Updates: book chapter, Bright-Eyed study, paper on myth as bearer of autistic hope for diversity event

Here is a quick update on some of my activities to date since my previous posting. The month or so after that posting was spent writing a paper of c. 9000 words for the book growing out of the conference on Mythical Hope on which I blogged in that posting.  Since then, I've begun work on another paper linked with the Our Mythical Childhood project - on a topic that might well end up resonating with my autism work, through I'm too early on in the project to make any confident assertions yet. I have written a couple of postings to date on this paper - which concerns a work of children's literature, Richard Woff's Bright-Eyed Athena - for another blog I keep. This is a blog on misc. aspects of the deity Athena. Thirdly, I am, right now, preparing a paper on my autism and classical myth work for a conference later this week at Roehampton on diversity and Classics. This event takes place under the aegis of Classics and Social Justice, from whose social media presence comes the image at the head of this posting. I plan to blog about this paper soon.

Hercules, the autistic imagination and Our Mythical Hope

Here is the text of the paper I gave in Warsaw in May 2017 introducing my autism and classical mythology work and linking it to the conference theme, of Our Mythical Hope in children's and young adults' culture... the (in)efficacy of ancient myths in overcoming the hardships of life. Some of what I actually said in Warsaw differs from what is set out here - the paper, as delivered, used this text as a springboard for reflections around my project rather than anything like a strict script.

PART 1 – INTRODUCING MY HERCULEAN JOURNEY

A year ago, when we were gathered here in Warsaw to ‘Chase Mythical Beasts,’ I gave some very initial information about the work I was – then – getting ready to embark on concerning autism and classical mythology. When photos taken at the conference were circulated shortly afterwards, and I saw this one of myself setting out my plans, I was struck at how intense I looked. This was, I think, because I was sharing how much this work meant to me. Back then, we had several months still to go before the project, enabled by ERC funding, would start. Indeed, we were still working out a number of aspects of the project, including what the precise start date would be. Then, in October 2016, the project got going officially. And, so, the dream I had fostered for several years could finally come true, namely to investigate the potential for using classical myth with autistic children.

I had learnt, back in 2008, that autistic children often respond well to learning about classical myth. As a classicist interested in classical myth, I was intrigued to find out why this might be the case. And this led to an unexpected turn in my life towards becoming deeply interested in autism and disability more broadly. Over this time, I thought about the topic constantly, and began a blog to set out my ideas, but I was far from sure whether it would ever turn into an actual project, much though I hoped it would. But, now, I am able – indeed required – to conduct this work. And today what I am going to do is discuss what stage I have currently reached, and where I will be going next. I shall outline some of the principles guiding what I am doing, and I shall talk about the particular topic that I have selected for the first stage of my project, namely the development of resources for use by those who work with autistic children around a particular mythical figure: Hercules. This was not the initial figure I had planned to work on – so I shall seek to convey what it is about Hercules that makes him suitable for the focus of my work. I shall also mention a couple of occurrences that have confirmed me in my thinking about the potential for using Hercules in this way, starting, now, with the first of these. This was being put in touch, by Prof Marciniak, with Dr Pecchini, my fellow panellist today, at a time when he, too, was exploring the potential of myths of Hercules in his work as a clinical psychologist.

The focus of this current conference, around ‘Our Mythical Hope,’ is something that I have also taken heart from – in view of how it points to the aspirational approach that, spurred on by Katarzyna, we are as a team, taking towards the study of classical themes in children’s culture. I have also taken inspiration from the conference’s focus on how classical myth can play a part in mitigating the ‘hardships of life.’ In relation to my work on autism, there is potential for using myth to deal with the challenges faced by autistic people – notably the

‘triad of impairments’ that Lorna Wing identified some years ago now, as which are still used as guiding principles. These are difficulties in: (1) social and emotional understanding, (2) all aspects of communication, and (3) a lack of flexibility in thinking and behaviour. As Rita Jordan – to whom I’ll return further soon – stresses, educational practice that only focuses in on one of the three might be inadequate – because it is the ‘triad of impairments,’ Wing’s term, that is key here:

Communication difficulties, for example, are apparent when the child has problems in understanding his or her own and others’ emotions and social signals and when they have problems being spontaneous and monitoring feedback to their own actions …  ASDs are transactional disorders, appearing in their interactions with others and not to be understood without the contextualization from which special needs are determined (p. 111).

