Welcome to From the Spectrum Podcast. This is
a podcast about autism. It is my goal to explain
what is autism. I plan to use a mixture of scientific
literature, personal experience, and opinion.
With opinion, I will explain why I feel the way
I do and give examples. I will provide links
to various references for each episode. For each
episode, we will discuss various aspects of autism.
The From the Spectrum podcast will mostly avoid
causes of autism and I will try avoiding the
increase of diagnoses of late. This is like playing
tug of war with barbed wire and I don't think
I want to travel down that path. For today's
episode, we will cover autism and education.
Any conversation around education ought to be
taken serious. The conversation about education
is dangerous. It's touchy. Autism and education
adds to the heated discussion. There is so much
going on in education, even within a single school
building. Many types, many differences with curriculum,
learners, educators, corporations, staff members,
rules and regulations. With autism, autism will
grab attention of those involved. Staff, For
the most part, even educated staff on the topic
are uneducated. Education cannot and should not
have much weight on their opinion. Undergraduate
level to, well, all the way up the highest degree.
Some of this population needs to reconsider.
their involvement. In the show notes I mentioned
the podcast is for the lay public and professionals.
Mostly in education they are distributed somewhere
in between. It is my goal for this episode that
others involved with people with autism can receive
further information so they can make informed
decisions either for themselves or for their
loved ones. Parents get hitched on their opinion,
their meaning school staff. What's coming out
of the school building? Which should count, but
it needs to be considered. their knowledge, their
education, their experience of autism. Is it
enough? And one should consider the goal of the
school is to have the child docile and behaving
correctly to the school's definition as much
and as fast as possible. and whatever is needed
to make that happen. At times, humans have enough.
They want solutions, answers. They want things
taken care of. And to qualify my comments, undergraduate
level, teachers to support service type, or even
master's level, Staff are not qualified to understand
autism's full complexity. Few are. Now, I realize,
unless it is a school psychologist in which they
should still be questioned, diagnosing autism
does not come from here. It takes specialization,
certain licenses, but more importantly, experience
and the ability to remove implicit biases, to
quiet those when dealing with the other person,
the person with autism or the suspected autism.
However, It only shows the vast and deeply rooted
biases these adults will have. Remember, humans
love to take control, feel like they are helping,
and humans love to have their beliefs confirmed.
Already, if you are in education, you probably
have underlying wants or desires to help. Feel
like you are providing something to the children
or students and the parents. Further, you are
in the school building handling these situations
for long hours and enough could be enough. It
feels good. It provides a sense of purpose and
confirmation of competence, a relief in the job
and the daily duties. This opens up negative
beliefs and worries for parents and guardians,
and it is a good path, a reliable path for stuff,
for treatments, for information to be misplaced.
or incorrect and it provides a path for something
common in our society an appointment with PCP
and one or more prescriptions and that is hard
to reverse if anything doses will increase or
more prescriptions will be prescribed. As a side
note, we'll just take a hard pause here. Go into
your search bar and type in CAGR compound annual
growth rate is what that stands for CAGR of anti
-psychotics for 2023. Society loves to prescribe
medication. That is our first line of defense.
Children and adults get prescribed antipsychotics,
antidepressants, psychostimulants. We are giving
these things to children. To sit down, behave,
and act right. Do what you're told. I think our
era will be known as the over prescription era
or the great prescription era or something along
those lines. Psychostimulants and ADHD has a
sharp increase. Hopefully, this will clean up
closer to let's say 10 years from now than 100
years from now. Can we sustain this paradigm?
You can search Rockefeller medicine or Rockefeller
and medicine men, medicine and capitalism. Further,
The top revenue business types from 2023. Three
of the top five business types include medicine
and health care. These are all cleared profits.
Revenue. That was a long turn from the school
and staff not being educated for properly understanding
what is autism. However, everything I just mentioned
is directly involved with the situation. It is
our first line, our first option. Similar to
the healthcare rant and that not working, what
we are doing in education is not working. Autism
or not? The worst thing the government has done
is not remove itself from education. They tried.
They seemingly, seemingly failed. So next. Okay,
the school day. Already the structure of the
school day conflicts with autism. The entire
structure is completely opposite of autistic
phenotypes. Both criteria A and B. The social
communication and interaction and the repetitive
restricted behaviors. Before we move on, maybe
you need to know criteria B. a little bit better.
