Isn’t inclusion a wonderful idea?  Imagine – a group of students, together in a local community school.  Each student is different from the others, but all are equal.  Each student has their own interests and passions, but all are meaningfully included as full participants in their school community.  Each student has their own abilities and needs, but all students are having their needs met.  That image is inclusion.  Seems very close to perfection, doesn’t it?

Inclusion is a beautiful idea.  It’s the kind of idea that gives us a lovely warm feeling inside.  It allows us to feel good about ourselves, whilst we work to improve the quality of others’ lives.  What’s not to like?

Well, on second thought, there just might be a few problems.  As an autistic adult who passed through the mainstream school system, I can definitely identify many things about it that I’m less than happy with – and I can assure you that I’ll be posting more of those thoughts in the future.  But today, let’s consider just one of the most obvious problems – the problem of bullying.

Numerous studies show that autistic children are clearly bullied far, far more often than their neurotypical peers, and some evidence suggests that autistic children are also more likely to be bullied than other disabled children (see Humphrey & Hebron, 2015; Schroeder et al., 2014; Sreckovic et al., 2014 for reviews).  This bullying can often be quite serious in nature – for example, one study reports that a quarter of autistic children have been assaulted with a weapon (Pfeffer, 2016).

However, autistic children outside of the mainstream might be much less vulnerable.

In the mainstream, perhaps the most important reason why autistic children are bullied by their peers is that the autistic children can be socially naïve and vulnerable (Sofronoff et al., 2011).  Furthermore, autistic children might stand out because of the mere fact that they are different from others.  Their unusual and intense preoccupations and interests might set them apart from their peers, as would any other abnormal behaviour.  Research even indicates that many autistics are transgender (de Vries et al., 2010, van der Miesen et al., 2018) or non-heterosexual (Byers et al., 2013; George & Stokes, 2017), which could be a further point of vulnerability.  Thus, autistic children in the mainstream stand out from others, and are more vulnerable than others: a perfect recipe for victimization.

In contrast, in a specialized school for neurodivergent children, the autistic children would not stand out.  Everyone would be at least a little socially vulnerable, and everyone would be unusual in their own unique ways.  Where everyone is atypical, atypical people would not stand out as targets.  Bullying behaviours might still exist, but it would not be disproportionately directed against a small subgroup of the school population.  Furthermore, special schools invariably have more staff supervision, which could provide further protection for their students.

Therefore, it comes as little surprise to learn that the rates of bullying directed against autistic children in schools specialized for them are very low (Begeer et al., 2016; Schrooten et al., 2016; Van Roekel et al., 2010).  Indeed, several studies seem to provide evidence that autistic children in special schools and classes are bullied less than their autistic peers in the mainstream (Hebron, 2012, p. 160; Nowell et al., 2014; Rowley et al., 2012; Sterzing et al., 2012; Zablotsky et al., 2014).

Homeschooling is another alternative to the mainstream, and insofar as homeschooling removes any inescapable obligation for autistic children to spend time with neurotypical peers, it would also seem to eliminate opportunities for bullying.  After all, while homeschooled children and their families can seek out opportunities for social interaction, they can easily look elsewhere for social experiences after a negative interaction.  I was homeschooled from Grade 8 to Grade 12, and I certainly don’t remember ever being bullied in that time.  (However, I can’t say the same about the time between kindergarten and Grade 7, when I was in the mainstream schools.)

To be clear, bullying doesn’t mean the mainstream school is unsuitable for everybody.  There are undoubtedly many people on the autism spectrum who are rarely bullied.  These students might do well in mainstream schools.

I also believe there may be some people who are more bothered by bullying than others.  Several parents have told me that their children don’t really seem to care about bullying, or that their children may not even understand the hostile intent behind the bullying directed against them.  I’ve also read Julia Bascom’s vivid account of the specific point in time when she began to understand what bullying meant, and how it was only at this point that she started to experience distress and fear as a result of bullying.  This would seem to suggest that there are some autistic kids who will shrug off bullying without suffering much psychological damage, and while that might change as they grow older, they might do well in the mainstream until that time.

The existence of autistic people who are not being bullied, and autistic people who are resilient to bullying, does emphasize the importance of not blocking access to the mainstream school.  Even though this whole piece has been devoted to arguing that we need alternatives to the mainstream school, it’s important to acknowledge that the mainstream environment might work very well for some children on the spectrum.

