I saw the teachers telling the kids that their lack of understanding simple things and their bad behaviour was because of their Autism and wasn't their fault. How is this teaching kids responsibiltity? I'm not suprised the kids were so unruly, they could just blame everything on their Autism as they had been told to do. How is that preparing them for the rest of their lives? The teachers were also telling them what a terrible thing Autism is which, from the look on the kids faces, was making them feel 'guilty' (as one girl put it) and ashamed (as one of the boys put it) of who they were and what they do. How is this teaching kids to be self-confident?
Grrrr :evil:
I also watched it and came to pretty much the same conculsions.
The most heart-breaking segment was when the lad who's Mum had recently dies was saying how sorry he was for being mean to her and causing her misery. It was obvious to me that being taught that autism was a bad thing would result in this boy believing it was his autism that made him do these things. Not once was it suggested that ALL teenagers, regardles of neurology are sometimes nasty to their mum and dad. The infernce was clear that his autism had made him do it.
I certainly would not send Megan to school under that Headteacher. I don't question her commitment but I do question her methods and her point of view.
I also sympathise with the person affected by his mum death. I also lost a parent due to cancer about 6-7 months ago. Personally I thought that Aspergers did actually help me in a way with my grief by putting it into a sort of perspective. I had a lot of help from my friends and my speech therapist/counsellor but I think AS did play a part.
On the question of Channel 4's intention's though I think they were trying to be genuinely understanding. However I also disagree with the strong bias taken by the Spa School, although judging from the interview in the Radio Times I think those of us who did read it saw what was coming.
Gareth wrote
I was very annoyed with the display of violence - they seemed to choose children who acted in a violent way and then blamed this violence on autism. This makes me worry a lot about the public image of autistics that is being painted.
I'm very concerned that a lot of people have this idea that autism causes violence. I don't see violence as an essential element of the aspie experience (beyond normal rough and tumble childhood play).
I believe this erroneous idea that autism is a cause of violence could lead to children who have the geuinely anti-social personality disorders or discipline problems being misdiagnosed as autistic. Have a look at this quote that I found in an academic article about AS;
"AS is sometimes used (mainly for administrative purposes) to describe children who do not easily "fit in" and whose behaviour is marked by aggressive outbursts and impulsivity."
This kind of sloppy misdiagnosis is a thing that we should be very concerned about. Why should we be put in a sutiation of having to advocate for troublesome people who aren't even autistic?
I've read that same translation of Asperger's paper a few times, but I didn't really get the impression that he thought the boys were especially malicious. Asperger did note emotional indifference, but that's different to malice. Asperger did mention the fact that some of these boys were bullied, so the reader can draw their own conclusions about the origin of any malice.
The one thing that did bother me about Asperger's paper was that he described one boy (Hellmuth) who obviously had some kind of feminising genetic syndrome or general brain damage, and few characteristics that were uniquely autistic, so he didn't belong in that paper in my opinion.
I've just read the excerpt from the article posted by Noetic, and it's horrifying. It certainly does seem to me that sociopaths are being misdiagnosed as autistic and mixed in with autistics. What does it say about the intelligence of the teachers when they are fooled into thinking the sociopaths are better students than the autistis? The autistic kids might be better off in mainstream schools with "normal" peers.
Hans Asperger wrote what he could in the context of Nazi Austria during the Second World War.
Stella
If you believe that autistics cannot learn
Well I don't think this and I'm at a loss as to why you think I would. But your response does tell me that you have misinterpreted the rest of my post so if you don't mind I'll refrain from answering your response because it baffles the *** out of me.
:shock: :?
:?:
Brightman, how easy it is for autistics to say the problems likes with NTs.
Can you rephrase that please, I don't get it.
Actually, you have described what you are doing with my words. How can I make assumptions about my own thoughts. That is illogical!
