I. Don’t. Have. Aspergers. April 8, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, older son, personal, societal commentary.Tags: Aspergers, Aspie, diagnosis, education, school
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Today, I came across this post talking about expression of Asperger’s in women.
I have to admit that I’m understanding how my son felt in school. When he was in 6th grade, the school decided to do an evaluation and said he was Aspie. The whole thing was rather traumatizing for him. He talked about how the school psychologist talked to him like he was a toddler, using small words in a loud voice. It was very patronizing. He started calling her the psychopath-ologist. The next year, the ‘diagnosis’ followed him to the gifted school he attended. I talked him into going along with it because there was help with social skills and things that he really did need some help with. He said he was okay with getting the help. However, he did keep insisting he wasn’t Aspie, and the teachers kept saying that his refusal to accept would make it hard for him to adjust.
Here’s the problem: he’s not Aspie. When he was 4, this first came up. I took him to out of town to two researchers who specialize in Asperger’s to have him examined. Nope, not Aspie, they both said. However, it’s obvious he’s probably gifted. It was at this point that giftedness could probably be problematic in a normal classroom.
Given my history with the public schools as a child, this had never been a blip on my radar. I constantly had problems, but very often I and my parents chalked this up to the fact that we were pretty much considered ‘poor white trash’. Now I can look back and see how that perception along with my very visual approach to things confluenced to make school hell for me.
But as an adult, I keep seeing things about Aspergers. And people keep saying my son is Aspie. And I suspect people think I’m Aspie. And I’m not. I simply am not. I am amazed at how many traits of Asperger’s are also present in the gifted, and given my experience with my son, I’m sure that there are a ton of kids out there who are being misdiagnosed as Aspie when, in reality, they’re perfectly normal…for gifted kids.
I know people who have kids who are Aspie, and I understand it’s hard to deal with. However, I am getting really tired of this ‘medicalization’ of a gift or a personality type or whatever you want to call it. The problem with calling gifted kids Aspies because they may show some of the same traits is that those labels become a capsule to describe the student. So-and-so is an Aspie, and so every thing they do that seems off or quirky or different becomes a sign of their disability: there is something WRONG with them. How many times do people look at these kids and say it’s a sign they’re brilliant? In my experience, almost never. By the time older son was finished with sixth grade, the fact that he had a college-level vocabulary was being used as a sign that he had a disability, and the psychopath-ologist was claiming he was actually hyperlexic. His English teacher, who at the beginning of the year was saying she thought he was a very bright boy, suddenly said he didn’t seem gifted when asked by the psychologist.
I don’t have any issues with parents of Aspie kids, or even Aspies themselves. However, I am really sick of how society seems to have taken a hold of this ‘diagnosis’ and turned it into a way to categorize anyone who is socially awkward, shy, or quirky. For a lot of kids, all of their gifts and abilities are now being viewed as some sort of dysfunction that falls under the category of Aspie.
And it’s not just kids. I’ve seen this and experienced it as an adult. Maybe I tend to fixate on things, but I need to do that to solve difficult problems. Maybe I feel things more strongly, but why is that a sign of Asperger’s instead of Dabrowski’s Excitabilities? Why are all these things viewed as a problem rather than a sign of uniqueness and intelligence? I know a lot of people view the label as a way to better understand those who are different, but it also seems like a way to write them and their gifts off as an oddity.
A reason to celebrate March 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, older son.Tags: education, gifted, high school
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A couple months ago, I mentioned that the older boy had been kicked out of school. Today, however, we’re celebrating because he took and passed his GED last week, and we got his scores this morning.
I was rather nervous that he might not pass one or two of the sections, but I ended up being very wrong. He was in the 98th or 99th percentile (and aced the science exam) on all but one section: writing. I’m actually surprised he did that well given he’s really never had any high school classes in any of this stuff. He’d done a lot of stuff in math online, and he had taken the US History CLEP exams last year. On the other hand, I’m not surprised that writing was his poorest test. It’s not that he’s a poor writer, because he’s not. However, he has significant difficulty with the physical act of writing, which really slows him down. Also, they asked him to write on sports, of all things. Poor kid.
However, he did pass the exam, and now he’s said he wants to go to college. I told him that he’s got about a year and a half before getting his apps in, so he needs to figure out where he wants to go and what he wants to do when he gets there. I’m curious to see what he decides. In the short term, however, he’s studying for another CLEP. After that, he gets to join the adult world for real: it’s time to start looking for a job.