Ultimately, I’m not trying to argue that any one educational placement is best for everyone – quite the opposite, in fact.  All I’m trying to say is that individuals and families need access to meaningful choice in educational placement.  We need different schools for different minds.  On the one hand, that means that children shouldn’t be compelled to attend the mainstream school, regardless of their own wishes and feelings, because of their “right” to “inclusion.”  But on the other hand, it also means that children who are happy in the mainstream, but who might make teachers’ lives a little trickier because of behaviour problems or intellectual disabilities, shouldn’t be dumped in special schools against their wishes and against the wishes of their families.

When I say that individuals and families need access to meaningful choices, I mean that we need to reconfigure our education and special education systems so that we can offer students a real variety of options.  If they live in an area with sufficient population density, students and families should have the choice to attend a special school for autistic children.  Autistic children should certainly be offered online distance education, as well as the possibility of remotely accessing the mainstream school through telepresence.  I think that individuals and their families should even be allowed take the funding that would be available to them in the school system and spend it to deliver individualized programming, perhaps sharing resources with other families with compatible needs in order to create economies of scale.  Autistic children should be able to access these options without fear of losing their high school diploma or equivalent certification, assuming they have the requisite academic abilities to obtain one.  And, of course, autistic children should have an absolute right to access the mainstream if they and their families want to – but I mean a real right, a right they can choose to exercise or not, not an inescapable obligation.

 

And what do you think?  Comment below!

References

Begeer, S., Fink, E., van der Meijden, S., Goossens, F., & Olthof, T. (2016). Bullying-related behaviour in a mainstream high school versus a high school for autism: Self-report and peer-report. Autism, 20(5), 562–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361315597525

Byers, E. S., Nichols, S., & Voyer, S. D. (2013). Challenging stereotypes: Sexual functioning of single adults with high functioning autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43(11), 2617–2627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1813-z

De Vries, A. L. C., Noens, I. L. J., Cohen-Kettenis, P., van Berckelaer-Onnes, I. A., & Doreleijers, T. A. (2010). Autism spectrum disorders in gender dysphoric children and adolescents. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 40(8), 930–936. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-0935-9

George, R., & Stokes, M. A. (2017). Sexual orientation in autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1892

Hebron, J. S. (2012). Bullying of children and young people with autism spectrum disorders: An investigation into prevalence, victim role, risk and protective factors (Doctoral dissertation). University of Manchester. Retrieved from https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/jrul/item/?pid=uk-ac-man-scw:181270

Humphrey, N., & Hebron, J. (2015). Bullying of children and adolescents with autism spectrum conditions: A “state of the field” review. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 19(8), 845–862. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2014.981602

Nowell, K. P., Brewton, C. M., & Goin-Kochel, R. P. (2014). A multi-rater study on being teased among children/adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their typically developing siblings: Associations with ASD symptoms. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 29(4), 195–205. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088357614522292

Pfeffer, R. D. (2016). Childhood victimization in a national sample of youth with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 13(4), 311–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/jppi.12203

Rowley, E., Chandler, S., Baird, G., Simonoff, E., Pickles, A., Loucas, T., & Charman, T. (2012). The experience of friendship, victimization and bullying in children with an autism spectrum disorder: Associations with child characteristics and school placement. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6(3), 1126–1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2012.03.004

Schroeder, J. H., Cappadocia, M. C., Bebko, J. M., Pepler, D. J., & Weiss, J. A. (2014). Shedding light on a pervasive problem: A review of research on bullying experiences among children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44(7), 1520–1534. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-2011-8

Schrooten, I., Scholte, R. H. J., Cillessen, A. H. N., & Hymel, S. (2016). Participant roles in bullying among Dutch adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 53. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2016.1138411

Sofronoff, K., Dark, E., & Stone, V. (2011). Social vulnerability and bullying in children with Asperger syndrome. Autism, 15(3), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361310365070

Sreckovic, M. A., Brunsting, N. C., & Able, H. (2014). Victimization of students with autism spectrum disorder: A review of prevalence and risk factors. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 8(9), 1155–1172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2014.06.004

Sterzing, P. R., Shattuck, P. T., Narendorf, S. C., Wagner, M., & Cooper, B. P. (2012). Bullying involvement and autism spectrum disorders. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 166(11), 1058–1064. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2012.790

Van der Miesen, A. I. R., Hurley, H., Bal, A. M., & de Vries, A. L. C. (2018). Prevalence of the wish to be of the opposite gender in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1218-3

Van Roekel, E., Scholte, R. H. J., & Didden, R. (2010). Bullying among adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: Prevalence and perception. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(1), 63–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0832-2

Zablotsky, B., Bradshaw, C. P., Anderson, C. M., & Law, P. (2014). Risk factors for bullying among children with autism spectrum disorders. Autism, 18(4), 419–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361313477920