Do you need a good, basic introduction to Neurodiversity 101? Here you go.
Neurodiversity is, according to activist Nick Walker, “the diversity of human brains and minds – the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species.”
Basically, it’s a fancy name for the fact that all our brains and minds are unique and individual. Like snowflakes, no two brains and no two minds are exactly alike.
But that’s not enough! The article also points out that within that range of variation there are some brains that work in a way that society finds acceptable — the neurotypicals. I think it’s safe to say I’m a standard neurotypical, which is not to say that some of the workings of my mind are out of sync with the larger culture, but that I can fit in reasonably well in most circumstances. While someone who is neurodivergent in some way might have extreme difficulty with situations that I find not at all stressful, but that does not mean they are somehow inferior.
Shouldn’t all of this be elementary and taken for granted by teachers, and maybe made part of standard training? I ask because I never did, and it’s taken years of gradual awakening to see what’s going on. It’s also because I’m looking over the midterm status of my students and wondering what I can do to reach some of them who are struggling. I know it’s not because they can’t, but because something I’m doing is failing to communicate.
“It’s also because I’m looking over the midterm status of my students and wondering what I can do to reach some of them who are struggling. I know it’s not because they can’t, but because something I’m doing is failing to communicate.”
No, sometimes it really is the student.
Sometimes. But a) these students had to meet academic requirements to even be here, and b) I’ve found it wiser to assume that your students are smart and try harder to reach them, than to assume they’re stupid and give up.
If you assume that the student is stupid and give up you will fail to reach them. If you assume that there is a way to reach them, you still might fail to reach them, but you might succeed.
When I first read that I thought this was going to be about autism, not the bell curve. I guess the thing here is how many of the students who scored low were as result of ability where the onus is somehow on your instructional methods and how many just couldn’t be arsed, or otherwise lack the required skills?
I know some departments seek a gradient of minimum values (which is generally good, because this evaluates the teacher, don’t want a class nobody passes), and some seek maximums (which is bad, if 15 students earned the A you shouldn’t arbitrarily knock half of them down to B+ cause the chair says we can only give out 3 A’s per section this semester), but should every student pass every class? No, not really. I don’t think at the university level you can blame much on learning disabilities, since student reps are usually pretty good at getting extra test taking time and other extensions for them. At the very least teachers are obligated to give students an honest appraisal of their abilities, and the grade is a way to do that.
But the grade doesn’t just appraise abilities, it appraises input time. PZ grades a lot of papers himself, which is a very rare thing for a professor to have to do – seriously they need to throw a few TA’s your way – but one thing TA’s have to deal with on a constant basis that I wonder is somewhat muted when students deal directly with a professor, is the littany of excuses and pleading which frequently exposes the reasons they got a poor grade to begin with. I could pay off my loans if I had a tenner for every half-assed wikipedia sourced, unproofed, plagiarized or just plain lazy paper my fellow TAs and I have assessed. I’m sure professors get it too, but have you had emails sent directly to you that read “Please overlook my performance on yesterday’s midterm or it will hurt my chances at getting into med school” in reference to a big fat 0 for lifting whole paragraphs from another student’s paper (the class wasn’t one that would come in very handy in medicine but…seriously, you’re admitting this to me?) I wonder if being a TA physically disfigures your face from all the WTF moments you endure reading messages like this, or the attempted bribery, or the admissions of being too high at the time. The thing is, most instances of plagiarism do not get reported, for a variety of reasons, and only a fraction get sent to a professor’s attention who depending on their schedule that week might give them a pass just so they don’t have to show up at the appeals ruling. The whole process of writing up a student is time-consuming and some teachers get lazy as a result. But it’s pretty much a quarter to a third of all students in my experience, with only serial offenders getting offered up as examples. Yes, it wouldn’t surprise me if up to 30% of your medical professionals blew off exams as undergrads.
