For the past few years or so, Wired magazine journalist Steve Silberman has been writing a book about autism and neurodiversity. His claim to fame in the field of autism is a magazine article he published about eleven years ago or so with the somewhat offensive title The Geek Syndrome in which he spoke of the rise of autism in the silicon valley and at the very least implied that math, science and computer genes were the culprit. I've already written about the fact that according to State Regional Center data, the rise of autism in the Silicon Valley has been no greater or less than the rise in diagnoses in other parts of the state. This magazine article was apparently so popular that Silberman has decided to write a much longer book length manuscript with neurodiversity being one of the main themes. I've had dialogues with Mr. Silberman, worried that he might trivialize my horrible disability. He explained to me that was not his intent and convinced me not to judge his book by its figurative cover.
I've awaited publication of Silberman's book with bated breath. For some reason, it's taken him a rather long time to write it in spite of the fact he apparently has a publishing contract and has undoubtedly been paid an advance. Originally, it was supposed to be published in 2013 but apparently it has been postponed until 2014. Judging from the company he keeps with Ari Ne'eman and other sterling individuals from the ND movement, I'm utterly curious as to what he'll write.
Recently Silberman authored a piece in wired magazine nearly a month ago which apparently I regrettably missed. Had I known about it, I would have written a blog about it sooner. Of course, there's the old saying better late than never.
If Silberman's future book is anything like this article my worrying certainly wasn't for naught.
I'd like to dissect certain talking points of the author.
First he quotes the person who coined the word 'neurodiversity' Judith Singer:
By autistic standards, the “normal” human brain is easily distractible,
is obsessively social, and suffers from a deficit of attention to
detail. “I was interested in the liberatory, activist aspects of it,”
Singer explained to journalist Andrew Solomon in 2008, “to do for
neurologically different people what feminism and gay rights had done
for their constituencies.”
My autism distracts me and impairs my concentration far beyond what a nonhandicapped person is capable of. I suspect it's the same in a lot of other people. I wish I could have improved social life and I suspect wanting to have friends and romance is not being obsessively social. Again, there is the offensive comparisons between women's and gay rights, when these people are not disabled and autistic people are.
One reason that the vast majority of autistic adults are chronically
unemployed or underemployed, consigned to make-work jobs like assembling
keychains in sheltered workshops, is because HR departments are
hesitant to hire workers who look, act, or communicate in
non-neurotypical ways—say, by using a keyboard and text-to-speech
software to express themselves, rather than by chattering around the
water cooler.
The reason the vast majority of autistics are unemployed are underemployed is because they have disabilities that impairs them from learning marketable skills such as plumbing, computer programming, going to law school etc. Also, because they have loud voices and poor social skills which most people find offensive. This is certainly true of people on the spectrum perfectly capable of speaking who have no need for keyboards or text to speech software, which certainly includes most members of the ND movement. I'm curious as to what autistic persons Silberman has even met besides Ari Ne'eman and Alex Plank and John Robison who are certainly outliers.
One way to understand neurodiversity is to remember that just because a
PC is not running Windows doesn’t mean that it’s broken.
I suppose this statement is true if the computer is a Macintosh or is running Linux. But a PC is certainly broken if there is a blue screen of death, there are not enough memory chips or the hard drive crashes. This is a better analogy, in my opinion, for autism. A Mac or a Linux computer is certainly functional, but a person with autism is impaired.
Silberman then goes on to give examples of persons with divergent thinking who went on to make great inventions or societal contributions. All of these individuals had dyslexia, not autism, which apparently is the subject of Silberman's forthcoming book. I suppose he could have mentioned Temple Grandin, but examples such as these are the exceptions and not the rule.
I was intrigued to find out that Ari Ne'eman and ASAN are working with the department of labor to develop jobs for autistic people. It's odd that as far as I can tell ASAN has not written about this on their web page or anywhere else. As I've repeatedly said, Ne'eman has never worked a day in his life or filled out a job application or had a job interview. I suspect the same is true for the bulk of graduate students and post doctoral fellows who populate ASAN's memberships and executive board. What the hell do Scott Robertson or Steve Kapp or Sarah Prippas know about employment? I will have to learn more about this if it is true and possibly write a blog post about it in the future.
