How to write an essay: part 1

April 14, 2009 — xanthippa

Essays are a very structured method of presenting a particular point of view.

How to write an essay remains a mystery to a lot of people! Putting all those ideas onto paper and presenting them as ‘an essay’ can be a daunting task for many people.  (Where do I start? How do I finish?)

Yet, it does not have to be so!  Very often, once the structure of how an essay is ‘supposed to’ be written is explained, writing one becomes easy, because there is a way to break the process down into very easily manageable steps.  However, not every person comes across a teacher who has taken the time to explain this structure and how to ‘get there’…

Not understanding the underlying structure of an essay makes ‘writing essays’, well, difficult (especially Aspies).  Here, I would like to ‘fix’ this:  essays are so very structured that everyone – especially people who do not deem themselves to be ‘writers’ in other ways, can compose effective essays.

There are two fundamental things that need to be understood about ‘essays’:  the ‘why’ and the ‘how’.  (OK, these are more ‘philosophical’ distinctions than anything else – but they do capture at least one aspect of the meaning…)

The ‘how’ is simple mechanics – but the ‘why’ underlies each bit.  So, let’s tackle the ‘why’ first.

The why of an essay (as I am using the descriptive) is the reason for writing it:  its main point, what it is saying and how it is saying it.  Once a person has understood the ‘underlying structure of an essay, many of the steps listed below can be combined, or skipped altogether.  However, listing them separately is one of the ways in which a person can gain an understanding how to build an essay, one little idea at a time.

The why of an essay can be arrived at as follows:

  • Examine the ‘assignement’:  question or statement.
    • Sometimes, the ‘main point’ is assigned, sometimes it is up to the ‘writer’ to define the ‘main point.
    • The ‘point of view‘ – or, the way in which this ‘main point’ is demonstrated (what evidence is cited to support the ‘main point’, how the evidence is presented and how the conclusion is drawn out) – that is always something the ‘writer’ must choose and ‘fulfil‘.

    This ‘main point’ and ‘point of view/means of making the main point’ (for lack of better terms) constitute the ‘reason’ for writing the essay (aside from it having been assigned, that is…).  In other words, they define the main idea which the ‘writer’ will build the essay to convey/bring across.

  • Define the ‘main point’ (unless it is assigned).
    • find a single word (OK, the word can be ‘contorted’ and hyphenated amalgam of a few ‘normal’ words, or it can be an expression:  the main thing about ‘this word’ is that it is the simplest-possible way of expressing the very core of the ‘main point’ which is the central focus of the essay.
      • this ‘main point‘ must be both ‘simple’ and ‘core’, because the ‘main point’ of each of the paragraphs in the essay will be ‘compared’ to it.
      • this ‘main point‘ is the focus of the essay
      • this is what the essay will say
  • Define the ‘way of presenting the main point’ (point of view)
    • write a sentence which defines how the ‘main point‘ will be made.
      • again, the ‘sentence’ is more of a suggestion than a hard requirement:  a phrase or point-form, or any other method which is ‘understandable’ to the ‘writer’ is acceptable, because this is all part of the ‘brainstorming’ or ‘rough work’ that so many teachers request to be handed in along with the ‘good copy’ of the essay, to prove the person actually did the work (and to demonstrate to the teacher the chain of thought that took the essay from ‘concept’ to ‘finished product’:  many teachers actually assign marks to these steps…so, if they are not handed in, the marks reserved for these steps cannot be earned…
      • the main goal of this step is to clarify in one’s mind the method (reasoning, proof, etc.) of how the ‘main point’ will be presented
      • once this is clarified, putting it down will help ‘the writer’ maintain focus, because it will be available for constant ‘feedback’…and, as subsequent steps ‘ought to’ be compared back to both the ‘main point’ and ‘the main sentence’ (which, for lack of a better term, is how I refer to this step for the purposes of this post.
    • This section will serve as the basis for the ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ paragraphs of the essay.
  • Gather the evidence
    • this step involves ‘putting down’/’brainstorming’ the pieces of evidence which will be used to support/demonstrate/prove the ‘main idea’ of the story
    • again, this can be done in two steps:  first, as ‘one word’ concept, then as the more concrete ‘simple sentence/point form’ (which might list the page numbers of quotes to be referenced, and so on).
    • while it is recommended (for the sake of self-discipline) that the individual points be put into the form of simple sentences, this is in no way a requirement:  point form is just as effective.
    • it is recommended (in order to ‘fit’ the expectations of ‘most’ essay assignments) that 3 major pieces of evidence be listed.
      • While most of these ‘major points’ can be expanded, it is important to clarify in one’s mind (and putting it down is a good way of achieving this – and being able to refer back to it) the main thrust each of these major pieces of evidence will make.
      • The ‘minor points’ or ‘development’ of the ‘major points’ will come during a later step.  They are very important – but it is also easy to go ‘off topic’ and loose the focus of the essay while ‘developing’ these bits.  Therefore, it is better to put all of the ‘minor points’ or ‘developments’ of these ‘major points’ into a section marked ‘notes’, not list them as the ‘major points of focus’.

