Here it is: how I got Horrible Histories banned from my school.
Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.
Imagine a little girl, a 4’9” fifth grader with dimples and twinkling blue eyes. Oh, look, she’s going to the school library. Perhaps she’s going to rent Little Women, or read On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder!
Five minutes later, she exits the library holding a large stack of books called “Horrible Histories.”
And she’s thumbing through one called “Angry Aztecs.”
Record scratch. Freeze frame.
Yup, that’s me! The only history geek in a fifty mile radius. Living in Bumhicksville, Nowhere (name changed, but very accurate) is pretty terrible, and going to school at Caucasian Christian School of Goodness (again, a name change, but an apt description) is even worse. I snapped a bit while I was attending, due to the lack of permissible self-expression, but horrible histories were my guiding light.
Flash forward six months.
Our teacher wants us to do a history project about an ancient civilization. Since our curriculum is Eurocentricism.JPEG, most kids pick the Greeks or Romans (and completely skip over all of the good stuff, like orgies and gladiator fights) in their presentations.
I choose my favorite ancient civilization:
The Aztecs.
My teachers knew I’d been reading Horrible Histories, but what they didn’t know was that I’d also been avidly reading all about Aztec mythology. I walk up to the front of the class, pull on a turquoise skull mask, and raise my arms to the sky.
My teacher goes sheet white.
I give my presentation and skip nothing. Nothing. Every detail of the sacrifices, every dirty, disgusting part.
It all culminates when I point to the calendar.
“It’s May!” I shout, my little girl voice rising an octave. My teacher looks like she’s about to phone the police. “The Aztecs called May Toxcatl.”
No one moves or breathed. I continue blithely.
“Toxcatl was a month dedicated to the worship of the god of the night, Tezcatlipoca.” I’m still going. Everyone is afraid. Marie, one of my classmates, looks like she’s about to cry.
“They’d dress a brave warrior as the god all year, and at the end-“ I pull the red streamers out from behind my display, shouting: “They’d sacrifice him!”
The kids shriek as the streamers of “blood” roll out across the floor.
The principal walked in, hearing the commotion, just in time for me to really get into character and shout “BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF THE NIGHT!”
And that’s how Horrible Histories and all mentions of the Aztecs were banned from my school.
Just a little memory dump here, but stuff like the fidget spinner abuse bs has been happening since the fidget spinner was a thing.
Kids werent allowed to play with pencils, if we were caught fidgetting with something it was taken away and seen as a distraction.
I distinctly remember throughout highschool I was having an extremely hard time focusing BC of my ADHD, so I started attending classes with one headphone in and my music on the lowest volume setting possible. I got in trouble time after time after time and I kept getting told to keep it out of my ear. Of course I didn’t listen and kept doing it, because it helped me focus and I wasn’t gonna let kids that used it to ignore class get in the way of me being able to function.
Eventually my teachers gave up trying to make me stop and eventually also realized that it was improving my grades, so I was left alone as long as I was functioning to standard.
Word traveled around through the school staff (because they loved me for some reason and knew what i was going through at home) and basically teachers were told to give me a pass on one ear buds and sitting wherever, as long as i paid attention to class. And to confront me if I started having issues.
In my forensics and chem class I had a horrible time sitting at those tiny desks so I talked with my teachers and I was allowed to sit at lab tables where I could stretch and shake my legs noiselessly, and also gently swivel on the seat to stim (lab tables always had those flat circular swivel chairs).
I was sitting at my chair in chem one day and the entire class got stopped because kids had started seeing me sitting at the table and on the lab chair and tried to follow suit, but were only doing it fuck around and ignoring class. One kid had successfully joined me at the lab tables because he too functioned and focused better sitting back at the tables. Fair enough.
My teacher Mrs.Reals gave an entire ten minute speech about how we were allowed to sit there because we paid attention to class and got work done and didnt fool around, and that other people weren’t allowed to sit back there because A: they didnt ‘need’ to, and B: because they were only doing it to fool around and ignore class. After that, I got nasty glares from kids for the rest of the semester and half my class hated me for functioning differently, and them not being able to capitalize off it.
Another instance was during my forensics class where I discussed with my teacher Mrs Adams if I could use my ear bud, and we both agreed only if I were to pay attention. I proved I would, and was allowed to.
One day we were watching a cold case and dissecting it and taking notes, and out of nowhere she paused it and pointed in my general direction and said “ear bud. Out. Now.”. My stomach jumped into my throat and I reached to take it out and she said “not you –omitted–. David. Ear bud. Out.”. And David had the absolute ballsacks to say “but she’s allowed to!! That isnt fair!!” And Mrs.Adams promptly said and I quote “she is allowed to because it helps her focus and she actually gets her work done. Her grades prove it. You dont. Your grades prove it. Give me your phone.”. And for the rest of the class I could feel his eyes burning through the back of my head and Mrs.Adams (who was seated directly in front of me) just occasionally told me I was okay and she would handle it.
Thankfully where I went to school, the teachers liked me and understood that I needed to do things differently from other kids and that others did too. A lot of schools arent like that and couldn’t care less about defending their neurodivergent students.
So the tldr here is; neurotypicals, please take note: if you cannot function properly doing the things we do to function in class, please to not ruin it for us for the sake of ‘equality’.
If you can do it and it helps you, I fully support you. And you help normalize it for us, so that’s great too.
But please dont try to screw other kids over because you think it’s an easy way to get out of doing school work and to distract yourself from class, because then it ruins it for everyone. Especially kids like me who would suffer otherwise.
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