Education For Children With The Autism Spectrum Disorder: Adapting To Cure Tomorrow
Education plays the key role in establishing the foundation to a child’s future. This is especially substantial in terms of ensuring children on the autism spectrum “survive and thrive”. The schooling system in North America is generally structured for students to attain the skillset required for traditional mass production jobs, but in a time and age where technology is continuously evolving, changes must begin to occur in order for humans to survive the new work environment requiring competition with the internet and artificial intelligence.
In Joi Ito’s article “The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals”, he focuses on adapting versus “curing” people on the autism spectrum. Ito uses this to shed light on how some people in the autistic spectrum have extraordinary abilities overlooked, but the stigma attached causes parents to have the mindset to attempt “curing” or forcing their children to be “normal”. He suggests it is important to have educational systems, and society begin adapting instead of seeking to “cure” people on the autism spectrum in order to achieve neurodiversity. The author explores the school system and criticizes them in unsuccessfully providing children on the autism spectrum with a skillset that is necessary for today’s society. He broadens his thoughts on how the system provides students a basic and rigid structure of education which non-neurotypicals will struggle with. Ito conveys the idea of empowering learning instead. This consists of finding a new approach to teaching such as “interest-driven learning, project-based learning, and undirected learning”.
According to Ben Draper in charge of the Macomber Centre for Self Directed Learning, children identified on the autistic spectrum by their parents, tend to thrive at the centre, whereas they struggled in the conventional schools. He believes that the best way for children to learn is through following their passions, therefore, providing them the support required and opportunity is the way to go. Furthermore, Ito speaks on behalf of his own experience of suffering through the traditional school system and states his belief that even though some children are competent with the current composition of society, the other immense amount failing still have potential they can contribute that school systems are not providing opportunities for or even looking into.
Changing the way education systems are by providing self-learning opportunities for non-neurotypicals is a way to adapt rather than cure neurodiverse students. Ito then comes back to the idea of shifting out of the old ways of teaching and embracing neurodiversity. *transition Society today and traditionally has mere tolerance and empathy towards people who lack social skills or do not fall into the “normal” category according to Ito. He provides readers with a statistic for non-neurotypicals, being one in 39 people diagnosed on the autistic spectrum and with the numbers for ADHD and Dyslexia included, totalling up to about 1 in 4 people who are non-neurotypicals. This gives the readers insight on how many people are suffering following the traditional structured schooling system driven by what society believes should be the focus. The author also uses the example given by animal welfare advocate Temple Grandin (who is also on the autism spectrum) who argues that many famous people such as Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Mozart and Nikola Tesla fall under the autistic spectrum category today. She then concludes that autism has helped to advance in human development and that neurological differences should be respected the same way that gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity is. This example is given by Ito to go back to his argument that society should be focusing more on adapting versus curing. The author believes that mental health problems root from trying to “fix” some types of neurodiversity or just by being insensitive to the individual. As a solution, Ito proposes providing appropriate accommodations to living, schooling or interaction is the correct way.
Another subject the authors touches on is the stigma attached to autism, which blinds society from realizing that they have potential. Ito emphasizes the gift that many people on the autism spectrum withhold. He states that people with Asperger’s and other types of autism often hold unusual abilities. That being said, these skills can be put into good use, such as the special force has in Israel. The special intelligence defense force unit 9900 specializes in analyzing aerial and satellite imagery. They put the remarkable skills of the people on the autistic spectrum towards recognizing patterns. Ito talks about how their ability to spot patterns and other unusual traits suit the engineering and science field very well gifting the beyond normal with abilities to write computer code, comprehend complicated ideas, and come to solutions for difficult mathematical problems. The author also believes the culture putting little value on the “dominating” conventional social and corporate values are behind some of the great success of the Silicon Valley.
