Aspies For Freedom

This is on the Telegraph Newspaper's website, its comments from teachers on behaviour issues-

"One day last week a seven-year-old in my class who has Asperger's 'kicked off' non-stop from 9.20 to 3.50 - biting, punching, scratching, spitting, hissing, growling, screaming, throwing, running at walls, trying to break glass in door, etc. She's been excluded from two other schools, and her parents were not even asked to come and collect her. This week, she's back in school. Can anyone explain that?"

"Yes, I can. It's called inclusion, and Mr Blunkett thought it would be a nice idea."

"Can anyone offer suggestions on how to deal with the bizarre behaviour of a 12-year-old with severe Asperger's? He gets very angry very quickly and keeps shouting 'boring' and throwing things. He can't interact with the other pupils. I'm a newly qualified teacher and could use a little help."

"Do a bit of research on Asperger's."

"I disagree. I wouldn't research anything to do with extreme special needs; I've never been trained for them. If we put up with this, inclusion will be here to stay."

"Inclusion is a ridiculous idea and it can only be a matter of time before something happens to make Blair and co see this is so."

This is how one teacher summed it up:

"We're desperately keen to do the job to the best of our ability but we're prevented from doing so by the growing number of badly behaved kids, parents who not only don't support us but undermine us, senior management too interested in filing bits of paper to back their staff, and too many enforced changes to the curriculum."

link

Aspie or not, some kids are just brats. They wouldn't take it from an NT kid.

I think they need proper training before including kids with different needs all lumped together in one classroom.

Training will no doubt help, but surely the first step is to ensure the parents take proper responsiblity for disaplining their kids. I've said it before and I will say it again, AS is *not* an excuse for poor behaviour. True, a lot of aspies (me included at times) lash out in situations (or make very inappropriate comments) because we do not understand what is expected of us, and become frustrated as a result. The answer is not to wave the white flag, and let the AS child run wild, but attempt to discover the causes of his inappropriate behaviour and take steps to address that.

Futhermore, it ought to be accepted that there are certain kids on the autistic spectrum that cannot be mainstreamed.  Alternative learning environments must be provided for them. Lumping every child into a typical classroom setting and hoping everything goes well is merely a cost cutting mesure, which will have disasterous long-term effects (not only for the AS child, but also on the education of those he constantly distracts).