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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
All children, especially autistic children, need strict social behaviour codes
Here's more from Temple Grandin, this time on the importance of behavior teaching for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
(pp 139-140) "Call me old-fashioned, but adults in the world of my youth, the 50's and 60's, believed in a stricter social behavior code than do adults in today's world. For a child with ASD, that was a good thing. Social skills were taught as a matter of course. Behavior rules were straightforward and strictly enforced, another positive strategy well aligned with the autism way of thinking. Consequences were uniformly imposed and expectations to behave were high. My mother and all the other mothers who lived in our neighborhood attended to children's behaviors, and placed value on teaching their children good manners and appropriate behaviors. To be a functioning member of society, these things were required, not optional, as they seem to be today. Kids today are allowed to do just about anything."
(p 286) "These shifting, changing social rules (or lack thereof) make it more difficult for most people with ASD to understand the social climate around them and learn to fit in. Many arrive at adulthood without even basic daily living capabilities - even children on the higher functioning end of the spectrum. They can't make a sandwich, write a check, or use public transportation. Functioning life skills have been neglected. What that is, only each individual family can say for sure. But in general, this lack of attention to teaching basic life skills while children are young and growing, is having increasingly negative repercussions on people with ASD. Quirky friends I had in college who would be diagnosed with Asperger's today, all got and kept decent jobs because they had been taught basic social skillls while they were growing up. They might still be quirky, still considered eccentric, or even odd by some, but they could function within society."
(p 283) "Every big corporation in a technical field has its department of the social misfits who make the place run. Even a bank has some purely technical people who handle accounting, fix ATMs, and run the computers. There is no black-and-white dividing line between computer nerds or geeks or Asperger's or high-functioning autism."
(pp 307-308) "If Albert Einstein were born today, he would be diagnosed with autism. He had no speech until age three, obsessively repeated certain sentences until the age of seven, and spent hours building houses from playing cards. His social skills remained odd through most of his life, and he was a self-described loner....A host of other brilliant historic figures such as Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, Lewis Carroll, Glenn Gould, and Andy Warhol are now speculated to have been on the autism spectrum."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
OISE: The heart of darkness
I recently took a course on Ontario's health care system and how it could be improved (hint, it needs to join the rest of the world in ending its monopolizing medicare provisions). When the professor was asked by the class why the province didn't take such an obvious step, he explained that public opinion (as embodied by the students in his undergraduate classes) was strongly against.
These students' opinions are highly likely to have been strongly influenced by their high school teachers, and teachers as a body tend to have a leftist orientation - favouring more government and more spending. Why do teachers tend to have a leftist orientation?
To some extent, it's a tautology, as most teachers have themselves been strongly influenced by their own high school teachers. But, there's a double whammy at work here, in that most Ontario faculties of education are also strongly leftist. This column about the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) provides chapter and verse.
The assertions in the column are hard to believe, because they're so extreme, but I have no reason to doubt any of them. The recent arrest of Ben Levin, an OISE professor and one of the chief architects of the new sex curriculum, on child pornography charges adds "verisimilitude to what is otherwise a bald and unconvincing narrative" (apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan).
As the head of one of Ontario's community colleges recently confided: if somebody were to drop a smart bomb on the Ministry of Education (including OISE), it would be some time before anybody noticed - and after that there would be great rejoicing.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Creative Destruction)
Here's a clip of Danny Devito telling the shareholders of a wire and cable company that they have been obsoleted. It's a bit of a stretch, but it would be possible to apply Danny's comments to the current education delivery system. Instead of "fibre optics", think "online learning".
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Copperplate is one of the available fonts
All right, let's try another week-long discussion period. As no one has suggested a topic to me, I propose the following.
RESOLVED: That schools should no longer teach penmanship, including cursive writing.
Please vote, including your reasoning.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Homeschoolers)
This video of a TED performance by the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys has gone viral. The banjo boys are 15, 14, and 11 years old respectively, and they are being home-schooled. Enjoy!
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Dyslexia is just an Eight-Letter Word
The New Jersey legislature has just approved a bill that will "require that school districts screen children for dyslexia and other reading disabilities at an early age and make mandatory specific training for educators in areas that would better prepare them for teaching children with reading disabilities" (more).
