I was infuriated last week when a young man I know, aged 24, was labelled as 'autistic' - when he is anything but!  It got me thinking about labelling, especially of children, e.g. bright, stupid, Asperger's, lazy etc.

Labels are a convenient way of categorising, reducing someone to a word.  Labels give a certain sense of power to the person labelling, but are damaging to those who are labelled, often for life.

To some extent, we all use labels, but that doesn't mean they're a good thing.  They are a form of generalising, and all prejudices have generalising in common.

A sad and enraging story came from a teacher I worked with years ago. One day, she was about to enter the tube station near the school, when she bumped into a boy she had taught at another school.  He was now about 20. After greeting him, he said to the teacher:

"Miss, I'm not all bad!"  To which she replied: "You're not bad at all!"

How disgraceful that teachers can label a boy 'bad' until even he believes it to be true.

Next week, more humour and less anger.