Culture shapes

Imagine a cathedral with many people in it. The space has a central region and many alcoves. Here is a depiction of culture using this analogy.

IEP Handout

The following is a handout geared towards autistic mid-school students. It contains organizing thoughts and activity ideas for them to take a leading role in their IEP.

PDF Version of IEP handout

Big ideas for people with IEPs

The law guarantees free, appropriate education to everyone, in the least restrictive environment. For 10% of students (that’s you), your parents and teachers have determined that mainstream classes are not appropriate or not flexible enough to meet your needs. IEPs are plans for how the school will follow the law so that you get an appropriate education. “General education” is the name for mainstream classes, and “special education” is the name for all the separate classes and additional services that are set up for students with IEPs.

The goals of your IEP should state

• The educational standard or level that you intend to reach. It may be the same as the standards for general education, or it may be more or less than that (or more in one area and less in others).
• How the school will give you the opportunity to reach that level.
• How you will adapt to what the school can provide. (The school cannot teach you exactly how you want it. It is always a compromise and you meet in the middle.)

It’s a free country. No one can require you to change your personality, beliefs or learning style, unless it is harmful to others.

People change. You may have had a certain unhelpful behavior pattern, but that’s not a good focus for the IEP because it is negative, probably temporary, and it may not be caused by what people think.

You (and family) are in control. You have to agree to the plan. You don’t have to accept special ed status at all. If having a label doesn’t help you, ignore it.

Debate topics

Inclusion versus separate classes – What’s appropriate? – Should you be able to learn whatever you want? – How much accommodation is reasonable?

Creative assignment

1. Design a perfect school for yourself, either in pictures, notes, or paragraphs. Or describe a perfect school day. Base it on your strengths and interests. You can include ideas like no tests, no bullies, be able to study kangaroos all day, whatever would make it an exciting place to study subjects you like, and would help you be successful – in whatever way you understand success.
2. Discuss with a teacher: In your perfect school, would you reach a higher or lower level in any subject area, compared to the real school? Is there something about your unique personality or disability that means you should reach a different level?
3. Discuss with a teacher: In you perfect school, what is different about the environment or the way things are done? Is there something about your unique personality or disability that requires things to be done differently?
4. “Accommodations” are what the school has to do differently for you based on your IEP. Look at the list of common accommodations. Which of these would you like to have, and which do you really need? What other ones do you need? Find a way to meet in the middle – something that you can adapt to, and a school can actually do.

 

On Measurement

The empathy test

Here’s a report on some “research” that “measures” the amount of empathy people have:

Looking at their test questions, it becomes immediately clear that the test is a composite of several different things. All together, these things are labeled “empathy” and the implication is that the more of it you have, the better. Before I get into why this does not qualify as research, I’ll elaborate about their test.

Here are four of the questions from the empathy test:

• I can easily tell if someone wants to enter a conversation.
• I can pick up if someone says one thing but means another.
• I am quick to spot when someone is feeling awkward or uncomfortable.
• I can sense if I’m intruding, even if the other person doesn’t tell me.

These four questions apparently measure the ability to read what someone else is thinking or feeling, or what their motivation is. Now, here is a set of different questions, which are apparently designed to measure the extent to which a person internalizes the emotions of others:

• I tend to get emotionally involved with a friend’s problems.
• It upsets me to see an animal in pain.

A Field Guide to Earthlings: An autistic/Asperger view of neurotypical behavior

This blog post exists for comments/discussion about the book “A Field Guide to Earthlings: An autistic/Asperger view of neurotypical behavior.” The book has a separate web site, where you can read the first part of the book.

I’m interested in hearing what readers have to say.
-Ian

Beating at Albuquerque RTC

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, recounted in Mathew 25, the people of the world gather before the King and he explains to the first group “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” They don’t remember ever doing those things for the King, so he clarifies that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I heard this as a child, and it meant a lot to me. I’ve since visited a half dozen prisons and another half dozen lockdown treatment facilities. I feel I need to know what is going on with the least of us – those in greatest need. I doubt we can move beyond war and torture if we cannot also move beyond the primitive ways we treat the least of our own people. In facilities everywhere, we are relying almost exclusively on powerful drugs and authoritarian regimes of reward and punishment to normalize those we cannot live with. And in some cases still using electric shock. And in some cases still beating them.

And in some cases, after doing all this, we are hiding in secrecy, and hiring a PR firm to create a positive “spin” on it, possibly to protect shareholder interests? I cried about the beating, but I’m almost as sad about the fact that management appears to distance themselves from responsibility, and the system of accountability is failing.

This news report shows a beating and a possible cover-up at Camelot RTC in Albuqerque.

