The social model of disability focuses on accommodations that promote inclusion for a broader group of people. Seeing disability in this way fosters an understanding of people having worth and therefore, human rights, which is not recognized in mainstream society.
Neurodiversity is an aspect of human rights, which defines neurology in a broader context so that more expressions which are often simply parallel to social norms and traditions are validated and the people who make them are treated more respectfully.
It's completely backwards to claim that the encouragement of human rights for diverse populations is extreme or purist. Broadening the understanding and therefore, the rights or populations who have traditionally not been included or accepted in society is the countering of a societal tradition being overly narrow and purist.
It would seem natural to me that any time a person or group is in a responsible position to influence the lives of others, the more assumptions they make about them will lead to more inappropriate treatment of them. Methods of education that assume fewer motives for the students would therefore, seem to be trying to contain them rather than empower them.
It would be nice to trust that the US government labels people as being disabled in order to include them more in society by providing more accommodations. Unfortunately, not only do I see them making unreasonable assumptions (and adopting public programs that do so) in order to show that accommodations can't be made for this group, I also see those assumptions leading to more prejudice and even more inappropriate stereotypes and therefore, abusive treatment by the rest of society.
In the United States, there are more people than ever before being seen as impaired in their thinking and behavior.Too often I think people claim that a healthy mistrust in government is believed to be a conspiracy theory rather than accepting that it is the government that has little trust (and therefore little encouragement) for us. We make up the majority and our independence and creativity must be very threatening to those who have learned to wield power only through the encouragement of bureaucracy and the submission of the public to industrial goals.Our dependence on building a bigger government or supporting giant industries (which have similar if not the same goals) is essential for those who need to control and manipulate our behavior.It's important to them that we believe that nothing other than looking to these sources for answers will solve any problem.
Of course a lot the power that captains of industry or government have is based on the capitol they raise from our choices as consumers and tax payers, so we as a combined force would have the most power if we were ever organized. It's important to them though that we stay confused. Otherwise the flaws in their designs would require them to give up part of their power in order to fix them.
Along with the recognition of autism that has grown in the last several years, there is a stronger push than ever for our government to compartmentalize people with atypical thinking traits so that society will better be able to manage what they have been able to label. This has also encouraged industries to find a way to profit from this particular herd once it's been established.
The United States is ruled by corporations. (Some describe the United States as more of a corporation itself then it is a nation.) Our education, medical treatment, and educational opportunities are all dependent on and influenced by the corporations who have the biggest financial investment in how we are treated in each of these areas of our life.
Whether impaired thinking and behavior are attributed to injury, hereditary, due to exposure of poisons in our environment, or societal influence, it has always typically been seen as a weakness or an inferior aspect of our species, which needs to be managed until it can be eliminated. While the methods for this range from life-threatening chemical restraints and institutionalization to eugenics, there is little if any acceptance that the people who are labeled as having these traits have anything to offer future generations.
While the medical establishment has an interest in cleansing the blood of autistic people ultimately and restraining us until we can be eliminated from the gene pool, the public educational department is now merging with political forces in order to contract the services of psychological engineers trained in the psychology of behaviorism.
These engineers are already using their acquired skills in other institutions such as hospitals, group homes, and residential treatment facilities on behaviorally disabled people and most recently their goal is to control them in schools this way as well. The state government is no longer seen as sufficient to control the behaviors in schools so the federal government is willing to "help out".
Sen. Dodd explains in this video that the problem is not due to teachers being unjustified in their handling of disobedient disabled students but that the problem is the lack of laws and trained professionals to deal with the inclusion of disabled students in the classroom. This of course protects and maintains old attitudes and traditions of our established government.
What is being suggested here is that the discipline of these students in public school classrooms be entrusted to more monitoring and control at the federal level by including the discipline and traditions of behavior modification. The program being proposed is Positive Behavioral Support based on the psychology know as behaviorism.
This website concerning the history of Behaviorism begins with this description:Behaviorism is the philosophical position that says that psychology, to be a science, must focus its attentions on what is observable -- the environment and behavior -- rather than what is only available to the individual -- perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings.... The latter are subjective and immune to measurement, and therefore can never lead to an objective science.
The first behaviorists were Russian. The very first was Ivan M. Sechenov (1829 to 1905). He was a physiologist who had studied at the University of Berlin with famous people like Müller, DuBois-Reymond, and Helmholtz. Devoted to a rigorous blend of associationism and materialism, he concluded that all behavior is caused by stimulation.
The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good because the good is rewarded. There is no true freedom or dignity. Right now, our reinforcers for good and bad behavior are chaotic and out of our control -- it’s a matter of having good or bad luck with your “choice” of parents, teachers, peers, and other influences. Let’s instead take control, as a society, and design our culture in such a way that good gets rewarded and bad gets extinguished! With the right behavioral technology, we can design culture.
In his biography of Skinner Dr. Boeree says this:
Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -- is the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems -- addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia -- and works particularly well with children. There are examples of back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who have been conditioning to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing themselves, and so on. There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving yourself appropriately is rewarded with tokens -- poker chips, tickets, funny money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these often difficult institutions.
There is a drawback to token economy: When an “inmate” of one of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place. The psychotic’s family may be thoroughly dysfunctional. The juvenile offender may go right back to “the ‘hood.” No one is giving them tokens for eating politely. The only reinforcements may be attention for “acting out,” or some gang glory for robbing a Seven-Eleven. In other words, the environment doesn’t travel well!
In this review of cognitive neuroscience, it says this about behaviorism:
The development of simple experimental methods for studying learning and memory—first in humans by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and a few years later in experimental animals by Ivan Pavlov and Edgar Thorndike— led to a rigorous empirical school of psychology called behaviorism. Behaviorists, notably James B. Watson and Burrhus F. Skinner, argued that behavior could be studied with the precision achieved in the physical sciences, but only if students of behavior abandoned speculation about what goes on in the mind (the brain) and focused instead on observable aspects of behavior. For behaviorists, unobservable mental processes, especially abstractions like perception, selective attention, and memory, were deemed inaccessible to scientific study.
Throughout the 20th century in the United States, our political systems and public policies have reflected and been mainly influenced by the intellectual notions that get tossed about in elitist universities. If universities were designed to teach the students how to encourage and empower the masses of people who will never attend them our industry and therefore, our economy would look very different than it does.
The ideals of inclusive education are not meant to empower more students but to contain them within a predictable environment in a way protects the interest of the elite. Psychology as an intellectual explanation of human behavior or an industry designed for public reform is not meant to empower the common man. Behaviorism is now being reintroduced into our culture as a kinder gentler way of providing a predictable environment where children will be better enabled to learn. However, very little has been shown to indicate that the goals of learning in a public educational environment are meant to empower the students rather than contain them. If the goal of education isn't to empower the students then giving more power to educators isn't a good idea.
Because "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."(Audre Lorde)our choices for better education and training cannot come from inside the corrupt system. There is no way to reform the educational system because it is functioning successfully in what it was designed to do. The reformation needs to come in how we view ourselves and our neighbors, so we can have the clearest view of our government, and what we do and don't need from them.


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