Glad I encountered this article. I am even more piqued to read a copy of Silberman's book, possibly an advanced copy if I'm ever so fortunate. Sounds like this book if it is ever published must be a doozy.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Gadfly's thoughts on Grandin's latest book
Late last night I finished reading Temple Grandin's new book, The Autistic Brain To date, I feel it is her most interesting book. Also, it's extremely well written. Of course, Grandin had an assistant author (as she's had for many of her previous books) work with her, so it's hard to tell how much of the writing or even research comes from Grandin herself.
Grandin now concedes she was mistaken about all autistics being visual thinkers which is gratifying.
It deals with Grandin's pursuit of scientific answers about her own brain by becoming a research subject for various scientists. Most recently, a group in Utah scanned her brain. I already wrote A blog post about this previously.
To recap, the group didn't really find anything new or revolutionary that could be applied to all autistics in general or even Ms. Grandin in particular. They found an increased brain volume. This is a finding that has been found by other groups in other persons with autism.
They found her left lateral ventricle was much larger than her right. Grandin speculates that this could be the reason she's had trouble learning algebra and following directions. Scientists have said it's possible that the right ventricle was damaged somehow and the left ventricle grew much larger to compensate. This could explain some of Grandin's superior abilities in visual thinking and design, but more about this later.
Studies of her white fiber tracts using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging found highly connected areas of her brain to the visual cortex. This is something else that could explain some of her talents.
It showed a larger amygdala which Grandin felt might contribute to her anxiety attacks.
Cortical thickness in her left entorhinal cortices was greater than controls. This is a path that goes to the hippocampus, the structure in the brain that creates short term memories. This might be why Grandin has exceptional memory abilities.
She also stated that her cerebellum was 20% smaller than typical controls in a scan she underwent under the auspices of neuroscientist Eric Courchesne. She speculated that this might be why she's had impaired motor skills and has had trouble learning to ski. I was also a research subject of Courchesne's not long after Grandin. He found that part of my cerebellar vermis-a part of the cerebellum, but not the whole thing- was smaller than in normal controls. However, this finding has not been replicated in autopsies of post mortem brains. Motorically, many autistics are intact. The cerebellum controls both fine and gross motor coordination, and Grandin's ability to draw and perhaps other perceptual motor abilities are not impaired. I asked Courchesne why that might be and he told me that if the problem occurs early enough, a cerebellar impairment won't affect motor performance. Developmental lesions are different than adult lesions.
In addition to overconnectivity in some parts of an autistic brain, there have been findings of underconnectivity to areas involving longer connections. This may be why some abilities and social skills are impaired in autistic people while other areas, which have shorter connections to the brain, are intact or even greater than in non-autistics. This may explain superior abilities in some autistics.
Grandin also had a visual tract that was 400% larger than a typical control. However, it seems to me that drawing conclusions from one control subject is not really valid.
There is also the theory that this might help find a biomarker for autism, but I think we're a long way from that.
One of the problems with these findings, rampant in autism research, is that they are limited to persons on the higher end of the spectrum since more severely autistic persons have problems with compliance and sitting still in a scanner which would cause artifacts in the readings.
Scanners are also limited in finding certain things and postmortem autopsies may be a better way to go, though there's a shortage of autistic brains.
In the past, Grandin has implied that all cases of autism have one underlying genetic etiology, claiming that if autistic genes were eliminated from the gene pool we would have no creativity and every invention from the spear to the cell phone would never have been created. Some years ago, I wrote a piece attempting to refute that notion. She also stated that the reason autism genes have remained in the gene pool is that they serve some sort of evolutionary purpose.
Since her writings on that subject, the science seems to have refuted a lot of her past statements. For example, work done by Jonathan Sebat and others has found numerous cases of autism are precipitated by spontaneous mutations that aren't inherited. She now seems to have changed her tune to accommodate the change in times and concedes that there isn't one autism genes but rather many different genetic conditions, involving various modes of inheritance or spontaneous development of mutations can lead to this condition.
In spite of this, she still asserts that half of silicone valley are undiagnosed persons on the spectrum but provides no evidence of this.