The other thing every class should be doing is where there are multiple sections each graded by different TA’s, those TA’s need to swap sections and grade every paper twice with two sets of eyes. Plagiarism isn’t limited to neighbors, and there is a rule of thumb students use that if you’re going to cheat, cheat with a student in a different section so nobody notices. We didn’t figure this out until we mentioned a particularly hilariously bad answer in passing over lunch, and then thought “hrm, that sounds familiar”. Checking the entire class turned up many more results that would have gone unnoticed.
I ended up far less sympathetic to my students at the end of grad school than I was at the beginning.
But if we’re talking about 10-20 student seminars where theoretically everyone who is there wants to be there, then I could see how you still have some sympathy to spare.
Yes, it should.
Right now it still mostly isn’t, not even for middle and highschool teachers. All I know about neurodiverse people is from having a slightly autistic daughter and learning from people who kindly talk about their experiences. Or occasionally doing shit like a google search on what font to use.
If it’s any help, my impressions are:
1. If an aspie person appears to have completely missed the curve on what you were trying to tell them, they probably did. Try saying it outright. If you’re too ashamed of whatever it is to say it outright, question whether you should be doing it in the first place. My last 2 bosses totally could not get that one.
2. The people who talk about the “autism epidemic” in terms that imply that it’s better to be dead from infectious disease than to risk autism are not helping anyone’s mental health.
Oh, and I still pretty much hate about 90% of people I went to grade school with, but I hope it’s better now than it was in the 1970s/80s. But yes, the microaggressions do add up over a lifetime.
Dianne
What I learned is that the inability to understand is mutual, but that the power balance in absolutely in favour of neurotypical adults over a non neurotypical child.
Worst I ever experienced was a school who had a kid with Tourette syndrome and where nobody understood what ticks are and that this kid was not voluntarily and maliciously calling the adults nasty names. His classmates loved to drive him over the edge and it was the only way he could react.
It sounds like what PZ is talking about is less what people usually mean by “neurodiversity” than about different styles of learning. For example, I learn best from reading and discussion. Videos are just about the worst. (But “programmed learning,” whether the old style “programmed learning” or the more modern computer-based version, is even worse.) Lectures are okay if I can ask questions during the lecture and the salient points are written down somewhere. I think it’s because my understanding of things is non-linear and my learning jumps around a lot, so teaching styles which force a linear thinking process don’t work for me.
Another problem is when what the students (who don’t know the subject) understand from what the professor said isn’t what the professor was thinking (because he/she does know the subject.) You run into that a lot when teaching math, because your understanding of the topic changes drastically when you go from not understanding it to understanding it. I like to say that, in math, once you understand something, it seems so obvious you can’t imagine how someone could not see it instantly. So the explanation that seems obvious and makes perfect sense to the professor is clear as mud to the students.
The things that cause problem for neuro-atypical students are usually different. Things like: distracting noises and other environmental issues; participation in discussions; deadlines; understanding formal and tacit expectations; degree of hand-holding around requirements. For instance, my son (aspie) did well in school, except that he really did not grok the idea of keeping the professors in the loop about how he was doing — we had many, many phone calls where I explained to him not only that he needed to talk to the professor, but how he needed to talk to them.
This discussion illustrates one of the other ways in which philosophy is ignored at our peril. Psychology has adopted a method consisting largely of assessing people in terms of symptoms and surveys, which is a poor substitute for understanding an underlying cause/effect relationship between a state of being and a symptom. The bell curve is a way of mapping the distribution of measured states in groups of people but – so what? How accurate are those measurements? The diagnosis of autism is vague – I’m not saying there’s no such thing as autism – I’m saying that psychology doesn’t yet know what autism is. They have a list of symptoms and if the patient experiences those symptoms they get lumped in that bucket.
When we talk about neuro-typical, it gets even worse – supposedly some people are “normal” except psychology can’t measure what “normal” is, then we measure how many people aren’t “normal” based on those survey results. No wonder the results are vague and confusing! You’re talking about measuring divergence from an unknown, then promoting those results as if they are a known.
