So when I went through school you’d have two types of struggling kids:
Kid A would struggle to pass tests, but work hard and get every assignment done so they can keep their average in check. Teachers like this kid. Not that there’s anything wrong with this kid, but teachers project virtue on them sometimes just to shame kid B when kid B asks for consideration.
Kid B is who I assume many people here were and who I was. Kid B struggled to get from start to finish of all of the assignments that kept popping up and per haps couldn’t do the same task for very long. Kid B, however, could get high grades on most tests. If Kid B asks for some consideration to pass the class as they’ve gotten the information but weren’t able to finish all of the assignments and are told no, because Kid A exists and “I can stand someone who struggles with the tests but does the work, but I’ll never tolerate someone who is lazy”.
I have cptsd from years spent as kid B, but I’m pretty sure that’s a generic thing that happened to others as well. I had that quote shoved down my throat by a double digit number of adults. And the too-radical thought is this: I believe the teaching approach that holds kid A as a paragon of virtue and kid B as a lazy snot is quite discriminatory and maybe those are just two differently struggling kids. And maybe some consideration should be given to both. And maybe PTSD causing trauma should be withheld from both groups
I am a firm believer that the phenomenon of “just a lazy fuck” doesn’t exist. I don’t know your brother, but I know the terms in which you refer to him were used on me pretty much just like that. And the reasons why those things were happening didn’t come to light until long after the era in which the terms were used. Even after the first couple diagnoses, my IEP (sheet teachers have that says what they have to accommodate for you) didn’t say anything that really related to any of the problems I was actually literally having. The cruel irony is that it said I needed longer on tests, which I never needed and was the only thing I was even successful at. Lazy is just a way to stereotype people who’s problems you’ve given up on.
You know, it’s not the “lazy” people that are causing the world’s problems.
To add to this point slightly, I also did literally say out loud many times that the school work is dumb and I refused, if that makes me sound more like your brother. That is because at even younger ages, I’d been punished and abused out of using the phrase “I can’t” for things they’ve seen me do at least one time before. Things escalated and got much more harsh when I tried to say it, so I was forced to switch to lies, elitist posturing, emotional manipulation, anything that would end the interaction without “I can’t.” Eventually I forgot that I can’t and started believing a subset of my lies.