Posts - Page 9 of 9 - Autistic Scholar

An Autistic Critique of the Mainstream School

August 1, 2018 Patrick Dwyer Comments 2 comments

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. …

Some Thoughts on Early Intervention: Part II

July 31, 2018 Patrick Dwyer Comments 2 comments

Quick recap: in Part I, we discussed early intervention and how it could be improved. I think we covered some important points (the need to be clear about our targets, whether the term “ABA” is no longer helpful), but we ended with an important question: How are we going to ensure that our best and hopefully-ever-improving practices actually get implemented at the community level? Without a good answer to this question, any improvements we make to our best practices will…

Some Thoughts on Early Intervention: Part I

July 31, 2018 Patrick Dwyer Comments 7 comments

As an autistic adult who is also a graduate student researching autism, I’m a member of two very different communities, and these communities have very different views on many issues. It’s like they see the world through two incommensurable paradigms, relying on fundamentally different sets of assumptions about the world.[1] The communities certainly don’t usually spend a lot of time talking to each other, at least in North America (the British are a bit ahead of us on that front). …