One area in which she hasn't changed and is repetition from her previous writings is her pat solutions for helping autistic people become employed. She states that obsessions can be channeled into successful careers and only gives one or two isolated examples and applies this to the entire spectrum.
It is gratifying that she emphasizes the importance of social skills in gaining and maintaining employment. This is in contrast to neurodiversity advocate Ari Ne'eman, someone who has never worked or been to a job interview or filled out a job application, who has stated that social unpleasantry in the workplace should be overlooked as a criteria for hiring and evaluating people's job performance.
One aspect that I believe Grandin overlooks is the fact that neurotypical social skills can't be easily taught to autistics that that stressors in the workplace might trigger meltdowns and other episodes where socially unpleasant behavior will result in the autistic employee's termination. She states that an autistic's attention to details make him suited for a job as an airport security screener, overlooking the fact that this is a job involving people contact under sometimes adverse circumstances which the autistic might not be socially adroit enough to deal with.
Though I believe this book does have some flaws, I do recommend it as a worthwhile read.
Grandin now concedes she was mistaken about all autistics being visual thinkers which is gratifying.
It deals with Grandin's pursuit of scientific answers about her own brain by becoming a research subject for various scientists. Most recently, a group in Utah scanned her brain. I already wrote A blog post about this previously.
To recap, the group didn't really find anything new or revolutionary that could be applied to all autistics in general or even Ms. Grandin in particular. They found an increased brain volume. This is a finding that has been found by other groups in other persons with autism.
They found her left lateral ventricle was much larger than her right. Grandin speculates that this could be the reason she's had trouble learning algebra and following directions. Scientists have said it's possible that the right ventricle was damaged somehow and the left ventricle grew much larger to compensate. This could explain some of Grandin's superior abilities in visual thinking and design, but more about this later.
Studies of her white fiber tracts using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging found highly connected areas of her brain to the visual cortex. This is something else that could explain some of her talents.
It showed a larger amygdala which Grandin felt might contribute to her anxiety attacks.
Cortical thickness in her left entorhinal cortices was greater than controls. This is a path that goes to the hippocampus, the structure in the brain that creates short term memories. This might be why Grandin has exceptional memory abilities.
She also stated that her cerebellum was 20% smaller than typical controls in a scan she underwent under the auspices of neuroscientist Eric Courchesne. She speculated that this might be why she's had impaired motor skills and has had trouble learning to ski. I was also a research subject of Courchesne's not long after Grandin. He found that part of my cerebellar vermis-a part of the cerebellum, but not the whole thing- was smaller than in normal controls. However, this finding has not been replicated in autopsies of post mortem brains. Motorically, many autistics are intact. The cerebellum controls both fine and gross motor coordination, and Grandin's ability to draw and perhaps other perceptual motor abilities are not impaired. I asked Courchesne why that might be and he told me that if the problem occurs early enough, a cerebellar impairment won't affect motor performance. Developmental lesions are different than adult lesions.
In addition to overconnectivity in some parts of an autistic brain, there have been findings of underconnectivity to areas involving longer connections. This may be why some abilities and social skills are impaired in autistic people while other areas, which have shorter connections to the brain, are intact or even greater than in non-autistics. This may explain superior abilities in some autistics.
Grandin also had a visual tract that was 400% larger than a typical control. However, it seems to me that drawing conclusions from one control subject is not really valid.
There is also the theory that this might help find a biomarker for autism, but I think we're a long way from that.
One of the problems with these findings, rampant in autism research, is that they are limited to persons on the higher end of the spectrum since more severely autistic persons have problems with compliance and sitting still in a scanner which would cause artifacts in the readings.
Scanners are also limited in finding certain things and postmortem autopsies may be a better way to go, though there's a shortage of autistic brains.
In the past, Grandin has implied that all cases of autism have one underlying genetic etiology, claiming that if autistic genes were eliminated from the gene pool we would have no creativity and every invention from the spear to the cell phone would never have been created. Some years ago, I wrote a piece attempting to refute that notion. She also stated that the reason autism genes have remained in the gene pool is that they serve some sort of evolutionary purpose.
