What Can They Teach Him?

October is Down’s Syndrome Awareness month, in which the Down’s Syndrome community come together to celebrate people with Down’s Syndrome, and try to educate the world about the condition and dispel the myths and negative stereotypes that stubbornly persist to this day.

When we first moved to our current house we held a housewarming party. I was talking to the father of a friend. He asked after Freddie, then said:

‘Does he go to school?’

I replied that, yes, he did and told him which school it was.

‘Does he go every day?’

‘Yes’, I said. ‘Five days a week, 9 til 3.’

‘But what can they possibly teach him?’

I think my face spoke for me. And that gentleman was as surprised by my reaction as I was by his question. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been, because he’d never actually met Freddie; he’d probably never actually met anyone with Down’s Syndrome before, because in his day people with DS were routinely shut away in institutions, their parents told they’d never be able to raise them so they should just ‘put them away’ and forget about them, because they were deemed ‘ineducable’.

Ineducable. Incapable of being educated. Unable to learn. This has to be among the most harmful of the myths surrounding Down’s Syndrome. And, for a long time, it was a self-perpetuating myth, because if you shut a person away from their family and any semblance of a normal life then they never get the chance to even try to learn the things we all learn at our mother’s, father’s, grandparents’ or siblings’ knees. If you deem someone unteachable, then you practically guarantee that no one is even going to try to teach them.

Anyone who has actually met my Freddie will tell you what a bright, inquisitive person he is, how much he engages with the world around him. His alertness and responsiveness were remarked upon by the nurses looking after him as a newborn on the neonatal unit. He can also be remarkably observant.

Not only is Freddie capable of learning, he actively enjoys it.

Of all my three children, he was the only one who enjoyed school. Now he's loving college and making further progress.

It’s true that Freddie needs to be taught in a different way, like many people with Down’s Syndrome or other learning disability. In Freddie’s case, his visual memory is better than his auditory memory – what he sees sticks in his mind much better than what he hears. So, he learns best when taught in a way that leans into this visual learning style.

People with Down’s Syndrome never were ‘ineducable’. It was simply the case that society, with its rigid ideas on children, learning, and the nature of intelligence, just didn’t know how to teach them.