But I also note the ‘in’ in brackets before the word ‘efficacy’ in the title for the conference. This allowance of the possible of ‘inefficacy’ alongside ‘efficacy’ signals something that, also, fits my experiences over the past few months as the project has been getting going, namely that classics, as it is received by children, might not always play the transformative or reassuring or aspirational role that we might like it to. Colleagues working on aspects of classics in children’s literature have told me about some of the uncomfortable things that they are discovering, for example that classical themes are sometimes used to perpetuate certain stereotypes, for instance around gender. The ‘in’ also puts me in mind of certain of the experiences I have had over the last few months, which have helped bring home to me just what the responsibilities might be for me as I produce materials that could be used in work with autistic children. I shall structure the remainder of this paper around three of these experiences.

PART 2 – FACING HYDRAS

One experience was from a colleague, a librarian, who has been very encouraging about the project. Chancing to learn that a visitor to her library was the grandmother of an autistic young child, she told the visitor about my work and mentioned that I am looking, particularly, at Hercules. The visitor responded that she very much hoped that I wouldn’t be including anything particularly violent, like the Hydra’s heads being cut off. Now: this is precisely one of the features of Hercules’s adventures that I am planning to work on – as one instance where Hercules, journeying into a fantasy land, encounters hardships which he overcomes against the odds. (Conversely, in the mundane world, he is often an outsider, who gets things wrong – because the behaviour that is suitable in a fantasy realm is not such in the everyday world.) In light of this comment from my colleague, I am aware that I need to treat the episode with care, including because it is not necessarily possible to control how someone will engage with any aspect of mythology presented to them. For example, the encounter with the Hydra, which might appear an instance of how to engage in problem solving to one person might be taken as uncomfortably violent by someone else, especially perhaps if the user empathises with the monster rather than the monster’s slayer. Stories of Hercules tend to be presented form the perspective of the hero, but what if a participant in an activity for autistic children identifies with the Hydra instead?

(There are various possible solutions here – for instance, by problematising who it is who is the hero and who it is that is the victim perhaps by focusing on how the Hydra deals with the violence of Hercules by growing new heads – but I’ll start to address these further down the line rather than currently).

Another experience that has got me thinking about my practice is the following one – namely feedback I received from a participant at an event at Roehampton where I introduced the work I am planning on autism and classical myth during ERC Week in March. One of those who attended the session was a therapist who has experience working with autistic clients. I stated during my presentation that I would be developing materials that teachers and other professionals could use with autistic children. When she stressed to me after my paper the many challenges of working with autistic clients, and also emphasised the potential for causing harm to clients if one lacks sufficient training, I realised that she had thought that I was intending to work directly with autistic children without any specialist present. This experience has made me realise that I need to emphasise that this is not what I am intending, and shown me yet again just how much expertise a practitioner needs in order to work in an educational or therapeutic capacity with autistic children.

So – here is what I am doing currently. I am developing resources around the adventures of Hercules – not the episode with the Hydra – yet – but a particular episode that already has a history of use in the education of the young. This is the ‘choice of Hercules’ between two paths, one of hard work, the other of pleasure, which was popular in educational texts in the 18^th century. I shall focus in particular on the episode as it is represented on a chimneypiece panel in Grove House, an eighteenth-century villa in Roehampton. Once I have finished drafting the first set of activities, I shall start liaising with professionals – and in light of their feedback, I shall rework the materials. Ultimately, I’m hoping that the materials will have a place in classroom activities - and I would be very interested in actually observing them being used. And this is one of the aspects of my work for which I have gone through the Ethics procedure at my institution.

Now I’ll turn to a third observation which is shaping my approach.

PART 3 – NEURODIVERSITY AND SIDEKICKS

My third observation in relation to the focus of this conference deals with overcoming the hardships of life from another angle, namely how far it should, in fact, be the role of someone working with autistic people to attempt to resolve the supposed hardships of their lives.