The term “neuro typical” implies that there is some underlying neurological difference. Well, humans have advanced to the point where we can say “patients’ serotonin level is below average” but FFS that’s barely better than the victorians who were measuring cranial volume. First off, again, “normal” serotonin levels are based on the averages of people that self-report as feeling OK. (I’m just using serotonin levels as an example) But the implication is that some people’s life experience is governed by their serotonin levels and not behaviors. That’s also an unknown. But by all means try to make it sound like the whole ramshackle edifice is grounded on a solid foundation of neuroscience.
Star Trek had this figured out decades ago:
“Brain and brain. What is brain?!”
Maybe having “standard training” for postsecondary instructors would be a start? At least where I teach, postsecondary instructors require no formal training in teaching. Although we do have allocated “PD time”, exactly what that entails is left up to the instructor. (I’ll note that yes, teaching experience and training are counted in our favour, but not required.)
taraskan I definitely can sympathise with you, those experiences sound all too familiar. Nice to know it’s not just me, I suppose, although I almost wish it were….
In any case, while I recognize that students are individuals, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect an instructor to (a) reliably tell the difference between lazy, unmotivated, uninterested, and neurodivergent students, and (b) adjust a course’s content or criteria to best suit each individual student.
And how would you do that anyway? What are the practical suggestions for better reaching neurodivergent students, that differ from the strategies that have been shown to improve learning for students overall anyway (e.g. active learning, multimodal instructional strategies, timely formative feedback…)? If you’re using evidence-based strategies to improve your teaching, won’t those help neurodivergent individuals as well? Between evidence-based general training in teaching and following the recommendations of counsellors/advisors from the appropriate offices that are professionally trained to assess individual student’s needs and provide those recommendations, what is being missed that would further help neurodivergent individuals specifically?
Ug. Please don’t link to anything that site says about autism.
Jake Harban, Do you have a problem with the Everyday Feminism article or what Nick Walker says? Neurodiversity is something that both professionals and friends/parents of autistics[and others] are starting to learn about. In fact, the latest book on Neurodiversity [that Interviews Nick Walker and many others and has a foreword by Oliver Sacks] won the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction last year. It was written by a science writer for Wired: _NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity_ by Steve Silberman. It is now a multi-award-winning book. Sadly, it was not written by an autistic person, but the author interviewed quite a few of us(I’m autistic) from autistic social circles, over a 5 year period. He also had translated Hans Asperger’s papers that were previously not translated nor in the professional or public consciousness. The first descriptions of autism/Asperger’s by professionals laid bare. It is quite revealing. The book was reviewed by fellow skeptics at Science Based Medicine: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/neurotribes-a-better-understanding-of-autism/ Neurodiversity has been spoken favorably of by people at SGU like the neurologist of the group Steve Novella. The book is worth reading, and the movement is worth investigating. One of the last[?] prejudices that is somewhat acceptable nowadays is ableism. Time to stop this in its tracks along with homophobia, racism, and sexism etc.. Neurodiversity movement will help stop the neurological ableism at least.
PZ:
I have to say, when I went to college, I had many things going on and did not do well at first. There was not much the professors could have done to help me grasp some of the concepts other than helping me deal with the enormous social issues I was having. It is doubtful how much influence they could have had, though.
AMM @9:
I would have benefited so much from having a parent like you. I wish more parents understood some of these things and used other methods than what I had.
That one article isn’t as bad as the others I’ve read, but it still hammers on the same themes— autism is natural (as if that made it desirable); autism is not a disease (which requires some semantic juggling); autism is not disabling (which is patently false and shut up).
Neurotypical privilege is very much a thing. Discrimination against autistic people is very much a thing. However, the physical and biological and psychological facts of being autistic are a hell of a lot worse than either. While mitigating or eliminating discrimination against autistic people is certainly a good thing all around, I absolutely despise the idea that autism itself is non-disabling or that curing it would be undesirable— and I see that a surprising amount, including on Everyday Feminism which more or less openly declared that curing autism would be tantamount to killing autistic people.
Discrimination sure adds insult to injury, but fending off the insult by denying the injury does no one any favors.
