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Here are two items of interest, which somewhat overlap:
1. This is a valedictory address by Erica Goldson that criticizes how education is done in America. (How it was received by the school, I have no idea!) People who do well in school may do so by memorizing a bunch of facts and spitting them back to their teachers as obedient drones (yours truly fits this description!), but are they really learning?
I like the idea of reading things outside of my school assignments, something that I didn’t do too much until about three years ago. Yes, I think that I was right to go to school and learn stuff that didn’t interest me. That’s the case right now, for I need to know certain things that I consider boring in order to navigate my way through life effectively. But it’s enjoyable to learn for the sake of learning.
At the same time, as a person with Asperger’s (and there are people with Asperger’s who may have different impressions on this), I enjoyed the structure of school. You study, learn facts, regurgitate them back to your teacher, and thereby succeed. I wonder if Erica prefers a looser school environment, in which students interact with each other in class discussions. I’d have problems with interaction and talking in class being the basis for a student’s grade. (Actually, I have had issues with that in college and graduate school classes.) I also think that there should be ways to ensure that everyone who wants to talk in a class discussion can get his or her voice in, since that’s difficult for some people in conversations. Maybe writing and online discussions can help here.
2. Izgad has an excellent post, Social Relationships and Anti-Asperger Bigotry. I appreciated the following:
Our entire educational structure is premised far more on “socializing” than on the dissemination of information. Not that there is anything wrong with being social, but this approach to education is rooted in a neurotypical bias. My grade school report cards never asked if I was reading on my own for pleasure, if I pursued research into topics of interest outside of formal school assignment, or how well I critically analyzed texts. So while my neurotypical classmates never were faced with an existential crisis or even the friendly well meaning suggestion that they attempt to operate in a more information based mode, I was plagued by the fact that I did not relate to people in the same way that others did. Was there something wrong with me because I was more interested in memorizing historical facts than with “playing well with others?” Was not the point of school to cram as much information into one’s head as possible?
Izgad’s impression of American education is somewhat different from that of Erica, for Izgad believes that it emphasizes “socializing” rather than “the dissemination of information”, whereas Erica thinks that the opposite is the case. But they overlap in that they hold that students should be encouraged to read on their own for pleasure and to research “topics of interest outside of formal school assignment”.
Should kids with Asperger’s be pressured to socialize? I think they should at least be taught how to do so. That may give them more options in life. But I’d also like teachers to think of ways that the child can grow up to contribute to life as him-or-herself.