Since I began getting interested in autism in 2008, there has been a shift in thinking about the condition away from autism as something in need of a cure. As Jim Sinclair said ‘don’t mourn for us.’ Autism, as activists present it, isn’t something to be pathologised as an impairment, but it is a way of being. In place of trying to make someone autistic more like ‘us,’ for example by helping them make eye contact and by finding ways to reduce repetitive actions, instead it might be timely to think about embodied differences and also about possibly advantageous autistic behaviours. And there is scope here for work on myth – including the myth of Hercules. One approach, in line with what I was exploring back in 2008, would be to use myth to help autistic people develop specific skills, for instance in communication. Another approach would be to use myth to explore the its potential for speak to different ways of thinking and behaving.

Indeed, the potential for myth as a gateway into the wold of an autistic child is huge. This may be demonstrated by the experiences of Ron Suskind, who – in his recent book Sidekicks – sets out his journey towards communicating with his son, Owen, via Disney characters, including characters in Disney’s Hercules. Reading about this process, and the place played by Hercules among an array of characters, has further encouraged me in my thinking that it is worth developing resources around the adventures of this figure.

Suskind’s experiences also put me in mind, however, of one challenge that I am facing. Owen had already developed a love of the stories and characters that his father was able to use as a gateway to understanding him. But it could well be the case that those I am producing materials for will not have any such existing knowledge of the stories – let alone a love of them.

However, this potential problem is surmountable. Indeed, it might not, even, be a problem I the first place – as I shall consider in the next section.

PART 4 – HERCULES NOW

In my development of resources around episodes in the adventures of Hercules, I am

following the approach developed by Grove and Park around the adventures of another hero, Odysseus. This is in their book, Odyssey Now, which is comprised of a set of activities for those working with those with profound disabilities, but which can be adapted for use with other groups too. As they state in the book, they developed resources around the adventures of a classical hero because rooting activates in stories with such a heritage can open up cultural experiences to those whose intellectual life is different from that of other people.

Like them, I have opted for a classical hero, Herakles, whose struggles against the odds see him draw on skills associated with strength and also cleverness that is akin to Odysseus. It doesn’t matter whether those doing the activities have existing knowledge of the stories – indeed, some of the users might find it hard, perhaps impossible, to understand the specifics of the myths. Indeed, a challenge for me will be to make the materials I create accessible to those with a range of abilities at communication.

In doing this, I shall be seeking to keep aware of the potential that the stories might provide

for engaging autistic children, while taking note of just how misguided it is to think in terms of some ideal recipient of the resources – when each autistic person learns in distinctive ways. This is something that is stressed, for example, by Rita Jordan in the practical advice she gives to those working with autistic people. For one thing, she stresses that it is crucial to keep the focus on the individual person, and to retain a sense of how each person learns differently: there cannot ever be a recipe which sets out how autistic education should be done. As a result, it is vital that practitioners should keep reflecting on their practice and the principles that underpin it – and it is crucial too they should reflect too both on their successes and failures as practitioners.

Jordan also stresses something that might be especially challenging for a non-autistic person – this is that, while each person learns differently, there is, all the same, a distinctly autistic way of learning. This can be hard to grasp by those who don’t share autistic ways of learning – I like putting it this way round, as it marks out the non-autist here as the one who is deficient, rather than the autistic person. However, as she also stresses, it is not necessarily helpful to divine autism into subcategories. What’s more, there is rarely ever ‘pure’ autism – instead, autism often intersects with other conditions, such as ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia.

Jordan emphasises that autism education should keep a focus not just on what autistics lack, but on autistic strengths and abilities. She stresses that it is vital to set high expectations for each learner, while providing plenty of support as well. And as she sets out, one challenge is around enabling autistic people to pick up with others are able to do instinctively. Autistic practice should be support distinctively autistic ways of thinking and behaving, while finding ways for autistic people to operate in a ‘non-autistic world.’

I’ll end by sketching out how the brief example of the Choice of Hercules mentioned earlier can be informed by these principles. There is potential for developing materials for those with different levels of communication. I’m planning activities, for example, around the complexities of eye contact between Hercules, the two women and also various of the attributes in the image – this activity would be geared towards those with more advanced levels of communication. For those with more basic levels of communication, I am envisaging an activity based around the fruit in the basket, potentially involving pictures or models of fruit. The children could be encouraged to say things like ‘hungry’ and ‘pretty’ and they could be encouraged to reach out and touch the fruit, or pretend to eat it.