      These points will go on to form the ‘body’ of the essay (the paragraphs in between the opening and closing paragraphs):  each one of the ‘major points’ of evidence will have one paragraph of the essay devoted to it.

This should (I hope) explain the ‘why’ of essay-composition:  if it does not, or if it is confusing (or just plain wrong), please, let me know and I will do my best to explain/fix it.

The next post (link to be inserted) will address the ‘how’ of essay-writing.

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Aspergers: ‘price’ and ‘punishment’

April 12, 2009 — xanthippa

People with Asperger’s syndrome (Aspies) process information a little differently than most other people.  Some of us (well, OK, ‘we the Aspies’) would say that we process information much more logically!

This is a gift – but is also is a curse:  very often, we will arrive at a completely logical (and rather obvious) conclusion which is not only obvious to ‘us’, but somehow completely inaccessible to ‘others’.  Perhaps this is due to their social programming – I do not know:  I’m still trying to figure out the unpredictable reactions of ‘neurotypicals’ (NTs).

Let me give an example which demonstrates this most clearly and understandably.

Please, consider the way we (as a society) ‘forbid’ things.

We have a list of behaviours which are socially forbidden: from horrible things like murder to little things like ‘talking in class’. Oh, we do not treat each transgression equally (though SOME Aspies thing that might have made more sense) – our society considers some much more serious than others.  Yet, the fact remains, these various behaviours are all ‘forbidden’.

Aspies can deal with that:  IF, that is, we are given a very accurate explanation as to which behaviours are forbidden (often, explaining ‘why’ will help us figure out ‘what’ these prohibited behaviours are), and IF we are willing to accept the prohibition (which is most of the time), we WILL  respect it absolutely.

KNOWING that respecting the prohibition is part of the social contract we have with our fellow humans is enough.

However, our society does NOT stop at the prohibition itself!  Perhaps this is some misguided attempt at ‘labeling’ different ‘seriousness’ of transgressions, but the fact remains:  our society ascribes very specific ‘punishments’ to particular transgressions.

Of course, once a ‘punishment’ is assigned to a specific ‘transgression’, it removes that ‘transgression’ from the list of ‘forbidden’ behaviours:  it has become a ‘permitted behaviour with a price’!

I am not sure if I am doing a good job of explaining this to non-Aspies.  I have a hard time putting myself into their position with regard to this and seeing it the way I (and many, many Aspies do).  Perhaps an example would be useful:

This is a true story:  starring none other than my husband!

When my husband was in grade 7, he had a Math teacher who had a rule:  if you got caught talking in class, you had to ‘write lines’ (a full page of:  ‘I will not talk during class.’).

