This week I’m in a discussion with my friend Daria at “Affect Autism.” She saw my presentation at a conference recently on the topic, “Good Autism Education is Just Good Education, and she wanted me to do a video interview and a podcast on that subject. You can hear or see the entire thing by clicking on the hyperlink above. In the five minute clip above, Daria Brown suggests that the educational system is geared to educate the 95% of the students in the middle of the “bell curve”, or normal distribution of students, and that is why it doesn’t serve students with developmental challenges well. I disagree, and the above is my answer and explanation.
As long as “models of education” teach to the artifice of devised formula of a bell curve, in essence caricature, children’s HPA axis and autonomic nervous system will remain consistently disproportional with regards to various affective states of hypervigilance, sympathetics in a constant state of mobilization of fight//flight or worse parasympathetic withdrawal/shut down versus calm and engaged. Engaging organically, dialectically and dialogically beneath the surface remains far beyond the horizon of the smashing sucess of the factory model of education which nevers ceases to disappoint and oppress!