Second grade logic and rulers February 23, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, math, teaching.Tags: angles, education, geometry, kids, rulers, sir cumference
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Today, I went back to work with the second graders. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about circles and degrees and Babylonian units and π.
My plan has changed from the original one of trying to teach the kids a bunch of applied stuff. I’ve pretty much given in to teaching them historical discoveries in math simply because there’s a lot of stuff you can do that doesn’t require multiplication and division. It’s been a lot of fun, but I decided to try something different but related: I wanted to teach them out to make a formal mathematical proof. Okay, not terribly formal. What I want them to learn is how to use logic to make a proof. I suspect some of them know already (based on some of the arguments I’ve had with my son who has rock solid 7-year-old logic). However, I’d like them to use their brains for good instead of getting out of (or into) trouble.
The thing about geometrical proofs is that they really aren’t that hard. At least, I never found them to be. I remember sitting in 10th grade geometry and being given T-charts. I would race through them and ace them all. I was horribly surprised to see that my classmates had difficulty with them as well as complaining the teacher was too abstract. I threw the idea of proofs out to Mike, and he said that pretty much the only tool you need is a brain, so it’s probably a good idea. (I’d have to disagree…you need a brain…but you also need a pencil, paper, ruler, and protractor. But otherwise, I think he’s right.)
Today, we started with the concept a line and measuring its angle. I know my former math instructor wouldn’t approve, but I’m teaching them to use degrees (aka Babylonian Units) because that’s what’s on the protractor. Also, I’m not sure how versed they are in fractions, so we’re not going to get into fractional parts of π. (Actually, if anyone has ever seen a protractor with units of π rather than degrees, please let me know as I’d love to buy it.)
Once we had a line, then I told them to draw a point on the line with another line coming out of it, so that it would look like this (without the measurements):
Each of them drew the line coming out an a different angle. They all measured their angles and found that they all summed to 180°. A couple of the kids seemed surprised that they all ended up with the same number. Incidentally, those that didn’t seem surprised were very absorbed with the flexible rulers I had brought to use. (Note to self: second-graders are easily distracted by anything novel.) We then talked about how any two angles, if they formed a straight line, would add up to 180° and how this was known as the supplementary angle theorem.
Once we had that down, we used it to prove the vertical angle theorem. It took them a bit to realize that the line created by adding supplementary angles doesn’t have to be horizontal (like in the picture above).
That’s all we got through today, but I plan on using this to show them that the interior angles of a triangle always add up to 180°. It might take us a couple weeks to get there, especially since next week I’m supposed to read them a couple more of the Sir Cumference books.
The magical standardized exams December 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, homeschooling, math, older son, science, societal commentary, teaching.Tags: education, SAT, standardized exams, testing
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I’ve been reading a lot of different takes on the whole fiasco of the Florida school board member with two MS degrees who failed the state’s 10th grade standardized test. His name is Rick Roach.
While it doesn’t seem to be a popular view, I am agreeing with Roach: the test really doesn’t have anything to do with how people will fare in the real world. I’d dare say that grades are probably a better predictor, although they have their flaws, too. Students who do well in school tend to be those who read teachers well and know what they want. They don’t have to be very bright to figure out how to keep teachers happy, follow the rules, and, in general, conform. They stay organized, hand in their work, which was hopefully done well, and keep the people around them happy. I hate to say it, but these are the skills that tend to help people at a job, not passing a standardized exam.
In my view, people who do well in life are those who are able to conform to the expectations of those around them OR those who follow their passions and work very hard at them. I don’t believe that tests do much more than how well one takes tests. And, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure all the emphasis on getting kids up to speed in science, math, and reading is doing much good and may, in fact, be doing a significant amount of harm.
The reason I say this is the experience with my older son, who is now a sophomore in high school. So let’s start out with a shocker: he got kicked out of school recently. He was going part-time, but he wasn’t sufficiently interested and never made it a priority to be there. This is the same kid who became so engrossed in studying US history that he passed both CLEP exams on the subject, earning him a full year of US history credits at most colleges…in 9th grade.
We decided we better start looking at how he’s going to get his degree, so I figured that since he’s almost 16, he can start prepping to take the GED. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is a high school equivalency exam, but you can’t take it until you turn 16. It tests on reading, writing, science, social studies, and math. While he has had a decent amount of algebra, he’s never had a formal science class except for one in 6th grade. However, he passed the practice GED with no problems, meaning that he probably won’t even need to study before he can take the exam in a couple months. He’s very happy about that because he doesn’t want to spend his time studying for that: he wants to study to take the macroeconomics CLEP instead. The kid who doesn’t want to be bothered to make it to school on time will work his but off to study something he’s interested in.
