Asperger Syndrome and Education- Part 1- Copyright Robert Fullarton

Aspergers and Education Part 1- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2012

When I speak about certain minorities I wish to emphasis and highlight the concerns, the rights and cares of the Aspie community in particular as well as those suffering from any sort of mental illness in general. As I stated in first two chapters on the conditions of having Asperger Syndrome and the ineptness with which such children innately find themselves in with interaction and socialisation, I will now go further and deeper into the points I want to express and expand on what I started earlier.

I myself quite recently applied for a position of tutorship with a young man of 12 who has recently been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome Disorder. 

I was browsing through a work offer that was posted on a recruitment website on behalf of the boy’s mother. The mother wanted her son to tutored with his homework, to be specifically helped with his English and his history schoolwork. The mother also put great emphasis on her son’s need to meet an older male who suffered from the same disorder, who might be able to prepare and advise her son for the future ahead, any school matters that required experience and maturity for her son. 

The position also stated that she was in need of finding an older male to help her son deal with matters of school socialisation. I applied for the job, with a feeling of excitement for the thought of helping a young boy grow up with the knowledge and the learning I have only managed to receive since I left school and of course I thought that I would love to help someone, to prevent them from going down similar road such as myself.

I never received any response from my application and I wasn’t surprised either, but the seeds of a wonderful inspiration have germinated within me and I must include them here in this chapter and in this book, under the general notion of what I call education. Pain is just one example or element of our vast learning experience, our learning experience is life and as this being, we are educated as this being corresponds to the world of natural facts, the amalgamations of nature in existence.

I would never wish any child, to experience the same negligence as I have received at the hands of my so-called educators and my peers. How difficult it is for the child to understand his own needs let alone the needs of others. From the early pubescent period right until the late adolescent period, as children with Asperger Syndrome Disorder bloom either earlier or later than other children (quite often it is indeed later), it can appear that the children seem either too bright or too placid. All the aptitude tests we receive in youth are frivolous and foolish, the academic measurement of a human capacity, vaguely covers a minute area of human intelligence, memory, receptivity and cognition. The depth and the vastness of our repertoire, changes with the changes of our biology and our neurology and those former enemies may become future admirers for our capacity to change. We indeed are constantly changing, as we are creatures of experience and perception in whatever manner and means we achieve it.

I personally believe that a public body should be properly funded by the government to care for the needs of the Autistic community and to cater the needs of children suffering academically without the understanding and the support of the school and the school children. All Savants and Aspies alike should be encouraged to develop their prodigious tastes, developmental cares and individual care is needed and I believe that all schools should provide the standardized Asperger Syndrome diagnostic examination by means of alerting and aiding the parents and the children at an early age. I express this notion for the reason that the most important issues regarding public and private schools at both national school and secondary school level regard the tutoring and the nurturing experiences, knowledge and general respect for the pupils, to be administered by the adults and the educators themselves. Young children –NT children to be precise- should gather an early awareness of their school mates and their fellow citizens with behavioural disorders, to know the normalness, the acceptability and the natural truth that comes with understanding the Autistic community. 

The negative light of the media, popular culture and the misconceptions of youth, given at and grown at an early age have germinated and created the rampant abuse by which Aspies themselves have suffered at the hands of their tormentors.

I propose the idea that there should be an individual councillor trained specifically to cater for the needs of the child in question. All efforts must be made to prevent bullying both on and off school premises that is the goal and the achieving aim of such a proposed plan. Such councillors would work either voluntarily or as part time or full time staff, and would themselves have been diagnosed with ASD itself.

As I stated earlier in the book –precisely in the second chapter- the idea of Aspies educating Aspies would revolve around Aspies in their early twenties, giving their advise, to tutor, to give public lectures and educate school classes, inform teachers and parents to deal with the specific academic issues that arise with ASD children.

A one on one tutorship would offer rehabilitation, a prohibition against bullying from other pupils and would serve as a means of encouraging individual talent, intellect, curiosity, energy and enthusiasm and this is I believe the best method to procure and prepare a child for future academic education. Of course this notion of private tutorship by Aspies for Aspies is just my cathartic resolution, included in this book to give a resounding answer to paediatric dilemmas that follow children on the Autistic Spectrum and that have often developed into behavioural disorders –which I have observed and noted from Aspies who I have befriended and gotten to know personally- and I believe that for individual reasons Aspies will find a certain situation, a scene or an ritual to be stressful for certain thought associations that occur and are associated with the very notion and act of the stressful ritual itself. We can either avoid or confront our fears and anxieties and often Aspies themselves will retreat from certain situations where they will cause adverse stress and anxiety.

As a prime example of this –on the obscurity of my thinking in general- I often get shooting anxiety whenever I am confronted with by a gang of similar aged males or girls, it is this fear of being on trial or on show for the eyes of a crowd. I loathe the shallow competition of youth –to out rival each other as they do- and I equally detest the difficulties by which I have known many a good person suffer in the distinctively reductive measures and mind games by which opposite sex operate. Yet again I state that I know little of the world of people and socialising, for I operate out of the world of patterns, figures, natural facts and events. I like to philosophise in comfort, for I can find few who understand my rationale and my motives for thinking as I do.

I certainly find it immeasurably frustrating just to actually talk and meet rather reasonable, bubbly, zany, artistic and equally friendly women. There is no basis nor any opportunity for me and my type, there are few for such males –fellow Aspies I know- who do not have the strength to endure the rigorous mind games, the strange behavioural rituals, the smooth and charming appeal that is needed to pass the test.