When Autism Comes up in Class

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Has this happened to anyone else? It has happened a quite a few times to me. Quite a few times in Critical Thinking (discussing how unscientific some apparent "causes" are), in psychology classes and surprisingly, English class.

We are currently reading a book called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" where there are androids that are so hard to tell apparent from humans that an "empathy test" was developed as only humans had empathy. It seemed to be testing for emotional empathy, not cognitive empathy and the questions related to empathy towards animals. I have heard people have autism are actually MORE empathetic towards animals but..........

We had the discussion of what an "authentic human being" was and he said that the author was trying to portray neurotypicals are "authentic" and autistics and schizophrenics as "not human". (Note that some think that they author MAY have had one of these).

I felt quite uncomfortable as I normally do in discussions about autism, but especially this because I found the comment a bit offensive and I was unprepared for it, whereas in the abnormal psychology discussion for example, it was listed in the syllabus so I mentally prepared myself for it and even scanned the notes (posted online pre-lecture), so it was fine (though I thought the video he showed was a bit outdated as they only discussed non-verbal autism, but to be fair, the teacher did give an example of a person who knew with no language impairment and a normal IQ). But I was totally unprepared for it this time. I also disagreed with the comments he was making. I doubt he was attempting to be offensive as he doesn't know I have autism, but I was still uncomfortable with the conversation.

Anyone have anything similar happen? How did you handle it?

I have had some instances where things like this have happened. My response was to quickly think out what was wrong with what was presented and counterpoints of what was more proper, and then when I had the chance to speak to begin to begin stating these thoughts out loud.
A number of times it seems that I have been able successfully challenge narratives.
A key element of doing this presenting confidence, to be confident in what you are saying and saying it in a manner that portrays assurance and conviction. It is important to keep the focus on the critique of the presented ideas which one is disputing; to act as if one is a prosecutor and the presented ideas are the defendant; to keep it so that the presented ideas being objected to and their objectionableness are the focus.
Now this is not an easy task, nor one in which one can be assured of success, but it can be done to greater effect by practicing discussion, debate, and rhetorical skills.

When I was a student assistant, I got called a "ret*d", "low-functioning" and "the disabled" by my colleagues when I was taking more time than others to complete simple tasks. It was not nice but I survived.

There was one particular incident which involved me and my colleague sorting out student homework assignments and marking our assigned questions. There was hundreds of files. We needed to sort them out according to their group set. My colleague scolded at me for making mistakes when sorting out the files. He then said I should follow his "fool-proof" way of sorting out files - which he said he taught this to his disabled friend. I was quite offended by this and since then we did not talk for months.

I feel as if I suddenly become "outed" in the moment. I feel as if I were transparent. But I am also aware that the classmates don't know who I am as a person and I am just another number in a seat. So it's fine. I have not had any in depth discussions about Autism in the classroom but I know misinformation would make it an interesting one.

I think the one thing that has ever offended me to a high level as far as discussing Autism was in an MBTI group on FB, a girl was saying how if she were to give birth to an autistic child, she would abort it. And how the autism gene was to soon be found and exterminated in individuals as an act of eugenics, killing us off. I was pretty upset over that as it began to make me think about the survival of neuro diversity as so many people of non-NT descent state that they are they best (Especially psychopaths and narcissists, w/o a doubt. But I have also seen this within the bipolar community and aspie community). It really makes me feel like each subtype, including NTs, turn a blind eye and forget each subpopulation had it's winners and duds present.

My point being made is that eugenics has the potential to kill human diversity when we genetically engineer/strengthen people to be the same. This is especially present with brain abnormality that exists within people. We need that abnormality to hopefully promote growth though as these neurotypes all exist.

FWIW, I don't think Philip K Dick was passing judgment on the neurodiverse in _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_. He was known for depicting the neurodiverse as individuals in a period when the rest of the literary community considered "madness" (their term) to be impossible to understand and thus impossible to depict. I'm not sure work like _A Beautiful Mind_ or _Rain Man_ would have been possible without Dick leading the way in novels such as _Flow my Tears the Policeman Said_ and _Through a Scanner Darkly_. He was also very skeptical of centralized authority, so when he is depicting a community standard (such as a definition of "authentic human being") he is probably not advocating it but warning against it.

Ocdgirl, you may be in a uniquely good position to point out such viewpoints when you are in such a situation. I think yelekam has given a good description of how to do so. Sometimes another person's ignorance is simply an opportunity to teach.

I can recall one instance where autism was discussed in class, but it was a very brief mention, and I didn't have any role in the conversation. Also, I quite liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Oddly enough, the autism allusions in it never occurred to me at the time, but it's interesting to think of it like that. I don't think Phillip K Dick was trying to portray people with autism as being less than human. I think he was trying to show how human the androids actually were. But I can certainly see how it could feel a little insulting when someone raises the possibility - even if it's not their outlook on the issue, merely an interpretation of a book - of autistics being less than human.

mines kind of a funny experience while at the same time it was kind of.....informative.

at my college during my course on the first year (so i was 17 at this time) we did a class on equality and diversity and one of the things we talked about was the autistic spectrum and Aspergers. where the interesting bit comes in (and kind of funny really) is that they talked about the Aspergers side of it and it got awkward fast, because most people started staring at me, i only just figured out why, but it was really unnerving and i was kind of not listening so i look up only to see most of the class looking at me......awkward......

its probably why i was called "spaz" and "downy" all the way till the end of the last year of the course. so yeah, thanks college tutors for giving my bullies more ammunition

That sounds horrible, painting ASD people as subhuman. I would argue that we are more human than neurotypicals in some ways.

It really bothers me when people in class use "autistic" as a playful insult. I'm not "out" as an Aspie, so I don't really say anything, but I swear someday I'm going to slap them into oblivion.