978-1572305441

A Frankie Mind Apart
Chapter 11
Frankie
Learning and Forgetting
at School
Frankie was very smart. His IQ was 125, he started reading
at age three, and he knew the capitals of all the countries in Europe by
the time he was five. In day care he was known as the “little professor.”
His parents, Mike and Daphne, who were both academics, expected
great things of him in school, and at first they were not disappointed.
His early school years were largely trouble free since he could rely on
his reading skills to get by. He could recite the alphabet before anyone
else in class; he could count to fifty before anyone else could get to ten.
He quickly learned all the flags of the world. He was the marvel of the
local school, and all the teachers talked about how bright he was, especially
since they knew he had a diagnosis of AS. But now Frankie was in
grade three, and he was languishing near the bottom of the class. It was
not that he did not have the ability; everybody recognized his talents.
The problem was that Frankie was obsessed with flags of the world, and
this obsession consumed all his interest and his attention. He knew the
colors of every country’s flag and its design and would pore over flag
books for hours. He had a remarkable memory for these types of visual
designs. But in class he was learning nothing of the standard curriculum.
What had been cute at age four was now annoying. His teachers
complained that one day he would learn something and the next he
would forget it. He rarely paid attention, often wandered around the
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