Sad and disappointed to read that the plight of today’s school Refuser hasn’t changed much since my nightmare experience in elementary and high school in the late 50’s and 60’s.
As a child born with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder I hated school and started running away at age 7. Because I was forced to go to school under fear of the police getting involved I was smart enough to figure out ways to avoid school an avoid the truancy cops. I would leave home in the morning- brown paper lunch bag in hand and walk the 20 minutes to school. I knew that if I was marked “present” in the first class of the morning then nobody knew when I would simply walk out of school and keep going. The feeling of freedom when I was hiding out in the forested areas of my neighbourhood was exhillerating and I knew no cop was going to go looking there. After all they couldn’t imagine a seven or eight year old off in the woods all day by himself. But the cops never caught me but I failed two grades making me two years older than my classmates which made things even worse.
In grade 10 I was finally kicked out. At that point I was physically able to take on the teachers who seemed to enjoy making my life miserable and making me feel like a loser. A physical dust up with a gym teacher who took great pleasure in making me feel like a loser because I was a chubby kid and very bad at sports. I ended up taking a high school graduation course at home WHICH I PASSED EASILY! This was a kid who never got more than a C in any school subject.
Today I am a happily retired multimillionaire who spent 20 years as a telelvision journalist travelling the world for two major networks and then moving into the movie business (a childhood dream) as a Writer and Director having made over 30 movies and winning numerous awards.
My rotten experience in public school made me put both my kids into private school fro JK to grade 12 in classes with a maximum of 15 kids. Both my children are very sucessful- one a PHd in history teaching at the university level and my son is an up a coming executive. I have been married to the same woman for 35 years.
If only one school official had taken an interest in an obviously intelligent, artistic kid who loved to read and draw and write short stories but who simply could not handle school culture because he suffered both extreme anxiety and very low self esteem.