Of course, this made ‘not talking in class’ a thing which was not forbidden – rather, it was a thing which was ‘purchased’ with a page of ‘lines’.  And, liking to talk in class, he knew he would have to pay the price for it at one point or another.  Therefore, being the intelligent and foresightful person that he is, he would not indulge in an ‘expensive’ behaviour without having the ‘means to pay for it’, so to speak…

Thus, when the teacher ‘caught him’ talking in class and ordered him to write a page of ‘lines’, my husband (well, he was not my husband then, he was in grade 7 – but, you know what I mean) pulled a page of ‘lines’ from his knapsack and handed it over to the teacher!

For some weird reason, many teachers think this type of a thing is a ‘provocation’ of some type:  the reason for this escapes me (after all, the price was pre-set by the teacher), but I have come to understand that many NTs think that many very straigt-forward and logical reactions are somehow ‘provocations’.  Perhaps it is that they do not like to be reminded of the fact that they skipped a logical step along the way…

Whatever the reason, the teacher said something to the effects:  ‘Ah, so you think you are so clever, having your ‘lines’ all pre-done!  Well, in this instance, the punishment is TWO pages of ‘lines’!’

To which my husband responded – logically, I think – by producing a second sheet of ‘lines’ and handing them in  to the teacher!

THAT seemed to end things…

Again, I am not sure if I am explaining things in an ‘understandable’ way:  what I am trying to say is that, once an action has a specifically defined punishment associated with it, it is not really forbidden any longer:  to the contrary!  It is permitted, provided YOU are WILLING to PAY the pre-efined PRICE!

Therefore, it is not ‘advisable’ to have a ‘specific’ penalty assigned to a ‘misbehaviour’, when it comes to Aspies!

Now, I DO understand that for most NTs, knowing the ‘punishment’ is a part of the whole ‘consequences of actions’ bit – and therefore, it is a ‘good’ thing to define the exact punishment for various ‘forbidden’ behaviours.  Yet, I ALSO expect NTs to take a look at the logical conclusion:  once you put a ‘price’ on something, it is no longer ‘prohibited’, just ‘expensive’…

The moral of this post…

If something is ‘prohibited’, keep it ‘prohibited’ and do NOT make it merely ‘expensive’ by putting a ‘price’ on it!!!

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What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?

March 31, 2009 — xanthippa

One of the best things about life is that as long as we are breathing, we can continue to learn!

One of the best things about blogging is that the comments I receive are often insightful, well thought out and I can learn from them.  Usually, these just point out the ‘holes’ in my education/knowledge base:  something I appreciate because it points me in the direction of things I need to learn.

Yet, every now and then, there are comments which are an education in themselves!  Below is an excerpt (!) from one such comment:  I thought it so important and informative that I wanted to share it with everyone.  And, having received permission from the author, here is the answer to my question ‘What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?’:

CodeSlinger says:

Cultural Marxism is not Marxism-Leninism (which we usually just call Communism).

Marxism-Leninism is a system of political economics, which results from applying the so-called Marxist dialectic, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in a process called critical analysis, which uses it to deconstruct Western democracy and capitalism, and to rewrite history in terms of economic class struggle (and we all saw how that turned out).

In the 1920’s, Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács adapted the methods of the Marxist dialectic and critical analysis to the cultural sphere and applied it to the task of undermining Western science, philosophy, religion, art, education, and so on. The result is called the quiet revolution, the revolution from within, the revolution that cannot be resisted by force. This is cultural Marxism.

Now, that was quite bad enough, but then along came a group of sociologists and psychologists — chief among whom being Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen Habermas — and they combined the Marxist dialectic with Freudian psychology to produce an exceptionally corrosive concoction called Critical Theory, which they use to deconstruct Western culture and values, and to rewrite history in terms of sexual and racial power struggles (and we can all see how that is turning out).

Collectively, these guys are called the Frankfurt School, because they originally got together under Horkheimer at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), which was domiciled in a little brick building belonging to the University of Frankfurt am Main in the early 1930’s. They all published their work in the Journal for Social Research (Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung), edited by none other than Horkheimer himself.

Then Hitler consolidated his control of Nazi Germany, so, seeing as they were all Jewish, they fled to the USA, more or less as a group, in 1934. In America, they affiliated themselves with Columbia and Princeton Universities. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, and they really got down to business.