Since her writings on that subject, the science seems to have refuted a lot of her past statements. For example, work done by Jonathan Sebat and others has found numerous cases of autism are precipitated by spontaneous mutations that aren't inherited. She now seems to have changed her tune to accommodate the change in times and concedes that there isn't one autism genes but rather many different genetic conditions, involving various modes of inheritance or spontaneous development of mutations can lead to this condition.
In spite of this, she still asserts that half of silicone valley are undiagnosed persons on the spectrum but provides no evidence of this.
One area in which she hasn't changed and is repetition from her previous writings is her pat solutions for helping autistic people become employed. She states that obsessions can be channeled into successful careers and only gives one or two isolated examples and applies this to the entire spectrum.
It is gratifying that she emphasizes the importance of social skills in gaining and maintaining employment. This is in contrast to neurodiversity advocate Ari Ne'eman, someone who has never worked or been to a job interview or filled out a job application, who has stated that social unpleasantry in the workplace should be overlooked as a criteria for hiring and evaluating people's job performance.
One aspect that I believe Grandin overlooks is the fact that neurotypical social skills can't be easily taught to autistics that that stressors in the workplace might trigger meltdowns and other episodes where socially unpleasant behavior will result in the autistic employee's termination. She states that an autistic's attention to details make him suited for a job as an airport security screener, overlooking the fact that this is a job involving people contact under sometimes adverse circumstances which the autistic might not be socially adroit enough to deal with.
Though I believe this book does have some flaws, I do recommend it as a worthwhile read.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Will Karl Deisseroth and company bring "clarity" to uncovering the etiology of autism?
I was interested to read a piece in today's L.A. times about a Stanford University scientist named Karl Deisseroth who has developed a new technique to see better inside human brains. Neurons (brain cells) have a covering over the part called the axon which is a myelin sheath or white matter which helps transport electrical impulses down them so that they can communicate with other neurons. The myelin sheath is made of fatty materials which cause postmortem brains to be opaque so that certain details cannot be seen.
The Stanford scientists developed a technique where they replaced the fatty myelin tissue with substances that included acrylamide, bisacrylamide and formaldehyde. These don't interfere with light diffraction the way the fatty tissue of myelin does, enabling various parts of a postmortem brain to be viewed that couldn't be otherwise.
The researchers call this technique CLARITY (Clear Lipid-exchanged Anatomically Rigid Imaging/immunostaining compatible Tissue hYdrogel).
They initially studied mouse brains.
One of the first human brains they studied belonged to an autistic individual. They found a neuron that apparently looped back onto itself rather than communicating with adjoining cells. Also neurons in the frontal lobe of this individual revealing "ladder-like" patterns in the neurons. They stated this was similar to a finding in Down's syndrome. This is in spite of the fact that in my reading of some stuff by Dr. Manuel Casanova, Down's syndrome brains are much smaller than normal and autistic brains are initially larger, undergoing an abnormal period of growth during a child's initial development and then tapering off.
I don't have the times article online handy, but another articlesummarizes this research well.
Dr. Deisseroth seemed to think it was not unquestionable that this finding could be key in understanding the etiology of autism, though I'm skeptical myself.
Prior to this, brains were sliced into small millimeter segments. It was difficult to see how various cells or circuits connected to each other. Also, the tissue could not be used for subsequent experiments. This new technique may help resolve these problems.
I'd also be interested in knowing what glial cell abnormalities they might find in autistic individuals since scientists have begun to recognize the importance of glia. Previously, they were just thought to provide supporting functions to neurons.
Here's hoping that this technique will help revolutionize our understanding of the etiology of autism so that we know what causes it and make it more likely a cure will be found at some point in time.
The Stanford scientists developed a technique where they replaced the fatty myelin tissue with substances that included acrylamide, bisacrylamide and formaldehyde. These don't interfere with light diffraction the way the fatty tissue of myelin does, enabling various parts of a postmortem brain to be viewed that couldn't be otherwise.
The researchers call this technique CLARITY (Clear Lipid-exchanged Anatomically Rigid Imaging/immunostaining compatible Tissue hYdrogel).
They initially studied mouse brains.
One of the first human brains they studied belonged to an autistic individual. They found a neuron that apparently looped back onto itself rather than communicating with adjoining cells. Also neurons in the frontal lobe of this individual revealing "ladder-like" patterns in the neurons. They stated this was similar to a finding in Down's syndrome. This is in spite of the fact that in my reading of some stuff by Dr. Manuel Casanova, Down's syndrome brains are much smaller than normal and autistic brains are initially larger, undergoing an abnormal period of growth during a child's initial development and then tapering off.