PART 5 – HERCULES NEXT…

To conclude - life can be difficult for children and young adults, just as Katarzyna Marciniak sets out beautifully in the conference booklet – but, as she points out, out of Night there comes a daughter, Hope. I have tried to show some of the sources for Hope for autistic children as they negotiate experiences on the road to adulthood. These include challenges common to all including building identities and making choices. Yet, for autistic children the challenges can be all the more acute as they find ways to make sense of experiences, to develop imaginations, learn to plan for the future, and try to make sense of where they fit within time and space.

I am driven by a conviction that classical myth can be a source of support, and Hope, for autistic children as they negotiate these challenges. I have only had time to sketch out very briefly what I shall be doing to turn this conviction into something tangible, but I hope that I have given a sense of the principles that are underlying what I am planning around Hercules, his choices and his experiences. Over the next few months, I am going to be drafting initial activities, and I’ll be contacting various practitioners and seeking their advice, including perhaps some people in this room. It’s been an honour to share my thinking to date – and I look forward to sharing my work with you as it unfolds during Our Mythical Travels.

Mythology in the classroom (autistic or otherwise): pitfalls and opportunities

Back in March - at an event at Roehampton to help celebrate ERC Week - several of us were struck that a follow-up event would be worth exploring. And we talked about potentially holding it in Cambridge, because several of those who came to Roehampton for the evening are based there and because of the potential for co-action with the Education Faculty there and also with the Children's Literature master's programme. I can now announce that this germ of an idea has grown into Mythology and Education: History and Practice which will indeed take place in Cambridge, on Friday 27 October 2017.

 

The event will address the following issue. Greco-Roman mythology is used widely and imaginatively in teaching and outreach activity, in both secondary and higher education. However, there have been few opportunities to analyse the pedagogical benefits and pitfalls, or to share and explore effective practices and innovation. We now seek to address this gap in pedagogy - at a one-day workshop for academics, teachers, and students.

Our location is the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. There's further information here, including on how to book.

 

The question of pitfalls vs benefits is one that I am currently grappling with in my work on autism and mythology - and I shared my thinking at the recent conference at Warsaw, Our Mythical Hope: in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture... The (In)efficacy of Ancient Myths in Overcoming the Hardships of Life. The focus of this conference - mythological hope - points to the aspirational approach that, directed by Katarzyna Marciniak, we are taking towards the study of classical themes in children's culture. We all, I think, share a conviction that classical myth can play a part in enabling children to deal with the 'hardships of life,' to quote from the conference's subtitle.

 

But I also note the ‘in’ in brackets before the word ‘efficacy.’ This allowance of the possible of ‘inefficacy’ signals something that has been concerning me, namely that classics, as it is received by children, might not always play the transformative or reassuring or aspirational role that we might like it to. Colleagues working on aspects of classics in children’s literature have told me about some of the uncomfortable things that they are discovering, for example that classical themes are sometimes used to perpetuate certain stereotypes, for instance around gender. The ‘in’ also puts me in mind of certain of the experiences I have had over the last few months, which have helped bring home to me just what the responsibilities might be for me as I produce materials that could be used in work with autistic children.

 

I'll share these soon on this blog, and also in the chapter I'm writing for the book linked with the conference, and - also - in Cambridge this autumn.

 

Back from a quest for Mythical Hope

I'm recently back from an extremely stimulating time in quest of Our Mythical Hope in Warsaw. I've come back full of ideas for my autism and classical myth resources.  I'll share the paper I delivered there soon - once I've written up the annotations I made to the draft I took along with me. The photo below shows me with my fellow Roehampton questers Sonya Nevin and Steve Simons. 

And here I am, snapped talking with Eduardo Pecchini, in the aftermath of our panel exploring Hercules, disability and mental health - appropriately enough in the presence of Hercules. In one of the many coincidences I've encountered in relation to this project, we each started working, totally independently, on Hercules from the perspective of disability at the same time. I'll say more about this presently.