Horkheimer’s key idea was that Critical Theory could be used actively, to change society, in contrast to the traditionally passive role of sociology, which had been merely to understand society. These guys were not your typical academics, whose main interest is the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, these guys pursued an agenda: they wanted to find out why the Marxist revolution had failed in the West, and they wanted to remedy that situation. To that end, the group’s research addressed what to attack, how to structure the attack, how to deliver the attack, and how to measure the results of the attack.

Thus, for example, Adorno joined up with Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia, and began studying the effect of mass media on the population, and how to measure it. Starting in 1937, they collaborated on the Radio Project (bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation) which, among other things, produced the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast so they could measure its effects, and the Little Annie Project, which pioneered methods that quickly evolved into the Nielsen Ratings and the Gallup Polls.

Another example is the concept of intersubjective rationality, developed by Habermas, which replaces the individual process of reaching a conclusion based on the objective criterion that it follows from valid reasoning and known facts, on the one hand, with the social process of establishing a consensus supported by the subjective criterion that the group feels good about it, on the other hand. In today’s schools, those who do the former are maligned for being judgmental and demanding, while those who do the latter are praised for being good team players.

But, rather than go into pages and pages of detail right here and now, I’ll just list the titles of some of the major works of the Frankfurt School. Given the context, this combination of titles will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck:

Authority and the Family, Horkheimer, 1936
Escape from Freedom&amp, Fromm, 1941
Sex and Character, Fromm, 1943
The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno et al., 1950
Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, 1955
Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse, 1965
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Habermas, 1976

These are just a few of the core works; some are papers, some are books. The total volume of work by these guys, and their followers, is huge. The combined result, as I outlined in my very first post on this blog*, is something like the following:

It includes not only censorship of various kinds, but also the erosion of privacy, the debasement of the schools and the neutralization of the church. It includes the destruction of the family by setting wives against husbands and children against parents. It includes the disarmament of the public, the invalidation of self-defence and the incitement of fear. It includes the promulgation of the culture of victimhood, the promotion of immaturity and the reduction of society to a mob of narcissistic adult children. It includes the dogmatization of the universities. It includes the concentration of wealth, the concentration of ownership of corporations and the concentration of control of the media.

In sum, your description of all this as a descent into a new dark age** is exactly correct. And since you put it in those terms, I highly recommend an article by Michael J. Minnicino, called The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness. It speaks your language, and it will make the big picture very much clearer! Another good place to start is The Origins of Political Correctness, which is a transcript of a talk given by Bill Lind at the Accuracy in Academia Conference in 2000.

Update: The reference list above has been updated to also include the following: Escape from Freedom, Fromm, 1941

Xanthippa’s  footnotes:

*  ‘first post on this blog’= ‘first comment’… on my post  ‘Limiting our freedoms – making sense of the ‘big picture’‘

** reference to my post:  ‘Fight the ‘Forces of Darkness’!‘

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Posted in education, freedoms, language, opression, philosophy, politics, religion, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Existing laws may already allow ‘Thought Police’

March 23, 2009 — xanthippa

Over the last little while, I have been ranting about the ever-increasing legislation to censor our communication.

Let’s not kid ourselves:  governments today are opposed to information being freely available to their citizens.  ‘Regulating’ things gives governments power over its citizens and collecting fees for ‘regulating’ is an important source of revenue for them.  From UN on, the aim of governments is to ‘regulate’:  it gives them both power and money.

It is only when we, the ‘unwashed masses’, show up – wielding pitchforks – and threaten to our legislators with defenestration* that they will unwillingly and grudgingly step back and allow us to keep some of our inherent rights and freedoms!

Still, when we do, we can make a difference:  the New Zealand government is backing off implementing its controversial ‘Section 92A’ of their copyright law, which would force all ISPs to cut off internet access to anyone even accused of copyright violation!  It looks like the internet petition, protests from all sides (except the movie and music industry) and the loud, loud outcry which echoed worldwide did have some effect:  the government will send that section ‘back to committee’ for re-drafting!  But, the fact that they are re-considering it does not mean they will come to a different conclusion… and passing it quietly, once the fuss had died down.