I don't have the times article online handy, but another articlesummarizes this research well.
Dr. Deisseroth seemed to think it was not unquestionable that this finding could be key in understanding the etiology of autism, though I'm skeptical myself.
Prior to this, brains were sliced into small millimeter segments. It was difficult to see how various cells or circuits connected to each other. Also, the tissue could not be used for subsequent experiments. This new technique may help resolve these problems.
I'd also be interested in knowing what glial cell abnormalities they might find in autistic individuals since scientists have begun to recognize the importance of glia. Previously, they were just thought to provide supporting functions to neurons.
Here's hoping that this technique will help revolutionize our understanding of the etiology of autism so that we know what causes it and make it more likely a cure will be found at some point in time.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
free download of my novel 4/1-4/5
They say that the best things in life aren't free. Well maybe my novel, "The Mu Rhythm Bluff" isn't the best thing in life, but it's going to be free. At least between April 1 and April 5. It's my own way of kicking off autism awareness month. I won't be able to offer it free again until July I don't think, the way that Amazon works. Of course normally it's less than three dollars so it's still a bargain. Not easy to sell ebooks as I'm beginning to find out. Let's see if I can give at least a few copies away. Again, here's the link to the novel in case anyone's interested: link here for free download from April 1 to April 5.
Monday, March 25, 2013
has autism speaks hired its first autistic employee?
For a long time now, I've complained about the fact that autism speaks advocates that businesses hire autistics, but as far as I've known, has never hired an autistic person as a paid employee to work in their organization. It would appear that this has recently changed. I must say, if Kerry Magro is a paid employee in their organization, I'm gratified.
His official title is "Social Marketing Coordinator". I'm trying to figure out what a social marketing coordinator does. Mr. Magro, in the post, is quite vague about what his job entails. I'm rather curious.
Magro is an individual I'm already somewhat familiar with as he has posted not infrequently on autism speaks' web pages and blogs. He's been described as an "autism speaks staffer", though it was unclear to me just what specifically his position was with autism speaks, what he did for them besides write a few blog posts and whether this was a paid position or not. A couple of years ago I wrote a previous blog post where I took Mr. Magro to task for recommending there be affirmative action for autistics in the workplace and autism speaks publishing this on their blog when they had apparently never hired an autistic employee.
The post states that Magro was involved in some sort of employment think tank that autism speaks was conducting. I have to wonder about the credibility of someone quite young, barely out of college, who as far as I could tell has never worked before, being included in an endeavor like this. Though Kerry has some unique qualifications that others in the think tank probably don't have, i.e. being on the spectrum himself, I have to wonder about a program that includes the input of someone with so little experience in the actual workplace. I have to wonder what this program is like, what the other people's qualifications may have been.
I'm glad now that AS is starting to practice what they preach and giving an individual with autism (albeit an extremely high functioning one) a chance at a mainstream job. I hope this works out for Kerry Magro and he can perhaps be a credit and an asset to an organization marred with all sorts of problems, which, at least in my opinion so far, has not been very helpful to persons with autism.
However, Magro is highly functioning and educated, in the process of obtaining a masters degree. What of persons (probably myself included) who don't function at Magro's level? Will autism speaks offer them employment in less executive type jobs (I'm assuming a social marketing coordinator is a more executive job, though I have no idea what this position entails as I've said before) such as data entry or even filing or janitorial work. Perhaps now that AS has become enlightened enough to hire one autistic person, perhaps they could hire some others. Of course, perhaps hiring a less functional autistic as a janitor might be considered bad publicity and this apparent sock puppet of the ND movement might be worried about flack they would get from ND's who might take umbrage at any autistic working a menial job.
I see that AS has a new employment tool kit coming out soon. I await this with bated breath.
Again, I wish Magro luck in his new position (whatever it is) and I hope AS will hire other paid employees on the spectrum.
As a side note to this post, I hope you can read it as the logo for my new novel may be getting in the way. I apologize to any readers of autism's gadfly for any inconvenience this might cause, but I don't know how to make it smaller or position it in a place more suitable and I still want to promote my novel.
