idk what its like these days (though i dont have very great expectations) but school was so hostile for me growing up with undiagnosed dyscalcula. I could usually get the answer if i was allowed to be alone to figure it out without distractions, and not be berated for having to do things the slow way, or mocked for having to count on my fingers instead of just be able to do additions in my head.
And while yes i was bullied badly in school, this shit about maths was from my teachers. All of my primary school teachers and all my maths teachers throughout high school acted like it was some kind of moral failing that I couldn’t do maths as fast as the others.
In high school when we moved to algebra suddenly my marks got high (letters stay put) and i was put in the advanced class, and then when i couldnt repeat that performance with other areas of maths (remembering the way numbers are layed out in formulas is difficult when they dance around and you get confused between numbers linked in ur head) I was accused of being lazy, of being an attention seeker, of deliberately failing.
No matter how many times i tried to explain that i just couldnt remember numbers, that they wiggled around in my head and connected themselves to unrelated colours and sounds, every one of my teachers just told me to ‘try harder, its not that hard’. Being singled out in class and questions fired at me with everyone watching to see me fail, having my teachers take my workbooks and read out to the class how terribly wrong i had gotten things so they could laugh. Parent teacher nights where they told my mum that i just wasnt trying, that i didn’t care, that I was failing on purpose.
You know I still have nightmares about being in maths class. you know i didn’t even know dyscalculia was a thing, that there was a ‘dyslexia for numbers’ until i was 25. I just thought I was stupid for needing to draw things so they got pinned down and started making sense.
i dont know where im going with this but i just wish someone had taken the time to listen and think ‘hey maybe this kid isnt making their school life a living hell for no reason, maybe somethings wrong’ or even ‘hey if drawing shit out and counting on fingers helps it make sense then go for it’ instead of using it as an opportunity to publicly mock me and make the entire concept of maths so stressful that i would have panic attacks about going to class.