Please research what criteria B looks like. If
you think it is odd or different type of behaviors,
then you are evaluating it with limited critical
thinking. Maybe you are offended because your
capacity to think is limited. Maybe you view
life through a narrow lens. And maybe that is
easier. It limits the conflict, the agitation
or frustration underlying learning. All types
of learning. All forms of learning. When learning
happens, there are underlying thoughts and feelings
associated with agitation and frustration. And
maybe you like to dismiss that consciously or
unconsciously to return to a comfortable state.
Remember something that keeps us within ourselves,
autism. Something that keeps autistics within
ourselves is the amount of possibilities and
interest, just enjoyment of those. Remember,
are you even interesting? If no, in comparison
to our fixated interest, if no, we are content
with the incredible amount of thinking capacity
we possess. Autism gives us the ability to be
comfortable within ourselves and this accelerates
our abilities, our superpowers. Again, you can
sum it up by are you like the so -called normal
people or not? So, back to the school. The classroom
typically involves 20 or so, sometimes more,
sometimes less. But nowadays, people are not
going into education, and people are leaving
education. Finding teachers, special needs teachers,
especially, or just general education teachers,
is hard. So, 20 or so students, to make it easy.
Remember criteria A. The classroom requires a
social dynamic, a speech and language dynamic,
and of course, sensory processing dynamic. Three
strikes. Three strikes against autism. And that
is just criteria A. Next, the school day typically
studies a single subject for 40 to 50 minutes
or so, depending on the age, but typically 40
to 50 minutes and then switches. 40 to 50 minutes
on the next subject and switches and repeat all
day. Criteria B That's it. B3. Episode over.
This is all you need to know about autism and
education. Those are complete contrast to autism
phenotypes. It does not work for us. The teacher,
and this is not a shot at them, the teacher is
seemingly best prepared, best suited to teach
the masses, the general abilities of the students.
Now, education has seemingly made strides to
accommodate. I guess we can say things like 504s
and IEPs, smaller class sizes and scheduling
breaks and so forth. A major consideration is
each person involved has their own opinion, has
their own expectation of how it should go, what
the child needs or should do, or how the child
should be treated or act, and so on. And Each
individual involved has their own knowledge,
sometimes or most times, a limited knowledge
of what is autism. Higher education or any type
of degree does not have a single autism specialty.
You can't get a degree in autism. And even if
you could, there's a saying about meeting a child
with autism or an adult with autism for that
matter. If you've met one child with autism,
you've met one child with autism. So, to break
that down, because I'm not sure if you interpret
that, each person with autism, each autistic,
has their own form, has their own problems and
superpowers associated with this phenomena. It's
so unique. Okay, elementary school. In elementary,
I had trouble reading and keeping up. It was
the 80s, and I remember being put in a small
group. three or four of us with a teacher's aid.
We would read short passages, short assignments
of some sort and come back together as a group
to talk about it. The comprehension part. I remember
sometimes the group was tasked to read it twice
before discussing it. I always finished last.
I learned to not read it, to pretend and I would
look around and say I was finished after the
group finished. Mrs. Blasey was the name of the
teacher's aide. I remember one day on the playground
she taught us to say thank you and not thanks.
Thanks doesn't have the same meaning. I remember
she was handing out chocolate kisses. Back then,
you could do this and making the students say,
thank you. Anyway, when reading in small groups,
it was very stressful for two reasons. I want
to discuss two reasons on this. One, reading
creates our visual thinking, the movies being
created in our heads. This adds time and a step.
This creates delays. The visual thinking is captivating
and required. This is common with autism. Remember
Temple Grandin, Thinking and Pictures. Read chapters
two and three. In addition, Temple Grandin has
a newer book out called Autism and Education
in which she discusses the reading to visual
thinking, the visualization of what the context
is, the content is, and how that delays and slows
us down. Second thing is, do you even know When
reading, we activate our speech and language.