I have a kid who is good at passing exams. I don’t have a kid who is a conformist and understands the need to be places on time. (Well, I think he understands…but he’s not going to make the effort unless he really cares about it.) Unfortunately, I think his lack of conformity is going to hurt him a lot in life, probably more than his exam-taking ability will help him. He’ll have an easy time earning his high school equivalency, but what good will this do him if he’s not going to be able to keep a job if he decides he’s not sufficiently interested in working?
I have also come to the realization that he really doesn’t need to know much math. In fact, I think most people don’t. Being a scientist, I use math day in and day out. In my work as an engineer, I don’t use nearly as much math as you’d think. In fact, like Roach said, I know a lot of people who don’t use math all that often. A lot of those people are engineers. A good chunk of engineering education involves teaching processes that invalidate the need for much higher level math. Yes, a lot of it is a cookbook for boiling things down to high school algebra. Now, the good engineers will have a conceptual understanding of what’s underlying those steps, and the really good engineers will understand it mathematically. But realistically, most of what they learn in college, in terms of math, won’t be used. And I say this as someone who is frustrated because I’ve had a lot of math and realize I’m forgetting much of it because I don’t use it.
Going back to the discussion on this emphasis toward pushing more math, science, and engineering hurting students, I’d have to say that there are a lot more kids like my son than people acknowledge. Kids are going to be successful in life when they follow their passion. I’ve seen kids who showed no motivation in classes go and learn the information taught in those classes because they wanted to work on something that required that information. There is so much emphasis on establishing superiority in these academic areas (when we can’t even manage competency in most cases) that we’re not allowing kids a variety of experiences they need to find their interests.
Our education system provides no real motive for learning aside vague promises of getting a good job after high school. I’m sure most students think that their job will be a lot like high school, which is probably not all that inspiring. There is no real motivation for them to learn, their curiosity is damped, they’re never allowed to excel unless it’s in an area where our system is currently focusing. And even then, bright kids are bored because they’re not really allowed to excel and dig into things on a deep level: they have to stay lock-step with kids who have no interest.
The whole ruse reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, where the whole society is distracted by notions of this or that trivial thing being important. Our society is fixated on test scores and ‘competency’ in science and math and writing. However, we’ve failed to pay attention to how and why kids really learn, and we’re delusional to think that competence in testing is the only indicator of who will succeed in life.
Of course, colleges will have you believe this, and there’s a huge industry surrounding making you believe that and providing you with more and more tests you’ll need to pass (for a sizable fee) despite the fact that grades are still the best predictor of college performance. There’s also the politicians who are also convinced that this is the way to fix our country’s problems…most of whom benefit from the system as it is because their kids almost always end up as winners in the education race. It also makes them look like they’re doing something substantial for education, which is why we have the No Child Left Behind legacy.
The gist of this is that most tests are assumed to be measuring things they aren’t measuring. The SAT is not going to tell you if you are going to be successful in life. It can’t even tell you that you are going to do well in college. We are imbuing these tests with magical powers: they have become our Sorting Hat. We believe in the magic of these exams to put people in some sort of ‘succeed at life’ or ‘fail at life’ category because it’s easier than looking at the realities of how our educational system is truly dysfunctional.
Undergrad physics inaccessible to women November 23, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, feminism, physics, teaching.Tags: education, gender equity, physics, problem solving, sexism
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I was very intrigued when this month’s Physics Today showed up in the mail. While scanning the table of contents, I noticed an article called, “Problems with problem sets.” The summary went on to say that the problem with undergrad physics courses is that they often use problems which require specific background knowledge. Men are more likely to be acquainted with this knowledge than women.
The gist of the is that many of the problems in physics texts assume knowledge of various areas like construction, meaning that more men than women will be acquainted with the problem set up. Many times, these problems will make reference to various tools or constructions without giving an explanation or picture to describe what’s going on. They assume the students will understand what is being asked without further explanation.
I guess I hadn’t run into this a whole lot as an undergrad, but I think I may be a special case. As a kid, I worked with woodworking tools because my dad was a carpenter. In fact, I regularly had to help out in the shop, so I got a lot of hands-on experience in building and working with tools.
On the other hand, I think that when I went back to school, I wasn’t afraid to ask questions. I’ve observed that there are a large number of students who don’t like to ask questions, especially among the youngest students.
