Strengths and Deficits, Another Sort of Academic Bias

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-07-23 16:00:00 UTC
Topics:

Between my posting Culturally Sanctioned Stigma and Academic Bias and now, Tyler Cowen's excellent article "Autism as Academic Paradigm" has unfortunately been moved to a payed subscriber only area of the Chronicle. From my notes though I still have the quote,

In "special needs" education, there is plenty of effort to teach the skills of the non-autistic to the autistic, but in the regular classroom we are often doing the opposite. I view higher (and lower) education as teaching people to be more autistic in many of their basic cognitive skills...

This filter for looking at the types of skills that are taught in public schools is particularly interesting in light of recent research regarding autistic problem solving skills.

Also of import is the role of point of view and bias in how the education of autistic and non-autistic students is framed. Teaching non-autistic students (the majority) the skills of the minority is considered building strengths. Teaching autistic students (the minority) the skills of the majority is considered remediating deficits.

This relates directly back to Norman Kunc's model of perspectives on disability (see the line item on deficiency and remediation).

The interconnections between broader civil rights issues and seemingly unrelated topics like education and science are subtle, but strong. Civil rights issues color the lens through which people are viewed, framed, and treated in all aspects of life.

Dora Raymaker
PREVIOUS STORY:
Longterm Care: A Longterm Issue
NEXT STORY:
Why I'm Asking Aetna to Cover My Surgery

COMMENTS (1)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.