In what is designed as an effort to aid us all in becoming better people and a better society, we are continually being sold information and products (and information about products) that instruct us how to become better people. A child may not know the reason for needing to become better in certain areas, so it is the parents responsibility to make those decisions as to which ones they need or encourage them in that way until, or unless they can make those decisions on their own.
One such decision of a product (usually a publicly-funded one) for a child is how they may be labeled which may aid them in getting the best education. How they learn determines that label or diagnosis. How they learn is defined by how their brain operates in deficited ways.
100 years ago there where three ways of defining how the brain may have been seen as functioning inappropriately.
One definition was nothing more than the description of a diseased brain or a completely dysfunctional method of behavior that would require that the person be hidden by family or institutionalized and thereby most likely forgotten. What patterns of treatment began in those institutions have only been improved by the acceptance that some will recover. However, there is still very little progress that has been made to help many of these people to recover and the largest, most inclusive, and most well funded warehouses for these people are not places that encourage recovery.
The second is the way behavior was described as inappropriate by psychologists and therefore was in need of adjustment. 100 years ago, such analysts were very expensive and therefore such treatment was sought only by the very elite. Today the pharmaceutical industry has introduced to the public, ways that mind controllers/therapists can be aided by medicines that will make a patient more vulnerable to their instruction/suggestion/coercion and treatments thereby able to learn more "socially acceptable" behavior. Now most of psychology is a part of a broader and more inclusive industry known as psychiatry so that meds can aid in the therapy/coercion and is it used as a public form of behavior modification, regulation and restraint. This regulation is aided by various forms of public enforcement.
The third was a classification of retardation based on a persons inability to learn scholastic skills needed by industry. With so little knowledge of how to help someone with this retardation make conventional progress in their learning, those who would today be described as having a learning disablities were simply considered slow or addled.Those who were not aided in finding a niche which suited their capabilities, were described in one of the previous two categories.
Today we have one broad category that includes any and all of the above categories which is defined as disability. Services for disabled people are based on each individual's political power or the connections that they or their family have.
People who are now being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum may very well fit into all three of the above categories and yet receive no aid whatsoever in any of them. If they are young it will depend on where they live, the political connections of their family, and the progressive attitudes that are present in the area where they are privileged to live.
Autistics without a diagnosis (whether they be young or old) if they have profound deficits in the areas that the medical model of autism has defined, may find themselves categorized by another less than valid societal label.
Those who will speak on behalf of autistic people to make our lives better will most likely only be able to make advances for those of us who is already the advantaged portion of our population. My view is that the rest must not be forgotten. If it is left up to politicians in the way that they currently handle things regarding these matters, they will make it so the best that will be offered to the disenfranchised is a trickling down of those services and opportunities that will be available to the few who are already advantaged.
I believe that if we can define better how all autistic characteristics may be expressed and therefore identified and provided with support, such a trickling down may ultimately include a larger portion of this population. In order to do this, it's important to see what political/commercial patterns which have led to the problems we are now facing.
The best example I can think of for how more autistics will ultimately be excluded and considered invalid, is by basing how we are treated in the earliest stages of our life (in academic settings/school) by evaluating our behavior.
Behaviorism has been marketed as a standard of behavior for autistics that prevents self injury and molds the minds of those who are incapable of appropriate behavior. Anything that is defined like this without including a comprehensive method for how such a program will be implemented will have the boundaries decided instead by those involved with the implementation.
Such lofty ideals are often what open the door for the worst abuse and lead to the worst behavior by specialist/behavior analyst/attitude engineers. No altered way of evaluating behavior such as PBS or Positive Behavioral Support can be implemented in an effective and responsible way by ABA practitioners without changing the focus completely about how the behaviors of autistic people may be expressed in ambivalent, non-harmful, and potentially productive ways.
Politicians who are working to better the lives of autistic people beware. The legacy of misunderstanding of autistic expressions is too old and etched too strongly in the minds of those who would implement any behavior program for it to be introduced as an ideal program and certainly not something that should be mandated for autistics.
The Kennedy Krieger Institute says this about the form of ABA known as PBS or Positive Behavioral Support;
Features common to all ABA-based approaches are the objective measurement of behavior, precise control of the environment, and use of procedures based on scientifically established principles of behavior. Any clinical procedure or research investigation adhering to these basic criteria can be considered to be an ABA-based procedure. This includes "functional behavioral assessment," and approaches such as "Positive Behavioral Support," and forms of "Behavior Therapy" that rely on direct observation of behavior and analysis of behavior-environment relations.
"The Autistic Self Advocacy Network-VA sent this comment to Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). JLARC is conducting a study of autism services in the state."
This is an excerpt from that letter;
"Strategies like Positive Behavioral Supports should be developed and implemented
throughout
all school districts. Pilot programs can be developed in several
districts and then disseminated throughout the entire state."
We are so fortunate to have ASAN advising the Obama trasition team on better treatment of autistics. I hope that others will join me in advising/coercing ASAN to advise/coerce anyone and everyone that they do avise reguarding the rights of autistic people that ABA treatments in scchools (including all forms of ABA such as PBS Or Positive Behaviorial Support) is part of a substandard education for autistics and will not reduce the abuse that autistic school children now face.