It’s a very interesting premise. Obviously it didn’t deter me, but I can see how this would be very intimidating for young women. It would definitely make many of them feel like they didn’t have a good enough background to do the work. I’m glad that someone is paying attention to issues like these, and I hope professors will pay a lot more attention to the problem sets they give in the future.
Leave it to the experts: the homeschooling parents September 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, older son, teaching, younger son.Tags: education, homeschooling, research
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A friend on Facebook posted the following article: What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents
I agree with some of the sentiment of the article: helicopter parents are damaging to their children. On the other hand, I have enough experience not to buy this line:
For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.
Most elementary school teachers are trained to deal with a room full of children. They are not heavily entrenched in child psychology, learning disabilities, giftedness, or many other things that can affect individual children and their functioning in the classroom. Their training is in dealing with large numbers of average children…a more sophisticated form of crowd control.
I am not trying to be mean to elementary school teachers; I am stating a fact about their education. (I considered becoming a teacher at one point, so I do know what types of classes are required.) The reality is that their education is limited, and they are reluctant to admit that. Now, there are exceptional elementary school teachers out there. I ran into a couple during my youth, and I’ve run into a couple as my children have gone through school. Unfortunately, my experience is that they are also the minority, if not completely rare.
Too often, teachers have told me that “they are professionals,” but they fail to realize that I am the expert in MY child. They will come to me with a complaint about the child’s behavior, and when I give them suggestions on ways to deal with it because, well, they asked, I am told that what I am suggesting is not possible. If these people are professionals, then why are they asking my opinion and, better yet, why are they then telling me they can’t take my advice?!
To add further insult to injury, I more than once ran into teachers who told me that my son’s difficulties in school were because of homeschooling. I remember clearly when the older boy’s third grade teacher said he obviously didn’t remember his math facts very well because he always performed poorly at Around the World…only to be told a couple weeks later by the principal that he’d done exceptionally well during their annual testing and that, “he obviously knows his math facts!” All I could ascertain from this was that the teacher was biased against homeschooling as well as having a poor handle on my son’s actual abilities.
I felt rather vindicated, therefore, reading the results of a scientific study on homeschooling done at a university – that is, it isn’t being done by opponents or proponents of homeschooling and therefore has no reason to be biased one way or the other. It was also funded by the Canadian government.
The study showed that homeschoolers who use curriculum are more likely to be accelerated in their studies relative to their publicly-schooled and unschooled peers when measured by standardized tests. They don’t look at the Big S (socialization), although they mention that schooling is an important form of socialization. (And it’s one that is a very poor form, if you ask me. I am still appalled by some of the things my son heard at school from his classmates.)
They weren’t certain of the factors that led to acceleration, but they mentioned more focused study on math and reading. When I homeschooled, I felt like the topics were more diverse than what my kids have encountered in a regular school. Also, we spent less time doing schoolwork than what my kids spend in a regular day at school…and that doesn’t include homework.
I’m certain that more studies will bear out the same result (in fact, most have), and help parents to be more confident that homeschooling is an acceptable and even superior alternative to a public classroom (and a cheaper alternative to private school). At the very least, I’d be happy if a few teachers paid attention and realized that parents can be as or more effective in working with their own children than the supposed experts.
College is easy September 7, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, teaching.Tags: education, overconfidence, students, teaching
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Over the last couple years, I had run into the down side of teaching: students who don’t want to be there. They come to class with a bad attitude, have no interest in learning something new, and generally complain about how boring and unfair you are. (It’s even worse when you have quantitative measures showing that your grading is not significantly different than your colleagues for the same class, yet students ratings indicate higher levels of unfair grading for you than for those colleagues.)
But that’s what happens when you teach general ed classes, and you learn to live with it.
I recently ran into another kind of student I haven’t seen in a while: the overconfident student. I recently got one of these. He’s been indicating that he’s seen all the stuff I’ve presented, and then told me that college was easy. This particular student comes from one of the larger high schools in the region and thus has probably had access to a lot of classes that have not been available to his classmates. He’s seen things like calc and circuits.
I feel bad for him: he’s likely going to hit a wall at some point.
I know what the typical engineering student will have to go through, and even taking 17-20 credits of 100-level general ed courses doesn’t compare to what happens when you hit some of the ‘weeder’ classes. If you manage to make it through those, the junior and senior level courses can often require overwhelming amounts of time. I can think of at least one class (an optional one) that students will often put in 40 hours/wk on that class alone and end up with a C.