His official title is "Social Marketing Coordinator". I'm trying to figure out what a social marketing coordinator does. Mr. Magro, in the post, is quite vague about what his job entails. I'm rather curious.
Magro is an individual I'm already somewhat familiar with as he has posted not infrequently on autism speaks' web pages and blogs. He's been described as an "autism speaks staffer", though it was unclear to me just what specifically his position was with autism speaks, what he did for them besides write a few blog posts and whether this was a paid position or not. A couple of years ago I wrote a previous blog post where I took Mr. Magro to task for recommending there be affirmative action for autistics in the workplace and autism speaks publishing this on their blog when they had apparently never hired an autistic employee.
The post states that Magro was involved in some sort of employment think tank that autism speaks was conducting. I have to wonder about the credibility of someone quite young, barely out of college, who as far as I could tell has never worked before, being included in an endeavor like this. Though Kerry has some unique qualifications that others in the think tank probably don't have, i.e. being on the spectrum himself, I have to wonder about a program that includes the input of someone with so little experience in the actual workplace. I have to wonder what this program is like, what the other people's qualifications may have been.
I'm glad now that AS is starting to practice what they preach and giving an individual with autism (albeit an extremely high functioning one) a chance at a mainstream job. I hope this works out for Kerry Magro and he can perhaps be a credit and an asset to an organization marred with all sorts of problems, which, at least in my opinion so far, has not been very helpful to persons with autism.
However, Magro is highly functioning and educated, in the process of obtaining a masters degree. What of persons (probably myself included) who don't function at Magro's level? Will autism speaks offer them employment in less executive type jobs (I'm assuming a social marketing coordinator is a more executive job, though I have no idea what this position entails as I've said before) such as data entry or even filing or janitorial work. Perhaps now that AS has become enlightened enough to hire one autistic person, perhaps they could hire some others. Of course, perhaps hiring a less functional autistic as a janitor might be considered bad publicity and this apparent sock puppet of the ND movement might be worried about flack they would get from ND's who might take umbrage at any autistic working a menial job.
I see that AS has a new employment tool kit coming out soon. I await this with bated breath.
Again, I wish Magro luck in his new position (whatever it is) and I hope AS will hire other paid employees on the spectrum.
As a side note to this post, I hope you can read it as the logo for my new novel may be getting in the way. I apologize to any readers of autism's gadfly for any inconvenience this might cause, but I don't know how to make it smaller or position it in a place more suitable and I still want to promote my novel.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Mu Rhythm Bluff, a novel by Jonathan Mitchell
As regular readers of my blog know, I've been talking about it for quite some time. I was working on self-publishing my novel "The Mu Rhythm Bluff". By clicking on this link, you can go to Amazon and read the first few chapters for free. If you're interested and you have a Kindle, you can purchase it for less than $3.00. You can also check out the artwork by my talented cover artist, Liz Ingersoll. I'm not sure if she has a web site that I can link to in case you want to hire her for a project, but if I find out about one if she gives my consent to give her business a plug, I'll do so and edit this post.
Some people are lucky at cards, others are lucky at love. Drake Dumas is neither. He loves to play poker, though he nearly always loses. He's 49 years old and still a virgin. He either can't get up the nerve to ask women out or he's constantly rejected due to his behavior.
After losing his job, incurring gambling debts and having to move back in with his parents, he hears of an experimental treatment involving suppression of brain waves called Mu rhythms. Also, transcranial magnetic stimulation which can be used to enhance or inhibit the brain.
Instead of mitigating his autism, it appears to turn him into an expert poker player, unbeatable by even world class players. When word gets around of his poker prowess, his luck with women seems to change. However, the old French proverb lucky at cards, unlucky at love does seem to ring true for Drake. He only seems to have his poker prowess when he's celibate and not involved with a woman. When he loses the girl, the poker skills return.
He must get to the bottom of this and find a way to permanently keep his skills. His situation is also complicated by a beguiling reporter who writes an article trivializing his disability and won't seem to leave him alone. Will she cause danger for Drake?
In the process Drake may learn some things about himself, his autism and love.
