Just as an update on this entry from a couple of years ago, the incredible news is that my schoolfriend Daniel Holt is now a fully fledged barrister who is able to accept cases. He announced it on his Facebook page yesterday afternoon. This is fantastic news of course, although it makes me reflect on a couple of things.

Most obviously, it demolishes the line that Special Schools always give kids a second or third rate education and fail them. You can go to a special school, get a decent education, go to university and lead a rich, full life. I now know quite a few people who attended my old school, Hebden Green, who have gone on to achieve wonderful things, academically or otherwise. Of course, there will always be pupils who attend such schools who won’t be able to get A-Levels, go to uni etc, due to their disabilities: I now suspect that those who campaign to close special schools lump the two groups of pupils together to deliberately distort the situation. Such ‘activists’ want to say special schools fail kids when they clearly don’t; the reality is much more complex, and some kids need to be taught in separate spaces, away from the chaos you find in most comprehensives. Obviously where it’s at all possible, all children should be taught together, but this is far from a black and white issue. While I may have received the best academic education when I attended mainstream classes, frankly, I now think my experiences in a special school really did me good: had I never been to Hebden, I would never have met my classmates – guys with far more severe disabilities than I have, from whom I learned a great deal of humility and patience. I am honoured to have known people like them, as well as guys like Dan Holt.

More personally though, Dan’s achievement makes me feel a little ashamed. He has a job: he is now a barrister, and will presumably be working to defend people in court. But what do I do? I just write blog entries and trundle around London in my powerchair. Learning about incredible achievements like this makes me feel a bit lazy, as though I’m wasting my life. Then again, I keep asking myself how I could ever have been a barrister. Dan uses a powerchair but talks clearly. As a communication aid user, I think I would struggle to keep up with the argument in a court of law, especially if I was supposed to be representing a client. I think the same goes if I had a regular nine to five job: because of my care needs and limitations, I really think I’d struggle. Yet through my blog and my other writing, I tell others what I think: I can convey to the world what life is like for a disabled man living in London, letting them know that I am just as nuanced, complex and proud as anyone else.

I don’t think I should feel too ashamed of myself, then. After all, not everyone has a Master’s, and not everyone can say they have kept a blog up for twenty years. I might not be a barrister, but I am a blogger, writer and filmmaker, and I think that that in itself is something to be proud of. And like Dan Holt I went through a special school system, coming out the other side with a will and determination to fight for what I need as well as a pride in who I am.