Getting ready for 'Hercules and the autistic imagination: introducing the 'autism' strand of Our Mythical Childhood'

In just over a week, I shall be heading to Warsaw for the first of three conferences associated with the Our Mythical Childhood Project. The upcoming event is this one:

Our Mythical Hope in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture... The (In)efficacy of Ancient Myths in Overcoming the Hardships of Life. 

The aspect of 'mythical hope' I shall explore will be in connection with my research for the autism and classical myth strand of the OMC Project. I shall introduce the work I'm doing by setting out two key things underpinning my research: that teachers and other professionals welcome new ideas for their work with autistic children, and that classical mythology provides a rich source of such material. I will focus especially on the resources I am creating around stories of Hercules, especially his difficult journeys into fantasy lands and his comparably difficult experiences in the mundane world where he often remains an outsider. In particular, I shall explore the potential of these stories in:

• Stimulating the imagination
  
• Extending experience
  
• Developing social and personal skills
  
• Giving cultural experience
  
• Aiding interaction with others
  

Last week I started an Academia session on the topic. If you'd like to join (I'd be honoured!), please go to: https://www.academia.edu/s/aac55062c5/hercules-and-the-autistic-imagination

Our mythical journey at Roehampton - how we introduced the OMC project during ERC Week 2017

Here’s a written-up version of the text I presented yesterday at a special event. Along with my colleagues Sonya Nevin and Katerina Volioti, I introduced the Our Mythical Childhood project in Roehampton's Adam Room whose chimneypiece I have many-times referenced in this blog of late. This event formed part of a series of events for the project helping to celebrate ERC Week on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the European Research Council. I'm awaiting photos of the event, which was also recorded. And I've also sent an evaluation form around those who booked. I'll add to and supplement this posting with these materials as seems most fit.

We’re so happy to have this opportunity to present our project to you. Some of your faces are familiar – others not – and as a result you’re making a dream I had a few months ago come true. I woke up at c. 3am after a dream that, as part of the project, it was necessary that I should reach out to every wing of the University including each academic department and each support department. I realised with relief that this was just a dream, but the dream had been coming out of an awareness on my part that one potentially interesting thing about the project is its interdisciplinary – its home in disciplinary terms is classics but we don’t consider ourselves rooted here.  There is fit for example with children’s literature, with education and with psychology and more…  so, when I started publicising this event I was very pleasantly surprised when many of the names that were showing in the booking notifications were unknown to me.  So – a dream I had of working with colleagues across the university is coming true.

This is a project that is being embarked on by the three of us at Roehampton. Today we’ll be introducing the work that we’re doing. But it is also a global project involving collaboration between a team of scholars in Poland, Cameroon, Israel and Australia. So, as well as introducing the work that we’re doing here, we’ll show how our work is being done in collaboration with our colleagues internationally. Here’s how this evening will be structured. I’m going to start by talking about the project broadly. This will lead into an introduction to a stand of the project for which I’m taking the lead, autism and classical myth. Then, Sonya will introduce the work she is doing along with her partner Steve Simons on animating classical myth. Finally, Katerina will discuss the work she is doing on how mythological figures are received in children’s culture in modern Greece.

And what we’re going to do is to try to convey how globally focused our project is, while conveying too how it is rooted in regional receptions in kids’ and YA culture, and one way in which I’m going to engage with this duality between international and local is in relation to this room. It’s my most favourite room and here’s why: this chimneypiece and the panel at the centre.  These can get a bit overlooked when we gather here for meetings and receptions and so forth but it is a wonderful instance of the reception of classical myth and it’s an instance too of the appropriate of a mythological figure that has a resonance with our project – because of when it was produced, who it represents and how it can continue to speak to children today – and adults… Having hopefully generated a bit of expectation I’ll come back to it after saying something more about the project.

The project started – for me – a few years ago when I saw a notice that Professor Katarzyna Marciniak put up on a classicists’ email list about resources created under her direction on classical motifs in Post-War literature for children in Poland. I wrote to her expressing my interest and support and this led to a dialogue around her work and a project that I’d been slowing building up for a few years on the potential for classical myth in work with autistic children. Katarzyna had built up a network of scholars interested in how children’s culture adapts and transforms classical themes. And we decided to go for something ambitious - a bid for funding to a sufficiently large and forward-looking scheme that might match the ambitious project we were envisaging. This was the Horizon 2020 Excellent Science Scheme of the European Research Council.