Speech and language process is implicated in
common problem with autism. I was in speech and
language whenever I was a child. However, anyway,
when reading, our speech and language silently
speaks to our brain. We speak to ourselves. silently
to teach the brain. If you know about criteria
A and if you combine these two other factors
reading and comprehension is difficult compared
to others. Now I just want to just want to take
a slight turn here and mention now Imagine reading
out loud. Imagine the difficulties now. That
is extra steps, that is choppy and broken languages,
that is reading the words, the text on the page,
visualizing it, processing it through visualization,
and then recruiting the speech and language to
form verbally speak what is being read then seen
out loud. I am 43 and just last semester I butchered
this. It was awkward but I don't care but it
was strange for this to happen the first time
in this cohort. Anyways Out of those two factors,
both are driving forces against my abilities.
I don't read much because I can't keep up with
it. It just takes me so long. However, I have
other special techniques. I won't go into them
in detail. We kind of touch on them from time
to time. or mostly every episode probably but
mostly it involves the visual thinking and some
patterns and anticipation. In fourth grade I
am thinking it was the fourth grade it was not
the third grade because it wasn't Mrs. Miller
or her classroom and remember that was my Vietnam
War novel year. I am still in contact with Mrs.
Miller. Anyway, the fourth grade. The class was
sitting in a circle, and each student around
the circle got the next letter of the alphabet.
The student's task was easy. Name. Five nouns
for that letter. As we moved around the circle,
early on, I counted. I tracked which letter I
would get. I wanted and I needed to rehearse
it. Amazingly, I was going to get S. Same as
my last name. In addition, the letters were across
the top of the chalkboard. If you don't know
what that is, a chalkboard, then search it. This
was simple. Each letter had three pictures of
the nouns for each letter. Each letter had three
random pictures of nouns. S had sailboat, sailor,
and school. I remember the picture and the alphabet
hung across the top of the chalkboard. I had
four of the five nouns already. and I began rehearsing,
speaking them to the class. Finally, it was my
turn and I said nothing. I just sat there. The
teacher and students were shocked and gave me
something like, oh, you know it. They also started
to encourage me, like, come on, you can get it.
This caused me to act like I didn't know the
five. I acted like I was thinking. I was concentrating
really hard on it. But I wasn't. I just wasn't
going to speak. Time's up. Not that there was
a time limit or anyone else experienced this.
The teacher and students named five. and I awkwardly
sat there. I cannot explain it. It was decades
ago. It was the mid to late 80s. My troubles
with education would continue and only become
more challenging each year. Today, I still have
challenges with spelling and subject -verb agreement.
Now I realize Subject -verb agreement is not
necessarily uncommon in society. Remember my
comments on the English language. It's a little
pretentious and lazy to me. I am unsure what
came first. My struggles in school or giving
up. But I had no confidence or trust. I could
do anything in school besides art. All levels
of education from elementary to high school I
excelled in art classes. Typically, typical brains
go from general to detail. They look at the whole
picture first. We see details. and not that others
don't. We go from detail to general. When I worked
in an engineering department, we would call something
like that reverse engineering. The slight details
come first and come fast. I remember looking
at pictures while doing the ADOS 2 mod 4 and
just being caught. on slight details of pictures
whenever I was supposed to be moving along. In
high school, I barely made it. Mentally, I quit.
And physically, I nearly quit a couple of times.
Quit school for good. I couldn't keep up in class.
And with each class, those generalized class
requirements and in that environment. In high
school, I changed schools. Then I changed back,
but I had to do an alternative school first.
Pathways to success. The alternative school was
my senior year, and it was known I might not
have enough credits to graduate. Alternative
school was the first time in a long time I thought
I could do it. Pathways to success lasted through
the beginning of the second semester of my senior
year, so it was close. One objective is proving
I could do general education classrooms, prepping
me to return to those classrooms. Alternative
school was a small class. We had four to five
students. It was slow -paced, reduced subjects,
one teacher, and a quiet classroom. It was great
for me. Then I was integrated back into the general
classroom. General classrooms. My troubles returned.
On paper and on record, official record, I did
make it. At the end of the semester, my senior
year, teachers would call students up to review
their grade. This was standard. It was the old
grade books, nothing electronic. Students' names
listed in rows, assignments listed in columns
at the top. and scores listed across the row,
with accumulated scores at the end. A newer male
teacher called me up, 58%, and asked me, you
might not graduate, right? How does that make
you feel? I didn't know. And after a long pause
of looking at the 58%, I honestly did not know.
