For just over a month I have been hoping - and itching - to share the following proposal for a conference paper. It's for a panel on "Learning Disabilities in the Classics Classroom" organised by Clara Bosak-Schroeder and Krishni Burns for the 2019 CAMWS (Classical Association of the Middle West and South) conference to be held in Lincoln.
I sent off my abstract around the middle of last month and have recently received the news that the panel has been accepted!
After lots of correspondence with US-based people for some years now in relation to my autism and mythology project, I'm very much looking forward to this opportunity to talk, in the US, about what I'm doing and planning.
Here, then, is my proposal.
What would Hercules do? Turning classical myth into a learning opportunity for autistic children
Elitism runs deep in classics. Yet classics is changing, including through the work of democratically-minded classicists who are to seeking to surmount the structural and historical factors that perpetuate classics as a subject that excludes particular groups. This paper will concern a project I have developed to bring classics to a particular public: autistic children.
I shall briefly introduce
the rationale behind my project, which I began after a meeting in 2008 with a
Special Needs teacher who told me that, in the experience of herself and her
colleagues, autistic children engage especially well with learning about an
aspect of the classical world, namely its myths. I began thinking that this might
be the case, and, then, started to wonder how I could contribute as a
classicist whose key interest is in classical myth. My academic life was
transformed from this moment, leading, for instance to a role as a disability
co-coordinator and a blogger: https://myth-autism.blogspot.com/. Indeed, my paper will include a brief recommendation
of blogging: for immediate dissemination of research, for reaching a wider public,
and for the opportunity to develop a more reflective voice to complement the traditional,
results-focused, voice that dominates academic writing.
Above all, I shall
discuss the first of three sets of activities that I have developed to encourage
autistic children to negotiate issues that, challenging for any child, can be
especially difficult for those with autism. These activities centre around
Hercules, a figure who, I shall show, has particularly rich potential to engage
autistic ways of thinking and being. The activities are part of a European Research
Council-funded project Our Mythical
Childhood: The
Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in
Response to Regional and Global Challenges http://www.omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/
(2016-2021).
The activities
centre on the choice that Hercules is invited to make at a crisis point, when,
on arriving at a strange place, he encounters two women who represent divergent
paths in life. As I shall show, the activities (eight in total) take
the user through the episode: from the arrival at a strange place, to noticing
certain things about the place, to noticing the two women. There are activities
where users reflect on what the hero might be experiencing in his interactions
with each woman. There are also activities which shift the perspective to the
two women – and on how they seek to
engage him. Then, finally, users move
to the hero’s choice. As I shall show, Hercules chooses one path – yet he considers
the other path as well. There is rich potential here for exploring different
perspectives on a given issue.
Each path, as I
shall show, will lead to a particular kind of future, one involving a life of
pleasure, the other a life of struggle. Each user of the resources can choose a
particular path – and they can do this by thinking about what Hercules would
do, potentially helping themselves develop a theory of mind. Or they can make
their own choice, and thus think about how their present can turn into the
future.
As I shall set out, each
activity is accompanied by educational goals which will help teachers decide
which activity to use according to their goals and their students' abilities. These
are divided in relation to the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy of
'cognitive,' and 'affective,' goals, while a third part deals with the students’
social skills and how these are promoted through the activities.
I shall then share
the outcome of a workshop, held autumn 2018, with specialists in autism
research to seek expert feedback on the activities. When I come to
market these resources more widely, the collaboration and endorsement of these
professionals will be integral. I hope, too, that they will take up these
resources for use in a therapeutic context.
After this, I shall
discuss a pilot study of the activities with pupils aged 5-11 in a specialist
autistic unit in a London state primary school. I shall end by outlining my
plans for further pilot studies.
The Hercules activities
I have developed are intended to be inclusive and thought-provoking – and fun.
They offer an opportunity for autistic children to think about such matters as
how to cope with new scenarios and change, and how to engage in decision-making.
They also offer a gateway to classics for those whose access to shared aspects
of culture can be particularly challenging.
Work cited
Anderson, L.W. et
al. (ed.) 2001. A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of
Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Pearson.
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