Our conviction was that in kids’ and YA culture, the reception of antiquity isn’t just taken in passively but is always being shaped afresh, in varied ways, in response to challenges that are both regional and global. We wanted to research the richness of these processes, with a view to impacting on the frontiers of scholarship, education and culture. We prepared the bid over several months, with excellent support from our institutions including Roehampton – and I would especially like to mention here Mike Edwards, Head of the Dept of Humanities, who peer-reviewed the bid and the then research facilitator for Humanities, Arianna Ciula, without whom I don’t think we’d be standing here now.

We were warned that the project was so huge and risky that we might well be unsuccessful – but we felt that by putting together the application we’d at least have material we could use for future collaborations. But then we heard that we’d got past the first round – and after Katarzyna presented the project to the ERC in Brussels, we learnt that we’d been successful. The project began, after lots of final bits of admin, in October 2016 after the agreement with the ERC had been signed off by each University’s signatories including our Vice Chancellor. I’m honoured, now, today, to be here introducing the project during the first ever ERC Week, to mark the Council’s tenth anniversary.

One thing that’s fuelling our work is this – that the way to approach the reception of classical antiquity is not as from some distant, frozen past, but as a vibrant cultural process – it is something alive – that has been appropriated at various times since antiquity right up to the present, and in media that can range from an 18^th-century chimneypiece such as the one in this room to contemporary novels, movies and, now, internet phenomena and computer games and toys such as Lego figures.

We are going to show the variety of receptions though a range of studies that pull together reception models in Europe, America and Australia and NZ and also in localities not typically associated with the classical tradition – Asia and Africa.  The example of Hercules is instructive here. This figure has been appropriated by many cultures including as a national hero. For instance, there is a late 1960s Russian animation, The Return from Olympus, where Hercules defends the working class against the gods who represent exploiters of the workers (cf. Putin as Hercules…?!). And in the Eighteenth-Century, the Hercules myth became a British myth – and the hero was used to educate the young – young men at least – in how to find a balance between two opposing forces of key interest then – Virtue/Hard Work and Vice/Indolence. And this is precisely how he is shown here on the chimney piece panel in this room – choosing which path to take in life between the pleasures of Vice, whose gifts are abundant, immediate and overflowing, and the way of Virtue which will take the hero up a steep and craggy path but with huge rewards at the end of his struggle. And on the panel, he turns his body towards Vice but his head towards Virtue.

I got to see the educational potential of this artefact earlier this term when the Class of 2020, the group of girls who are being sponsored by the University to mark our 175^th anniversary. came into this room as part of their day of activities on the Humanities Challenge Day. What many of them saw was not – just – some artefact from a long-distant classical/18-century past but a metaphor for the choices they make in life. One said in her evaluation:

My favourite things about today was when we went into the Adams room because I loved the architecture and designs inside and outside. The picture on the fireplace was also very good because it made me think about decisions that I have made and will make.

So – classical myth has rich potential as a transformation marker in children’s culture including for the amazing girls in the Class of 2020. And the OMC project is seeking to capture this via its various strands. For instance, Lisa Maurice in Israel is leading research into how classics is used in educational resources worldwide. Plus, we’re all involved in compiling a Survey of works for children drawing on classical antiquity. Over each 6-month period, Roehampton, like the other institutions, is producing 30 entries. We are currently nearing the end of the first period – and Katerina and Sonya have brought along some of the works that they are working on. Some of the authors who will be contributing to the second set of entries are in this room – including the author who will write about this Lego figure and others.

Now to the second thing I want to talk about – the work I’m doing on autism and classical myth. I think that the best way to introduce this is via a brief account of how it came about. This was around 2008 when I was talking with a special needs teacher who told me that one things she had noticed over the years was that autistic children often respond well to learning about classical myth. I started musing over why this might be the case and then something stuck me – namely that, as a classicist specialising in mythology, I might have something specific to contribute towards using myth with autistic children. So: I began contacting as many people as I could think of, including at Roehampton, and I kept being encouraged to push forward. For instance, the special needs teachers I spoke with, and dramatherapists too, consistently said that they’re always looking for new resources and that stories provide valuable sources for materials.