Eventually I answered back, I don't know. Later
I found out when the final grades were handed
out on the paper grades, the report cards. Nothing
electronic. The grade was changed to a 62 and
a half percent. a D minus is the letter grade
I have on that report card. I have my high school
transcripts because of everything we're discussing
today as a reminder of what occurred to me. It's
not even an excuse. It's just reality. And at
the time, the male teacher called me up and showed
me the 58%. Assignments and grades were finished.
And that year, earlier in the year, it was mid
-second semester. I took it late. I took the
SAT, a component of the education plan for me.
was preparing me for post -graduation, either
an unbelievable path to applying to colleges
or different employment options. So, they had
me take the SAT. I scored a 640 on the SAT. Six,
four, zero. A part of the autism assessment is
a full psychological assessment. I have scores
and abilities from this assessment that puts
me into very superior ranges relative to the
population comparisons. Very superior high averages
to very superior on many different items and
some abilities or inabilities that are low average
to extremely low or words like impaired or severe
ranges. We have superpowers and super deficits.
How are the schools and the educators supposed
to facilitate each one of these? So the child,
the student can excel in these environments.
It doesn't seem fair to either one. Some of my
superpowers from the assessment High average
to very superior includes processing speeds.
Remember the rate of information. The sensory
processing phenomena. The fire hose of information
as Dysaroth called it. That EI conversation.
Know that in some environments, in some context,
this is superior. This is a superpower. This
is better than most of society, but in some environments
it is a super deficit. Struggled. I cannot be
in those environments. Understand that. Also,
visual reproduction. Remember the details first.
A test called trail -making. I received high
average to superior in Processes like scanning,
sequencing, and switching speeds. Remember autism
has rigid thinking. B3. So rules are rules. Mostly
as long as they are clear to us. We define a
clear rule set and we do that. That is one of
the jobs of the proof frontal. Cortex, understanding
rule sets, and then recruiting what is necessary.
Remember the activating and inactivating things.
Also, organization and planning on the CEFI test
was very high, superior. I forget the language
used for that test. And then some super deficits
include working memory. Remember the keeping
up, that processing, some information into visualization.
This complicates our short -term or that working
memory. General adaptiveness, conceptualizing,
and of course, socialness and leisure. or severe.
The outside world is chaotic. Generally speaking,
education is arranged around the middle, the
average. This is where the majority of the population
falls. And one final conveyance of some troubles
that I have and other students out there will
probably have too. And you can make sense of
this with the biological factors and the processing
complications we've discussed today. Taking notes
in the classroom. I cannot take notes. Remember
the challenges with spelling and visualizing
the content. And my penmanship is awful, which
hurts this. spelling and the penmanship are kind
of indirect forces here. But keeping up with
listening and just understanding the information
being conveyed and writing them down, I cannot
keep up with that. I cannot do it. However, some
of those other superpowers that we have discussed
supplements that. So I don't need to do the note
taking. the typical students do. I've mentioned
that I started a higher education, a grad school
program recently. And before I started, I made
a goal of keeping notes. That way I can keep
up with the class and because I anticipated some
troubles with this. So I made a goal. I really
deliberately worked at trying to keep notes.
Well, That did not last and I did not fight it
because I wasn't going to change it. I just stopped
taking the notes. Now in stats class I could
I could write down some formulas that were important,
but anything else I could not. Now I just typically
watch people take notes and. Learn that how amazing
it is. I'm constantly amazed. by watching them
take notes. However, with those other superpowers,
I have not failed or it has not hurt me one bit.
So I am thankful for that. I am thankful for
our superpowers, our sensory processing and visual
thinking. It is a strong use. As we wrap up today,
I hope you learned something about what it's
like for someone with autism navigating the education
system. Regardless of a young child to all the
way up to an adult in grad school, problems are
across the board. Each stop, each level, there
are massive amounts of problems. However, there
are techniques and differences that can be utilized
that can serve the autism. with great benefits.
This is the direction, the focus that I hope
others can take, recognize, and take. Don't try
to change someone with autism because they are
different than you. If you are listening and
enjoy the episode or enjoy the podcast, Please
feel free to leave a review or rating. In podcasting,
reviews, ratings, and downloads are huge. And
I very much appreciate your feedback. If you
would like to contact me, please email at info
.fromthespectrum .gmail .com. Thank you. for
listening to From the Spectrum Podcast.