Do you think schools favor autistic thread?

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rozaliRindro
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18 Nov 2013, 8:01 pm

Objectivity, analytical, math, seems to be the measuring stick for "brain".

However, neurotypical people are not objective. Not because they're not smart enough but because it's not toward their best interests to be objective.

For example, a drug opponent would just block all info that says ganja is safe. That kind of instinctive behavior will make it very difficult for them to learn anything that requires objectivity and literal meanings.

If you're a programmer, for example, how can you program if you can't even think of women as objects?



Teaorcoffee
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19 Nov 2013, 12:20 pm

I don't know if they favour autistic thread or not. Schools should like any thread.



jerry00
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19 Nov 2013, 1:52 pm

NO because teachers are NTs and NTs hate awkward people. Even adult NTs hate awkward kids.

Most teachers are not highly qualified or enthusiastic about their subject even when the kids are able.

School exams on the other hand probably do favour autistic people. I passed every exam without studying right the way up to college when the exams actually started getting difficult and my bad habits caused me to fail. It would have been better if they'd given me harder exams at school so I didn't get the idea studying was optional.

But schools don't care about anything other than mediocrity. They spend all their time on the dumb kids who might not get a passing grade, and everyone else gets ignored.

I hate school.



muslimmetalhead
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19 Nov 2013, 5:19 pm

Teaorcoffee wrote:
I don't know if they favour autistic thread or not. Schools should like any thread.
lol


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IntellectualCat
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19 Nov 2013, 11:41 pm

I don't think schools, at least in the US, would favor autistic students over neurotypical ones. The class sizes are large, so a lot of teachers would probably ignore the autistic students' needs in favor of the NT students, as they are in the majority.



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21 Nov 2013, 2:22 am

I have not found ASD useful in my school career, especially not early on.

As another poster mentioned, I also did very well on standardized testing--likely for the types of reasons you mention: objectivity, analytical thinking, and early intuitive math skills (which are not a given with ASD, but do run in my family and seems related to ASD for us). I think these types of tests are less likely to let a subjective question slip through.

However, in class, I often did not understand the question writer's intent and would get many answers marked as incorrect because of this type of misunderstanding. Furthermore, I was often seen--behaviorally--as trying to annoy my teacher when I misunderstood her intent. To me, these tests/work and teacher requests were worded vaguely or poorly and my responses seemed to validly answer the questions. Elementary school, in particular, was quite nightmare-ish because of these problems. By high school, I was more articulate and more confident and would take my tests back to the teacher and explain my reasoning which often improved my grade. (I wish these teachers also improved their tests for future students as well.)

Have you heard of Daniel Kahneman's ideas of a two-system thought process? I think I naturally lean more on system 2 than the average person, which provides for a more thought-out, objective response. However, for most of the early teachers I had, my responses were so foreign to them, that even correct ones were judged to be incorrect because my entire line of thinking lied in their blind spots.



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21 Nov 2013, 1:34 pm

Assuming I have interpreted the rather incoherent OP correctly, then the only appropriate response is: "What a bloody silly question."

If schools favoured autistic pupils, all the rest (the NT majority) would be regarded as having Special Educational Needs and treated to the provision of personal learning assistants.

Which is a philosophically-interesting proposition (and could be arguable as a desirable state of affairs), but not much more than that, because it's the sort of bloody silly answer that you usually get if you pose a bloody silly question.