I started a blog in early 2009 to report on my progress. I decided to do this because I was aware that I had many other projects ongoing – but by blogging as and when I thought I had something to share, I could at least report sporadically on my progress. And in the period from 2009 until the OMC project got going, I did indeed blog sporadically, often with huge gaps between postings. But what happened too was that several specialists who work with autistic people got in touch with me and by the time we began on the funding bid to the ERC, I had written c. 20,000 words around aspects of autism myth and disability studies. And during this time, this interest in autism led to some unexpected interfaces between my various roles at the University. For instance, I became the disability co-ordinator for the School of Arts and went on to hold a comparable role for the Dept of Humanities – and this has enabled me to work with the disability team here including Lisa Forbes and Tom Cakebread, whose presentation on neurodiversity at a training event in disability and inclusive practice here last year was inspiring.

Since I started work on the project, two interesting things have been happening. For one thing, classical reception studies has been developing as a field of classics. And in this climate, with OMC, we’re exploring from new angles how classical antiquity is persistently reshaped in children’s culture, including to deal with difficult moments and rites of passage. Secondly, understandings of autism have been developing, including an increased sense of the challenges that autistic people face and also the how vital it is not only to seek to ‘reach’ autistic people but also to gain a deeper understanding of the world of each autistic person – it is the potential for myth to gain this understanding that is helping drive what I’m doing.

My work on autism is in line with a core feature of the OMC project – namely that engagements with antiquity are not passive, but instead classical themes and figures are ever being reshaped. And this takes me to a key answer I have been formulating over the past few years to the question of I asked back in 2008 – of what it is about classical myth that might appeal to autistic children. Classical myths on the one hand look fixed: each character for instance has specific traits and each story seems to have a fixed structure. Yet, on the other hand, classical myths are flexible and fluid – they were so in antiquity and they have been thus ever since. I am going to work with duality to find new ways to open up cultural experiences for autistic children – children whose access to cultural and intellectual life can be challenging.

I am going to be developing materials around several mythological characters, starting with the one in this room, on our chimneypiece. The panel here offers huge potential – for working with autistic people across the spectrum. For instance, there is potential for developing activities around the most basic levels of communication. For example, I am planning a task that focuses on the fruit in the baskets – where children are encouraged to touch models of fruit and say key words relevant to the experience, such as ‘hungry’ or ‘pretty’. I am also planning activities around more developed levels of communication. For instance, Hercules here is at a difficult moment, facing a choice between two different paths in life. I am considering developing activities around eliciting states of feeling which contrast with one another. I am also exploring the potential for an activity around turn-taking which takes the focus away from Hercules in the middle to the two women and how they each seek to gain his attention.

I am currently building up contacts with specialists and practitioners and soon I shall start discussing these materials with them. My work is in its early stages – I’ll keep blogging on my progress and I’d be happy to share this progress with you.

I then handed over to Sonya who in turn handed over to Katerina. We received some warm feedback in the reception afterwards. I now feel as though, as we near the end of the first reporting period of the project, our mythical journey at Roehampton has truly come into existence.

L-R: Katerina Volioti, Susan Deacy, Hercules, Sonya Nevin

What's an autistic classroom?

When I sent the title of an event I’m planning to introduce the Our Mythical Childhood project to a colleague who was putting together a programme of upcoming classical events at Roehampton the colleague wrote back to check whether I’d got the title of my talk at this event right. The title I’d sent her was along the lines of ‘classical myth in the autistic classroom’ and she wanted to check whether I’d meant to write ‘autistic classroom.’ I assumed that I had managed a typo thanks to autocorrect with tends to offer me ‘artistic’ for ‘autistic’. But I checked, and I had correctly written ‘autistic’. So I confirmed this to my colleague and she who said that that she’d wanted to make sure that I’d actually meant ‘autistic classroom’ as she is not sure what such a classroom might be. I’m glad that she asked about this because the question has got me to think about what I do actually mean by the phrase.

