Autism & mythology: learning good practice

One thing I’m enjoying right now - as we move into the second month of the Our Mythic Childhood project - is the opportunity to read the literature on autism that has been on my shelf for a while. One of the books in question is an edited volume, Autism and Learning: a guide to good practice (ed. Stuart Powell and Rita Jordan, Routledge), that has sat there for a couple of years and was first published quite a time ago, in 1997. A date of publication approaching two decades ago would be something that I would take note of were I to be reading something on a classical topic because the goals and outlook - and the positioning of the author/s – is likely to be shaped by the intellectual climate at the time of writing. This is something I’m aware of, in my own work. For instance I am fairly regularly revisiting my PhD thesis just now. When I completed it in the early months of 2000 it felt timely, but it now looks to me to be steeped in a way of thinking about mythology, religion and deities that has moved on. And how much more so with anything written on autism – a field with is constantly finding new space.

The book I’m reading has a new preface, from 2012, by Rita Jordan, one of the original editors. This 2012 date itself even marks an earlier stage in thinking on autism. This is witnessed, for instance in the references to ‘children with autism’ or ‘adults with autism’ or ‘people with autism’ – when the move currently is towards such description as ‘autistic people’, ‘autistic children’ etc. One advantage here is the potential to capture how one’s autism is not some add-on to an individual. Thinking of someone as ‘with autism’ risks creating a sense that autism can be distinguished from a person – or that one can, even, perhaps be cured of the condition. This is not to say that I cannot see the benefits of the ‘with autism’ description – and I had an interesting discussion just recently about this with the press officer, a psychology graduate, who wrote a piece about the Our Mythic Childhood project.

What I’m struck with is just how far the practical strategies set out by the book’s authors are commensurate with how I am envisage how I should set about preparing my mythological studies for use in the classroom. I shall summarise a few points here:

1. It is crucial to keep the focus on the individual person – and to retain a sense of how everyone learns differently. And so…
2. There can’t ever be a recipe which sets out how autistic education should be done – and as a result…
3. It’s vital that practitioners keep reflecting on their practice, philosophy, pedagogy, successes and failures. What’s more…
4.  While each person learns differently, there is a distinct autistic way of learning – and…
5. This can be hard to grasp by those who don’t share autistic ways of thinking. I like putting it this way round – as it identifies the non-autistic here as the one who is deficient.
6.  The authors mention the insights that ‘high-functioning’ autistic people have supplied (p. 4). Increasingly, autistic voices are being shared, including from those who can now look back on their childhood and at how adults would try to ‘reach’ them and on what it was like to be reached.
7. It’s not necessarily helpful to divide autism up into subcategories – perhaps more useful is Lorna Wing’s identification of a triad of common features (more to follow here). Conversely,
8. There is rarely if ever a ‘pure’ autism - autism often intersects with other conditions. I’m minded here of a training session I took part in last year on ADHD, and which I commentated on briefly, which explored how there much of an overlap between for example dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD and autism – so much for dyspraxia as ‘autism with empathy…’
9. Autism education should keep a focus not just on what autistics lack, but on autistic strengths and abilities. This ties with the earlier point above on a distinctively autistic way of thinking. Thus
10. It is vital to set high expectations while providing plenty of support for each learner.
11. One challenge is around picking up what non-autistics are able to do. Autistics need to learn what others manage instinctively. And so,
12. Autism practice should both support distinctively autistic ways of thinking and behaving while finding ways for autistics to live and work in a ‘non-autistic world.’
13. Good autism practice might well benefit all. This is commensurate with what I’ve discovered over the last few years namely that good disability practice is good practice per se. But, as the authors say, this might not be the case the other way round – so, what works for non-autistics in the classroom simply might not support the learning development of autistic people. There’s another potential implication here that challenges the previous point (#12):
14. Autistic good practice has the potential for impacting on, even transforming, the ‘non-autistic’ world (p.1). 

Next steps…  I shall explore on the implications of the above points around using classical mythology in autistic education, for example in providing space where individuals can work out their distinctive identifies, while also negotiating between an autistic way of understanding and the other world – the world of non-autistics.