As some already know, this is not my first novel. I have also written several short stories, 14 of them are on my web page which you can check out. My first novel, "The School of Hard Knocks" was about the experiences of a young autistic boy in an abusive special education school. I was not able to get it published and I probably won't bother publishing it on Kindle Direct Publishing without some serious revision, which I may or may not do at some point.
I believe my second novel is closer to publishable quality but may still not be there. However, I don't know how I can make it better and don't have thousands of bucks to pay a book doctor or editor, who may not even be helpful. So, here it is, ready or not. I was able to read "The School of Hard Knocks" on a national radio program, so maybe I can repeat that with this one and sell a few more copies. I submitted an earlier version and have sold two copies as of this writing. It had a few problems, so I resubmitted it. I apologize to those who bought the first two copies and I notified amazon and hopefully whoever you are, you can get the updated copy without additional charge or problems.
Now, I have to work on getting a side bar in the artwork and a link, hopefully I'll be able to do this.
I know everyone is enthralled with the 1 in 50 story (which I may write about in a subsequent post), but maybe you can take a break from that, and check out my novel.
Again if the concept of this novel appeals to you or you've just been a reader of my blog and want to help me out, buy the book and help me out. Thanks in advance to anyone who does so.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Does neurodiversity help teach special ed students
I've just read an interesting piece by Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a former special education teacher and now, I believe a clinical psychologist, endorsing the neurodiversity model as a solution to the problems of special education students. Dr. Armstrong a couple years ago or so, wrote a book about neurodiversity. I've written a take on Dr. Armstrong's book in a previous post.
Journalist Steve Silberman, whom I'm now following on twitter, was nice enough to give this article a shout out. Mr. Silberman, for the past few years, has been writing another book about neurodiversity which I'm waiting to read with bated breath. Originally publication was slated for 2013, but I guess Silberman wants to take his time to write the book or for some other reason, the publication date has been moved up to 2014 :(.
Dr. Armstrong seems to believe that the deficit model of special education does not help students. He takes umbrage at terms like "moron", "learning disability", etc. Though the word moron's meaning has changed in recent years to insult people, at one time it was a classification for persons with severe retardation which was a non-offensive part of nomenclature.
He talks of a variety of studies that he intimates would help special ed students such as Baron-Cohen's work with extremely high functioning persons with autism. Yet in the same vein, uses classifications of persons with serious mental retardation. He cites work showing creativity in persons with bipolar disorders as well.
Armstrong seems long on superficial general examples but rather short on specific suggestions on how this can help educate special education students or the benefits they can accrue from taking this approach. In his article, he does not cite a single example of a student who has benefited from this approach or how they were benefited.
Dr. Armstrong, unlike Ari Ne'eman, seems to acknowledge that those with a neurodiversity perspective do not seem to think of autism as a disability he writes:
The concept is neurodiversity. The term, which was coined by Australian autism-activist Judy Singer and American journalist Harvey Blume in the late 1990s, suggests that what we've called in the past "disabilities" ought to be described instead as "differences" or "diversities." Proponents of neurodiversity encourage us to apply the same attitudes that we have about biodiversity and cultural diversity to an understanding of how different brains are wired.
I must commend Dr. Armstrong for his honesty in telling us what neurodiversity really means, rather than the usual strawman arguments I hear that because I don't like neurodiversity that I'm opposed to human rights for disabled or "differently abled" persons.
I tweeted back to Silberman that I doubted that he or Dr. Armstrong had ever spent a day of their lives as special ed students, as opposed to the eight years of my life which I was in private special ed schools in the pre IDEA days. Though I realize Dr. Armstrong at one time was a special ed teacher (rather than a journalist like Silberman), I still question how much he really knows about the perspective of the special ed students.
I'm still waiting for Dr. Armstrong to give a specific example of a person who was helped by his approach. He failed to do so in his book. I wrote a pretty extensive comment on his book not long after it was published that I linked to above and the interested reader can check that out. I was disappointed that Dr. Armstrong still fails to do so in this article.
Again, I take umbrage to Armstrong's comparison of peta lillys or people from Holland not living at a high altitude and comparing this with the struggles that those of us with disabilities have to go through every day.