Here are five questions I want answers to:

1. Is residential treatment the last resort? When is it the right choice?

2. Are the other ways of growth and healing that we should be using, other than drugs and behavior coercion?

3. How can the system honor the spirit of each person involved, accepting that a child’s path of development may have a higher purpose and may not be evident to those around him?

4. What is the proper place of the profit motive in RTCs?

5. What is the correct balance between transparency of operations and protection of individual privacy when children are outside the home?

Neurotypical indirection

There are several kinds of indirection employed in neurotypical communication.

Indirection using metaphor

The dimension of metaphor runs from LITERAL to METAPHORICAL, and indicates the degree of substitution in communication. Metaphor is a manner of speech using a substitute or proxy for the intended thing. A great example from Look Me In the Eye is when a taxi driver approaches an apartment complex to drop oft the passenger, and asks “Where are you?”, which is a substitute for “Which apartment is yours?” An autistic passenger said “I’m right here,” because she missed the metaphorical indirection. In order to decode metaphor, the listener has to test multiple meanings and determine which is the suitable level of indirection for the current situation.

Indirection using ambiguity

The dimension of ambiguity runs from UNITARY to AMBIGUOUS, and indicates the degree to which multiple meanings are included in one expression. The sentence “I’m not going to be there until you get there” does not specify the reason for being late. It leaves open the possibility that the lateness is an invitation to go together, or a threat of some kind. A statement that has a tone/inflection or gesture that doesn’t match creates an ambiguous way of saying it. A message given as a question or with a “maybe” (or some other noncommital word) or in the subjunctive mood can express vagueness, or a range of possibilities without nailing down one of them. An autistic listener might be confused, and not seek out multiple meanings, or might assume the simplest one. (In the example above, the autistic might understand that the speaker has a prior commitment until the approximate hour when she happens to be going, and nothing more than that). In order to decode ambiguity, the listener has to understand all meanings at the same time, without discarding some of them or settling on any one.

Sarcasm is the particular case of ambiguity that includes two opposites in the same expression.

“Crediblity Machine”, a transit planning model

This is a presentation I did at the Podcar City conference in San Jose, CA, October 2010.

CredibilityMachine (pdf)

Compact thoughts on autism 2009-2010

The following 13 sections are emails on various autism-related topics.

Tysons Corner PRT Route Design

I said on a list that this design was scary, and was challenged to make another design, so here it is. In the attached PDF is a map of Tysons Corner and the procedure used to determine the PRT route.

TysonsCornerPRT (PDF)

Autistic education

This paper summarizes my view of the education of autistic students.

On a recent trip to the library, I read a few dozen scholarly articles and teacher’s manuals related to autistic education. While all of the articles talked about measuring success, not one of them defined success. The unwritten purpose in that literature is to normalize students’ behavior, regardless of whether normalization benefits anyone. If this is how the world is handling autism, then to the extent that we are “successful”, we are breaking down, and spiritually asphyxiating the next generation. Autistic students need a whole different kind of education, as I will show below.

But first, what is school? I don’t accept the myth that schools exist to happily pass on the accumulated wisdom of the ages to serve the next generation. Schooling is compulsory; if it were so desirable, there would be no need to enforce it. Schools are a political battleground in which truth and priorities are contested (not by students) and students are exposed to the version of truth that serves the interests of those in power. Since power is diverse and incompletely centralized in our semi-democratic society, the battle is never won; school is an ongoing laboratory or microcosm that reflects its enclosing political divides. It forms the first rungs of the ladder of social competition, by setting academic, athletic and popularity standards, then constantly testing the contestants and sorting them into levels.

Thus, the modern school is a supremely non-autistic place in its very conception. The self-identification that arises from the results of the sorting process is contrary to the independent cognitive style characteristic of autistics. Autistics are predetermined to lose in a system whose basis is striving to converge on a commonly defined pinnacle of achievement. To make society a place where autistics have equal rights and dignity, our schools have to respect the way we relate to authority and submission, not just coerce us into the standard competitive model.

The purpose of autistic education should be to permit the students to excel in their own particular directions, rather than as measured by a common standard. Facilitating the development of each person’s unique greatness will build a society with adult autistics who contribute at our highest potential. The special role of autistics is to diverge, pull society in many directions, to be outliers, curanderas, shamans, and hermits. Only a few of those outliers will be “great” in the sense of widely recognized contributions, but all can work towards our own potential. Schooling designed for autistics should therefore honor our creative and independent nature, and help us be more fully autistic, rather than less. It should never try to make us imitate convergent people; that will only lead to empty shells of adults who are disabled and ineffective.