Neuronormative

Neuronormative refers to the dominant cultural framework that treats certain ways of thinking, feeling, sensing, and behaving—usually linear, verbal, regulated, and compliant—as normal, natural, and desirable, while positioning divergence from that standard as disruption, deficit, or disorder.

In schools, the neuronormative ideal shapes everything from classroom management to curriculum design, privileging children who sit still, speak on cue, and learn predictably, while pathologising those whose bodies move differently, whose emotions swell suddenly, or whose brilliance unfolds through nonconforming patterns.

To expose neuronormativity is to challenge the fantasy of a universal child—to name the systems that mistake homogeneity for harmony, and to demand an educational world capacious enough to honour neurodivergence not as a problem to fix, but as a variation to welcome, support, and celebrate.