I admit that maybe I’m wrong and he’s just one of those kids who will fly through. In fact, I’m hoping I’m wrong…but I’m also not betting on it. I tried to tell him that it would likely get harder, but I don’t think he was listening.
Familiar faces and the network analyzer August 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, feminism, teaching.Tags: education, feminism
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I was in a different part of town than normal at lunch time, so I decided to go to my favorite Greek restaurant. As I was standing in line, waiting to order my gyro, I noticed someone further back in the line. I recognized the face, but all I could remember at the moment was that I knew this person because he had sneered at me.
After I left, I realized how I knew this person, and why the only thing that came back to me was his sneer. I still have never been able to understand this particular behavior, but perhaps someone else has an idea. I found a locked entry in my LJ from about four years ago which recounted the event. (And those of you who are engineering students – take notice. It’s rude, don’t do it. Sadly, I’ve also gotten this attitude from a number of students, as well.)
My classmate/officemate/fellow grad student asked me for help on something in the lab he was TAing. We needed a part (a female to female BNC connector) to calibrate the network analyzer.
We had no such connector, even though it was there a day or two ago. At that point, it could be anywhere in the building. I quickly constructed another part that would serve the same purpose. (For those who are interested, I connected a female BNC to N connector to an N barrel to another N to BNC female.) I handed it to the guys (or maybe I should say Guys with a capital G…they’re power engineers, and think dealing with anything less than 20kV is wussy) and said, “Use this.”
Guy #1: “So do you always just put stuff together until it fits?”
Me: “Do you want to do your calibration?”
Guy #1: “Yeah, but isn’t adding more parts going to throw it off?”
My response: “Perhaps, but the network analyzer is looking for a through connection to perform the calibration. This should work just fine since its not going to increase your resistance by that much. Your main concern could be that because it’s longer than the other barrel, you could have some sort of phase shift…but it should only be a little bit.” (I don’t know about you guys, but in re-reading this, it doesn’t sound all that complicated to me.)
Guy #1 stares at me for a moment but says nothing.
I say: “Or I could just be blowing smoke. That sometimes happens, too.”
My officemate sort of smirked and said, “Thanks, Cherish.”
As I was walking out the door, though, I heard Guy #1 say, “That was a long answer to a simple question.”
I told Mike about it. He said that Guy #1’s initial comment was meant to imply that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I responded in a completely appropriate manner (i.e. explaining my reasoning). However, he wasn’t expecting that, so he made the last comment to “save face” in front of his buddies. I guess the conversation didn’t bug me so much (it’s a good idea to ask about someone’s methodology) until I heard the comment on my way out. Mike’s comment was that he couldn’t say it in front of me because then I might have had a chance to respond…but he probably meant it as a dig, which is why he said it as loud as he did.
I don’t get it…I thought they WANTED my help.
Educational Elitism July 1, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, societal commentary.Tags: classism, education, elitism
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I came across yet another article rehashing the topic of too many kids going to college. Not surprisingly, it was written by Charles Murray (of Bell Curve fame). I’ve seen a handful of articles by him, all having the same theme.
When I first read these articles, I was unaware of the Bell Curve connection. However, I still felt the extreme hypocrisy that seems to characterize these rants, well thought out as they may be. He claims, in this particular article, that allowing everyone who wants is creating a classist society: there are those who go to college and those who don’t. Those who don’t, he claims, are mistreated in society.
These articles bother me because, while he rants about the system, he proposes no alternatives and even seems to hold the past in high regard. The past, when you were stuck in a job that your parents did, or women were stuck at home. Somehow, it’s more noble to say that one couldn’t afford to go to college than to have tried and failed, in his mind. He claims that college for everyone means there are no more excuses to not finish…if you don’t, you’re viewed as dumb and lazy. Never mind that, in the classist systems that existed at the beginning of the last century, simply being poor meant you were dumb and lazy. Francis Galton may not have been around at that time, but eugenics was certainly alive and well – and often targeted the poor.
Of course, throughout all of this is the thread that SOME people should be allowed to go…and that the reason most people don’t belong in college is, in fact, because they are dumb or lazy. In other words, he’s reframing his elitism to make the rest of us look like the elitists. It feels like he’s trying very hard to keep elite educations in the hands of those who, in his opinion, are truly deserving…not that he actually cares about creating a meritocracy.