The answer I gave her – this was about a month ago - was this: come along to the event and you’ll find out! So I have a few weeks to get my thinking sorted out ahead of the event which is on Thursday 6^th March. Here are some initial musings, informed by the chapter on autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in a book that I’m grateful to my colleague Lena Kamenopoulou for recommending: Special Teaching for Special Children? Pedagogies for inclusion, ed. By Ann Lewis and Brahmn Norwich. The chapter in question, by Rita Jordan, and also synthesises the author’s previous work on autism and education. Perhaps I should write to her to ask whether she thinks there might be such thing as an ‘autistic classroom.’

For one thing, an autistic classroom might be one where children diagnosed as autistic are taught, and were special provision is made for their distinctive needs. Jordan, building on her own previous work - and others’ notably Lorna Wing’s – defines these as dealing with difficulties in:

1. Social and emotional understanding
2. All aspects of communication
3. Flexibility in thinking and behaviour.

She doesn’t number these three points – I’m only doing so because I’m following the order in her list. Indeed, what she stresses is that educational practice that only focuses in on one of the three might be inadequate – because it is the ‘triad of impairments,’ Wing’s term, that is key here. Jordan writes:

Communication difficulties, for example, are apparent when the child has problems in understanding his or her own and others’ emotions and social signals and when they have problems being spontaneous and monitoring feedback to their own actions …  ASDs are transactional disorders, appearing in their interactions with others and not to be understood without the contextualization from which special needs are determined (p. 111).

So, an ‘autistic classroom' might be one where the educational needs of diagnosed children are met, so that transactional problems can be helped, and where, for instance, their flexibility in thinking is helped in relation to how they communicate with others, and where their social and emotional understanding is fostered in the context of how they think about their behaviour and the behaviour of others. An autistic classroom might, then, be one where autistic children are helped to become more emotionally engaged and which seeks to remediate their difficulties in being socially engaged, emotionally engaged and in communicating and in developing flexible thinking and actions. Such a classroom might find ways to help those children who find it hard to participate in the mainstream classroom – the space where other children are helped in socialising and becoming enculturated. An autistic classroom could deal with needs of those who develop different from others in such areas as the following identified by Jordan:

• Joint attention
• Imitation
• Social and emotional identification
• Reading social signals

For example, as she says, autistic children can find eye contact ‘intrusive and painful’ so getting them to do this might make listening to what the speaker is saying a challenge. An autistic classroom would hopefully support an autistic child in building up confidence in making eye contact and responding to eye contact from others – and in gaining understanding of social signals and what these might mean.

So this is one answer to my colleague – an autistic classroom is a classroom for autistic kids where the specific challenges they face can be addressed. However, the Lewis-Norwich volume title ends with a question mark - signalling that the authors are engaging with a debate over whether there should be ‘special teaching for special children’ and what it means for a child to be regarded as ‘special.’ They are engaging with the call to move away from ‘special needs’ to an inclusive education. From this perspective, should there be a distinctively autistic classroom in the sense of a space that supports the learning of those diagnosed as autistic – or should autistic children have their own classroom – or should a classroom be created that supports the learning of all, autistic and otherwise?

A few follow-up points:

Firstly, I’m going to reflect about how the debate around how to meet the needs of autistic children vs. inclusive practice might impact on the resources I’m currently developing around the mythological adventures of Hercules, including around eye-contact, imitation and reading social signals.

Secondly, I’m going to read one of the items referenced by Jordan, which looks at the role of drama and also play in autistic pedagogy: Sherrat and Peter 2002. Developing play and drama in children with autism (David Fulton).

And finally this! In yet another happy coincidence – I’ve reported on others previously over the last few months – on drafting this posting on Monday morning (20^th Feb), Katarzyna Marciniak the Principal Investigator for Our Mythical Childhood, emailed me on Monday afternoon to tell me about an event taking place in Warsaw on inclusive practice. I’d initially planned to write up this posing on Friday. Instead I’m doing it today (Weds) ahead of the event on Friday. I’m looking forward to finding out about the event from Katarzyna, who will be attending it – and, hopefully, to making contact with the organisers.