And that’s not even covering the contortions of pretzel logic that I’ve seen in other articles on Everyday Feminism, where they declare autism is not a disability, that no one would want to be cured of it, and that people who have it are (or should be) proud of all the things they can’t do because being disabled is just so fundamental to who they are which contradicts the claim that it’s not a disability so let’s make some vague allusions to autism having “some disabling aspects” that are incidental to autism itself. This article didn’t do any of that, but enough articles do that I have an almost instinctive eyeroll reaction when I see anything related to autism on Everyday Feminism.
I don’t particularly care how many awards it may have won. Neurodiversity is either a good idea with the risk of being implemented very badly or an absolutely terrible idea depending on how it’s defined.
To be honest, I don’t particularly care what autistic social circles (such as they are) have to say. Autism seems like a catch-all term; five autistic people will give you fifteen different accounts of what it’s like to be autistic (because the nature of the condition can change over time in response to treatment, managing techniques, or the inscrutable wiring of a badly-designed brain). Bits and pieces of individual accounts are strikingly relevant (if generally useless) but aggregating a bunch of autistic experiences is very much like averaging all the past winning lottery numbers.
Really, it all comes down to the disability issue— I’m all for eliminating ableism against autistic people, but failing to recognize that autism is first and foremost a disability whose elimination would be desirable, the best you can do is replace one kind of ableism with another. Switching the contempt of: “You’re autistic, you’re defective” for the faux-compassion of: “You’re autistic, I will do everything to accommodate your disability, don’t worry you won’t be judged by neurotypical standards” is not an improvement since the second sentence cannot be uttered without implicitly adding: “…like the real people.”
Sorry, no.
Seeking out a book costs 1 spoon.
Making a non-routine purchase costs 1 spoon.
Reading a new book costs anywhere from several to hundreds of spoons depending on various factors.
Investigating a movement costs 1 spoon for a quick googling and more spoons for more depth.
At the moment, I can’t afford such frivolous spending. My silverware drawer is nearly empty as it is. Maybe tomorrow? Spoons can sometimes grow back overnight.
I’m pretty sure the only prejudice that’s not considered at least somewhat acceptable nowadays is hating left-handed people. And I bet there’s still crackpots who still use the term “sinister” as a slur.
Jake Harban, are you autistic? Because what you’re saying in no way reflects what the overwhelming majority of autistic people are saying, and we really wish people would quit talking over us. (This has been a particular problem in the progressive atheist community in the past.) Five autistic people will give you fifteen different accounts of what autism feels like, but they’ll almost always give you exactly one account of how you should approach it as an allistic person. And what you’re objecting to is exactly what we’ve been asking for.
We don’t want a cure for two major reasons: One, yes, a “cure” for something that is part of literally every component of my personality would in fact be killing me. There is no way you could remove my autism and leave anything that remotely resembled me. Two, cure research is taking a huge chunk of the money that people put toward autism – money that could be better invested in getting needed accommodations for autistic people who are already here, right now. Specifically, it goes to hate organizations that actively encourages trying to “cure” us through such wonderful methods as prolonged, systemic abuse, feeding us bleach, and occasionally outright “mercy killing” us.
Autism is a disability precisely because the world is made for neurotypical people, in a way that is sometimes actively hostile to autistics. That’s all. I’d strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with the social model of disability, because you are plainly and painfully unaware of what its advocates are saying. I don’t want to be an exception to “neurotypical standards;” I want “neurotypical standards” do be regarded as a useful baseline at best, for society to recognize that different members work in different ways and might have different needs and that’s okay, and to have those needs reasonably met. This goes both ways – I have strengths that a neurotypical person lacks, and I don’t want them held to my standards either. Not because “oh, they’re normal and I’m not,” but because those standards simply aren’t the best fit for them.
Acceptance isn’t about turning us into coddled inspiration-porn. It’s about admitting that we’re actually capable, interesting, worthy people, and we deserve an equal stake in society.
Yeah, we’re almost like real people that way. Ask 5 neurotypical people what it’s like to be neurotypical and, well, actually, four will look at you in puzzlement because it never occurred to them to think about what it was like being a real person, but if you can get past that, they’ll almost certainly give you a widely varied description of what their lives are like and what it means to be a non-autistic person.