Family

Simone Aspis: Low Aspirations


Simone was born in 1969 in Dollis Hill, London. She went to a residential special school in Cheshire from the age of four until sixteen. From there she went on to college and then university.

Here Simone talks about her parents’ aspirations for her.

  • Simone Aspis
  • Simone Aspis
  • Simone Aspis
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/low-aspirations.mp3

Transcript

I always was complaining a lot about being in a special school, an awful lot I was complaining. My parents unfortunately did not listen to me and I used to complain about the fact I found my school boring, the fact that why was I here, you know, segregated from other children and why wasn’t I not got the same opportunities as my brother.

Unfortunately my mum and dad saw that as me behaving badly so they would write reports saying I’d behaved badly. I got the sense that they were always – you know, a sense of that there was a much more concentration on helping my brother to achieve than myself because I was a disabled person, a) because I was a disabled person and because I was also a disabled girl which doesn’t always help in the Jewish community. I think they had a lot more higher aspirations for my brother, they didn’t really have very much aspirations for me at all.

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