This is all good, I guess, but it has as its premise the notion that some kids "have dyslexia", as if it is a distinct and separate genetic condition or something.
While it is true that some kids require extraordinarily careful and skillful teaching if they are to learn to read, they still require the same type of teaching that all beginning readers need - it's just that their instruction needs to be done really well. Difficulty in learning to read is a continuum: some students are easy to teach and learn no matter what their teacher does. Some students learn with moderately good teaching. And some students are really hard to teach: they learn only if they are taught very carefully.
So, while I applaud the move in New Jersey, I worry that the bill is making the assumption that optimum teaching is already taking place in all of the state's grade 1 classrooms and that there are a few dyslexic students who need something else. I think that the legislators would benefit far more children if they worked to improve the beginning reading instruction in every grade 1 class. H/T TB
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Pox on All Their Houses
It's hard to suck and blow at the same time, but the leaders of the Ontario Secondary Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) are very good at it - according to this column by an OISE graduate and assistant curriculum leader at the tedious board. It's worth reading this column, including the stuff near the bottom about the sinking popularity of American teachers' unions, as well as a comment about another former OSSTF head, Earl Manners, who also switched sides and now has a comfortable job advocating for the school boards he used to hate.
Ken Coran, until recently the head of the OSSTF, is now running as the Liberal candidate in London West. It seems his credibility is already under fire, with spurious claims about his residency and playing football for Western, as per this column. Mr. Coran has yet to learn that while union officials can play fast and loose with the truth and get away with it, politicians cannot.
All in all, lousy PR for the teachers' unions and for the Liberal Party. Yuck! H/T DW
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
School-grown terrorists?
More home-grown terrorists - John Nuttall and Amanda Korody.
I hope more comes out about John Nuttall and Amanda Korody's formative years, but I'll bet anything they didn't do very well in school, perhaps having trouble with reading, and feeling like outsiders - forcing them to find some other source of identity and purpose.
My analysis is still the same as in my Huffington Post blog. I'd just like to point out that there are no Amish homegrown terrorists.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The excerpt applies to labels in general…
I'm reading The Way I See It: A personal look at autism & Asperger's by Temple Grandin. The author is herself autistic, but very high-functioning - mainly as a result of the strong measures her mother took when Grandin was a child. So her explanations and advice are from someone who's been there and done that. Her main advice to parents of newly-diagnosed autistic children is - DOING NOTHING IS THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO.
Here is an excerpt from the book (pp 9-10) on the subject of labelling.
"The autism spectrum is very broad, ranging from an individual who remains completely nonverbal into adulthood to a brilliant scientist with Asperger's Syndrome who continues to struggle with understanding the social nuances of the world. However the child comes to the diagnosis of autism or PDD-NOS [pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified] or Asperger's Syndrome, I want to warn parents and teachers: Do not get hung up on labels. Labels are useful for obtaining services, to grant a child eligibility into programs or for financial aid services. But the label should never define the child, nor dictate what program should be used with a child. Autism spectrum disorders are varied and no two individuals will manifest the same set of characteristics at the same level of intensity. Always look at the child - not the label - and base treatment decisions on the child's individual profile of strengths and weaknesses, learning style, personality, etc. It would be easier for parents and educators if, as with cancer or diabetes, we could equate the label with a proven form of treatment. Diagnosed with autism? Use treatment programs X, Y, or Z. Diagnosed with Asperger's? Instead use program C, D, or E. That is not the case; it may never be the case. Far too often we adults make gross assumptions about the capabilities of people with ASD [autism spectrum disorder] based on their label, especially with children who are nonverbal or have limited verbal abilities. NEVER let a label lower your reasonable expectations of a child and that child's capacity for learning. By doing so, you rob the child of the very experiences and opportunities that can allow learning to grow and develop. You rob the child of his potential, and his future. All because of a label?"
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The Finnish Holy Grail
According to this article, there is already a fair amount of school choice and competition in Finland. It's odd, don't you think, that the Finland boosters haven't included Finland's free schools in their list of positive factors....