Published on 12, July, 2020
The week commencing 27 March is the designated 'Autism Awareness Week'.
Looking at the NAS articles, it seems to be all about fundraising, about baking cakes, going for a walk or holding a sponsored event. All very worthy, I am sure.
But aren't we missing something really important. The slogan is 'until everyone understands'. And what will everyone understand about autism if we just bake cakes or go for a walk? That there is a condition called 'autism'. That those who are autistic can bake cakes?
'Autism awareness week' should surely be an opportunity we should all use to state our case. Anyone who has been touched by autism, from parents and carers, relations, and those who are autistic themselves - should get involved in awareness where it really counts.
And that is by contacting the newspapers, writing letters to the media, writing to our MPs, lobbying parliament, writing to local councillors, and organising campaigns where the real issues relating to autism are stated. Issues such as lack of available diagnoses for adults, the waiting time for a diagnosis, the real lack of anything having been done under the 'Autism Strategy', the fact that NHS trusts do not offer any help at all to adults who may be on the spectrum. Many MPs are on Twitter and Facebook, we could message and tweet them. Get the broadcasters, local radio especially, interested in our cause. Write an article or letter for the local newspaper on the difficulties we face in everyday life, barriers put up not by us but by the attitude of others. This is surely as important as any amount of fundraising in raising awareness.
Daily I see discussions on this forum about problems autistic people and their carers are having with authority, funds being cut, barrers put in our way. And if we also let a wide audience know of these difficulties some of this may just begin to make others understand. Some seed may fall on stony ground, but if we all did communicate our issues to the media, our lawmakers, our local councillors then maybe, just maybe, we would begin to open a few doors in the barriers that are put in our way.
But how many of us will do this?
I love what you have said.
I'm one of those people who is doing these things.
I encourage everyone to do something. I have just read on a Facebook ASD page about a young boy who was put in quarantine for 5 hours at school for forgetting his PE kit. He's autistic. Are we living in the UK in 2019 or are we living in 1944 Germany or Russia sending people to Stalingrad.. it's disgusting.
I am currently reading Dr Ross Greene book the explosive child which I would encourage everyone to read. You can pick it up second-hand on Amazon. I live in one of the counties that has the highest number of autistic children and it's going up every month. I will be writing letters and I will be getting back on the radio to talk about these things.
An autistic child or any child would do well at school if they could.
if you picked a person up from deepest darkest Peru in the jungle and dropped them in the middle of London how would they react. They wouldn't understand the language.. the culture.. all the social nuance and so on. thats how kids and people feel when they don't have the skill set to deal with situations others can deal with.
Why do we expect a person who doesn't understand to cope when they don't have the skills or have a development issue that has never been dealt with. When are we going understand that some people have a low frustration threshold and the modern factory churn them out school system is ruining lives.
That's not the half of it...
You really think the school system is ruining lives? You do know it’s not compulsory don’t you? Nobody has to go to school, there are many alternative options. The school system in the U.K. may not be perfect, but are you?
Working in a school, I have to agree with this. I've seen so much criticism of schools and how they deal with situations. Some is absolutely right and some is just harsh.
People (I'm not talking about people on here, I mean in general) quote so much about how schools need to be better trained, more knowledgeable etc about autism. And yes, it would be good if more people in schools were better trained in this. But in reality those that work in schools have to be knowledgeable about a huge number of conditions, learning difficulties, illnesses, mental health issues, social situations, family situations. This list goes on and that's before they have even started planning, teaching, marking and keeping up with their subject knowledge. People cant be experts in everything.
It would be amazing if their could be more SEN schools around but unfortunately this all comes at a huge cost.
I'm intrigued though BlueRay by the many alternatives. Obviously you can home school. But what are the other alternatives?
I agree with everything you say, but with all the different alternative forms of education that we are now seeing, I see it as a positive and a move in the right direction. I know that all the alternatives are not yet available to everybody, for so many different reasons, but it's still a move in the right direction and I agree that probably the biggest change that could be made is a change in the acedemic pressure that is currently rampant, but that's going to take a lot of time, money and effort to change, but it is changing, even if the changes are slow and that's where we need to focus our attention. It's easy to say what's wrong with the system but not so easy to do anything about it, but it is changing, slowly, we have to keep the faith and do what we can, in our own little ways and continue to focus on the good and grow that.
@Binary - DITTO here and glad I left at 16 ant then graduated in my mid to late 20's. Never looked back until the recent head£$%^ (*censored by me)
Unfortunately, like a lot of other things in life, opportunities in education are very much the preserve of the better off: those who can afford to live near the better schools, who have the resources to pull strings, who can afford private schools or extra tuition, etc. They know how to play the system.
Precisely. Blanket criticism is never helpful. Schools have an awful lot of pressures on them to meet certain targets. It would be brilliant if a lot of the academic pressure could be taken off so that children can learn at their own pace but it is how it is and like you say it is not a bad school system overall. Especially compared to some other countries. It's never going to be perfect.
I see what you mean about several alternatives now. I was putting all those options under the term home schooling. This again isn't a one size fits all though. Someone with learning difficulties would struggle with online schooling. In these cases, yes it would be great if someone could teach them one on one but this does come at a great cost if a parent can't do it themselves. Some children also really struggle to concentrate at home so a different environment might be needed which can cause more cost. Some families would really struggle with this.
I also think that home schooling can be too isolating for some children. Yes school is hard for these children but if a child is struggling with social skills, them being isolated certainly won't develop them. So I don't think taking kids out of school is always a positive thing to do. Although I do think it's sometimes necessary.
Some areas are much better set up than others for home schooling where parents collaborate to get what's best for their kids.
I don't think theres a perfect answer for these kids a lot of the time unfortunately.
I think the few people who did ‘succeed’ at school, are the ones who seemed to know what they wanted to do in life or they came from homes that taught them the value of education.
I don’t think I would want to be considered a success by societies standards, as those standards don’t relate to my value system but I do want to achieve what I consider to be a success, which might look like societal success in some ways, but any success I achieve has little to do with societies standards, in fact, far from it. That can feel lonely sometimes as I have realised it is a good thing to share our successes with others; however, I will not give in, I will continue to carve out my success, because I would rather die than live by societies standards.
I remember a tutor of mine at uni, had a similar school story to mine in many ways, but she put hers down to being black. I think the majority of us never benefited that much by school and many of us were hurt by it, but at least, most of us, did come out of it with some level or education and the rest is always up to us anyway, regardless of how well we did or didn’t do at school.
I guess it’s like anything in life, it’s what we do with what we have, that counts.
I totally agree with you Binary about how much teachers have to be aware of and how extremely difficult their jobs are and even if some schools aren’t that good, in general, we have a good school system in the U.K. and general/blanket criticism doesn’t help anybody.
Chidhren can do online schooling. My friend’s daughter used to do this and she got brilliant grades and has now gone on to do extremely well at uni.
There are also private tutors who will homeschool and also parents who get together to homeschool their kids together, utilising various options such as joining groups with specific interests such as art or sport or acting etc.
We just have to get creative sometimes and when we are clear on what we want, we can make creative use of what’s available or create new options. This might all sound like too much for some people but there are people out there who can help, we just have to know what we want and be prepared to go for it and pay the price, which isn’t always financial.
There is always choice and there is always a way, when there is a will but we often have to look outside the box and not look at the obstacles, such as, lack of finances or whatever, in order to get to our goal. I bet there are even plenty of retired teachers who would love to help in the education of somebody who doesn’t fit into the system. It might not be easy to find alternatives, but they’re there, and we can find them if we look hard enough.