers, just the person retaliating). It was like a 3 week program where they analyzed you (poorly because I knew all their testing methods and was not cooperating), stuffed you in a corner, and told you do homework for the day and then an hour for phys-ed. I stopped doing the homework after a while and just started playing my GBA.

It was humiliating, but I will say, the kids removed from the their situations were actually really great people despite being labeled as trouble makers or problems.

Anyways, I changed schools, and then changed schools, then got expelled and changed schools again, and eventually I graduated highschool. I then attended university and completed two programs.

Now, over 20 years later, I am actively unpacking and working on these issues from school because I fell through the cracks and was actively punished for being a victim.

Why where you there? What was it like? How did you do later in life? And did it have any effect as a adult?

I shouldn’t have been in special education, but I was. Home life was a nightmare. My mom and dad would constantly fight and take it out on me.

That meant once I left school for home, there was zero chance of ever getting any homework assignments done. I would get straight A’s on tests, yet would get all zeros on homework assignments.

The school wouldn’t listen, nor cared about, the abuse going on at home. They were always short staffed and short on budget, so special ed was their bandaid solution.

The special ed teachers ptotested time and time again as I clearly didn’t belong there. Sometimes the class would read aloud a book together. We would go in a circle, each reading a paragraph. Everyone else struggled to get through it, I breezed through it.

The teachers wouldn’t let me participate anymore as I was unintentionally embarrassing the other students. There was no internet or smartphones at the time. So I spent nearly all of high school, reading any and every book I could get my hands on, silently.

I was there because of multiple learning disabilities. I was smarter than most kids my age is the funny part. I just sucked at learning the way they taught us. My whole life people told me I’m smart but I never believed them until recently. I’m at the part of my life where I feel trapped now, partly because everyday I go to work with people dumber than sacks of shit and it takes a toll on me mentally. I’m told things get better.

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