After Murray’s article, it was refreshing to read William Deresiewicz’s The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. The essay is long (by internet standards, mind you), but well worth every word. He talks about how those at elite schools tend to be the ones who work the system, and do so without necessarily thinking. They aren’t independent minds. They are there to become part of the system and let that system propagate. And these are our future leaders: trained to be part of an elite system, not to really think about where we’re going and how their decisions affect the rest of us.
This was a considerably more in depth view of the educational system, a real critique, and a real assessment of the problem…far different than complaining that every yokel is taking away the status of the elite.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
It’s not easy being…gifted. April 10, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, homeschooling, older son, societal commentary, teaching.Tags: Aspergers, Aspie, education, gifted, gifted education
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see more Very Demotivational
I was surprised at how many people misunderstood my post on Asperger’s. However, I suppose it’s bound to happen when people go on a rant in print. What I’d like you to do, if you felt I was being offensive to Aspies, is go back and read the post, substituting “gifted” for “Aspie”. Or you could use the word ‘green’. I still feel pretty much the same way. The point I was trying to make was that labels suck.
Nicoleandmaggie left a comment in yesterday’s post that said:
I’m not convinced this is true. I can homeschool a child who is gifted without ever having a clue they’re gifted while being able to keep them adequately challenged. Likewise, I could probably do the same with an Aspie child (since people used to keep giving the older son that ‘armchair diagnosis’). The problem is not the mental state of the child as much as the fact that we expect all children to sit in classrooms with other kids their age and function exactly the same way. With both Asperger’s and giftedness, it’s amazing how those labels suddenly don’t become as important when in a workplace setting.
If you’ve ever hung out with physicists or engineers, the ones that stick out are NOT the socially clueless, nerdy, fixated types: it’s the ones who make decisions emotionally and adhere to societal norms. Really, the place we need these labels is when we have such an artificially constructed environment that necessitates ‘normality’ and conformity. Further, the teachers of these classrooms (especially in elementary) tend to be of the personality type that values social conformity over rationality or innovative thinking. Giftedness is viewed as a threat to the social fabric, and I would guess that Aspies, with their nonconformity to societal values, are in the same boat as the gifted (and it’s twice as bad for those who are both). All this, despite the fact that the ‘teacher lecturing to kids sitting quiescently in their desks’ method of teaching has been shown to be one of the least effective methods of communicating information.
In my own life as a student and as a parent, I’ve had a fair number of teachers who think that gifted kids don’t need to be challenged, they need to be brought down a notch. And, as a parent, the looks I get from teachers when the subject of giftedness comes up is far worse than having to say there’s an IEP for educational autism in place. (And what good are labels like exceptionally gifted when no one has a clue what they mean anyway?!) Yet, as an adult, I have never had to even address most of the differences my kids display in unstructured environments. When not in school, people learn to deal with those who are different or to try to avoid those who are so different that they can’t deal with them. I am thoroughly convinced that the reason we need labels is not to help the kids but to help the teachers deal with kids they don’t understand or don’t like. Which makes me wonder why we keep using this model where we stick kids in these situations that almost always result in a negative impact on their self-esteem.
I think there are two solutions to the problem, best when used together. First, I think the role of teachers is all messed up. Second, I think the whole classroom organization scheme is messed up, too. The older boy attended a gifted school for two years where the premise was that each kid could work at an individual level toward their own specific educational goals. The teachers in this scenario became facilitators. It’s actually a lot like homeschooling, except there are more kids and some of the learning comes from interacting with those kids. In this scenario, the teachers need to be educated about differences, keep an eye out for problems a kid may have, but they also have to understand the material they are teaching very well. (Given elementary education training is more about classroom control than ensuring a very thorough understanding of the material, this changes the nature of how teachers would have to be educated.) In this scenario, kids who had different needs were able to have those needs addressed without drawing undue attention to their differences. It significantly reduced the amount of peer issues and, especially, bullying. The interactions were organic, not forced.
A lot of the education was done through self-paced computer programs. This meant one kid would get through five years of math in one year while another might struggle getting through a single year during that time. But it didn’t matter…they could excel where they were able and allowed to take it more slowly when necessary. And there was no judgement attached.
Creating this sort of classroom environment is probably somewhat more expensive than a regular classroom, but I’m not sure. (How does the cost of textbooks and workbooks compare with computers and easily updated software?) We’re so used to the notion that education means suffering, both through too fast or too slow academics as well as through social stigma for all our differences. I don’t think people really are making an effort to correct these issues, which are often linked, because they are too stuck on the idea of doing things the way they always have been done.
This means we continue to need labels. And I still think labels are stupid.