He unfortunately mentions Ari Ne'eman in his article. Though Ne'eman was not as honest as he was when he denied that he had ever stated that autism was a disability and then tried to cover up his belief when I provided documentation to the contrary on this blog.
I also wonder about Silberman's point of view as he told me when I first wrote to him about his planned book that he did not plan to trivialize the devastation that autism causes to some. This would seem evidence to the contrary.
I guess I'll just have to be patient until Silberman publishes his book, so I can give my take on autism's gadfly, which I'm still anticipating.
Addendum: Silberman has now blocked me on twitter, just for politely disagreeing with him and judging his and Dr. Armstrong's ability to assess the needs of special education students because they themselves were never special ed students. Someone else on twitter called my account there a "troll account". Yet more examples of how much neurodiversity loves to dish it out, but can't even take the most polite criticism.
Journalist Steve Silberman, whom I'm now following on twitter, was nice enough to give this article a shout out. Mr. Silberman, for the past few years, has been writing another book about neurodiversity which I'm waiting to read with bated breath. Originally publication was slated for 2013, but I guess Silberman wants to take his time to write the book or for some other reason, the publication date has been moved up to 2014 :(.
Dr. Armstrong seems to believe that the deficit model of special education does not help students. He takes umbrage at terms like "moron", "learning disability", etc. Though the word moron's meaning has changed in recent years to insult people, at one time it was a classification for persons with severe retardation which was a non-offensive part of nomenclature.
He talks of a variety of studies that he intimates would help special ed students such as Baron-Cohen's work with extremely high functioning persons with autism. Yet in the same vein, uses classifications of persons with serious mental retardation. He cites work showing creativity in persons with bipolar disorders as well.
Armstrong seems long on superficial general examples but rather short on specific suggestions on how this can help educate special education students or the benefits they can accrue from taking this approach. In his article, he does not cite a single example of a student who has benefited from this approach or how they were benefited.
Dr. Armstrong, unlike Ari Ne'eman, seems to acknowledge that those with a neurodiversity perspective do not seem to think of autism as a disability he writes:
The concept is neurodiversity. The term, which was coined by Australian autism-activist Judy Singer and American journalist Harvey Blume in the late 1990s, suggests that what we've called in the past "disabilities" ought to be described instead as "differences" or "diversities." Proponents of neurodiversity encourage us to apply the same attitudes that we have about biodiversity and cultural diversity to an understanding of how different brains are wired.
I must commend Dr. Armstrong for his honesty in telling us what neurodiversity really means, rather than the usual strawman arguments I hear that because I don't like neurodiversity that I'm opposed to human rights for disabled or "differently abled" persons.
I tweeted back to Silberman that I doubted that he or Dr. Armstrong had ever spent a day of their lives as special ed students, as opposed to the eight years of my life which I was in private special ed schools in the pre IDEA days. Though I realize Dr. Armstrong at one time was a special ed teacher (rather than a journalist like Silberman), I still question how much he really knows about the perspective of the special ed students.
I'm still waiting for Dr. Armstrong to give a specific example of a person who was helped by his approach. He failed to do so in his book. I wrote a pretty extensive comment on his book not long after it was published that I linked to above and the interested reader can check that out. I was disappointed that Dr. Armstrong still fails to do so in this article.
Again, I take umbrage to Armstrong's comparison of peta lillys or people from Holland not living at a high altitude and comparing this with the struggles that those of us with disabilities have to go through every day.
He unfortunately mentions Ari Ne'eman in his article. Though Ne'eman was not as honest as he was when he denied that he had ever stated that autism was a disability and then tried to cover up his belief when I provided documentation to the contrary on this blog.
I also wonder about Silberman's point of view as he told me when I first wrote to him about his planned book that he did not plan to trivialize the devastation that autism causes to some. This would seem evidence to the contrary.
I guess I'll just have to be patient until Silberman publishes his book, so I can give my take on autism's gadfly, which I'm still anticipating.
Addendum: Silberman has now blocked me on twitter, just for politely disagreeing with him and judging his and Dr. Armstrong's ability to assess the needs of special education students because they themselves were never special ed students. Someone else on twitter called my account there a "troll account". Yet more examples of how much neurodiversity loves to dish it out, but can't even take the most polite criticism.
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