No, actually, I haven't. It is the only logical conclusion I could come to about your responses to my posts because you seem to totally miss any point I was making, invent your own and then respond to your own misinterpretation of my post and add a little retrospect of your own into your response that has nothing to do with what I said. eg:
Real communication and understanding sometimes takes longer than one instance of sending a message. Immediately, both yourself and Amy are saying their is miscommunication and misinterpretation from me, but cannot believe you have done the same with Make Me Normal.
refferring to the bit in blue - Why do you think that we are incapable of beliving in something without anything to suggest that this is the case? You have drawn conclusions from information that doesn't exist in my post. It is illogical, but you still did it.
You admit there is a huge barrier yet blame me. Again illogical.
Wrong again. It is perfectly logical. The barrier lies with trying to answer something in response to something I never said, I end up having to re-explain my posts over and over agin to people who continuosly re-word my posts in their own head so that they can respond to something that they understand rather than to what I've actually written - which is precisely what you have done :mad:
I'm not going to defend an argument or point of view I never made. It's pointless and I'm not going to be drawn into it. I have only ever encountered this problem on talking with NT's on forums when they didn't like the misunderstood interpretation of what I said. I'm not going to get into a row with you just because you HAVE misinterpreted what I said.
Brightman, you've decribed Saucecode's habits nicely here
you seem to totally miss any point I was making, invent your own and then respond to your own misinterpretation of my post and add a little retrospect of your own into your response that has nothing to do with what I said.
In reply to Noetic, Hellmuth, the supposed male case of AS documented by Asperger, had unexplained obesity, breasts, feminine hips, undescended testicles, possible microcephaly, a drooling problem, lax joints, and probable low muscle tone. His sexual characteristics were so pronounced that he had ben given hormones as medical therapy. The sum of these characteristics is highly suggestive of some kind of genetic syndrome that is not pure, standard autism. There is no way in the world that you can argue that Hellmuth is in any way typical of male aspies. None of the male aspies who I know have any of Hellmuth's distinctive problems, except perhaps the low muscle tone.
Kev wrote
I find it totally unsurprising that Moneer wanted to pretend he wasn't AS. If you went to a school where ASD's were routinely focussed on as a problem wouldn't you want to pretend you didn't have one? When a number of children expres the desire to kill themselves because of who they are I think we need to take a long hard look at the environment thats led them to believe this is an option. Self-confident kids don't want to top themselves. Kids who are routinely informed that they aren't getting on because of the way they are - an nothing else - are almost certainly going to experience increasing lack of confidence and self-worth.
When I read this passage it brought to mind some of the ideas in a book that I read years ago, "Learned optimism" by Martin Seligman. It was a book outlining a theory that depression is caused by a pessimistic thinking style and particular kinds of beliefs about the self and the world.
Now, if my memory serves me well Seligman argued that if a person tends to attribute the cause of bad things as being permanent characteristics and/or their own characteristics, then that is the kind of thinking that causes depression. An example would be a child thinking they were being bullied because of their own characteristic ("I'm autistic") or a permanent state of affairs ("I will always be autistic and that is why I'm being bullied"). But, I think Seligman would argue, if the autistic kid attributed the bullying behaviour to others ("I'm being bullied because I'm surrounded by bullies") or to non-permanent, changeable causes ("I'm being bullied because they don't like the way I dress or the things that I say"), then the kid would be less prone to developing clinical depression.
So I can only conclude that according to the learned optimism theory, a school that tells it's pupils that their problems are due to the pupils' own permanent characteristics is positively promoting the development of clinical depression in it's students. That's not a service that I would wish to have inflicted on my kids.
Neither am I.
Well lets leave it at that then.
A quick reminder for you Saucecode:
Quote:
I'm not going to defend an argument or point of view I never made. It's pointless and I'm not going to be drawn into it. I have only ever encountered this problem on talking with NT's on forums when they didn't like the misunderstood interpretation of what I said. I'm not going to get into a row with you just because you HAVE misinterpreted what I said.
Neither am I.
:roll:
AFF has an open door policy. I am begining to think that one should have to apply to become a member. free of course. but that will I think make for a more constructive site. Leave spectrumhaven with open enrollment.
One doesn't sail back to port because there is a barnacle on the bottom :wink:
Saucecode, Kev has said he does NOT want to argue with you, respect that and drop it.
Saucecode, you read my post, it was clear, do you think that we don't have better things to do than keep arguing just because you want to?