The fact of the matter is that governments will censor and restrict (sorry, they prefer the term ‘regulate’) as much as we, the citizens, will allow them to!  Once something becomes ‘accepted practice’,  there is grounds for it to become part of our laws, whether we like it or not.

What I’m about to write next is a little bit of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ argument, and I freely admit that.  Yet, it does illustrate what I think is an important principle which we ought not loose sight of…

All around the world, we have accepted that governments have the right to regulate ‘the airwaves’.  Of course, the word ‘airwaves’ is a misnomer:  what is mean by this is the transmission of information using electromagnetic radiation (waves) which travel through the air.  Whether it is the US FCC, Canada’s CRTC, Ofcom in Britain,  ARCEP in France or any other nation’s body – the common thread here is that EVERY governments has established that IT has the RIGHT to regulate the transmission of information vie EM waves through the air.

It is on this basis that it licenses – and censors – radio and television stations. It regulates who is allowed to access which wavelengths, and when, and how.

Most of us have come to accept this as their ‘right’ – if not their outright role, and therefore DUTY.

We seem to have simply ‘accepted’ the premise that governments HAVE the right to regulate the transmission of information using EM radiation.  And, undoing such an assumption will be difficult!

Now, I would like to remind everyone of my first law of human-dynamics:  if a law can be abused, it will be!

How often have our legislators (or the bureaucrats who actually control the implementation of any government policy) passed a law, only to later expand its application in ways the populace never dreamed of – and would not have approved, had they understood just how twisted this law can be?  (If you can’t remember, here is an example from Australia…)

Back to my main point:  how does fMRI work?

Well, in layman’s terms, it is a medical imaging device which measures the EM transmissions of our brain as we think.

As in,when we think, our brain actually converts our thoughts (or, perhaps, makes our thoughts) as a form of EM radiation, which it then transmits these waves outside our brain… where this nifty machine can detect them.

But, did we not just accept that our governments have the right to regulate these???


Please, think about it!

Note:  *defenestration – when talking about ‘open-source code’, the word ‘defenestration’ (meaning, ‘out of windows’) becomes a bit of a pun…
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Posted in debate, freedoms, human nature, language, opression, philosophy, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Carleton University introduces new course: ‘How to rig an election 101’

February 18, 2009 — xanthippa

Warning:  In order to comply with the CRTC  (CBSC) ruling on a similar situation, please note that the following post may contain sarcasm and may employ facetiousness as a method of criticism.

Press release by Carleton University Faculty of Social Engineering:

For immediate publication:

Following the failure of the progressive students in their attempt to only support research into diseases which are politically correct, it has been deemed necessary to introduce more effective training in social engineering into the curriculum of Carleton University.  We are therefore proud to announce that, the Carleton University Faculty of Social Engineering is introducing a new course, titled ‘How to rig an election’.

The course number is ‘CUFSE 101’ and will be open to all students deemed ‘intrinsically sufficiently progressive’ following an extensive interview process.  If there is sufficient demand, higher-level courses will be designed to follow.

CUFSE 101 Course Curriculum:

This course has been specifically designed to teach students how to ensure that our governments – at all levels – are sufficiently progressive and promote the development of diverse and inclusive society.  In order that proper government policies are developed, it is necessary to teach future progressive candidates how to ensure they will be successfully elected.

To train students in the required skills, the course will focus on the following electoral techniques:

1.  Long term strategic planning:

  • ensuring that the body which supervises the election is stuffed staffed with progressive individuals.  This step must be undertaken by the progressive elements who have been elected, in preparation for future election.
  • ensuring that the wording of electoral rules is sufficiently vague and obscure so that, if necessary, it can be interpreted in completely unexpected ways.  Particular attention will be given to teaching the proper language which will not give any future non-progressive candidates clues as to how these rules can be applied.

2.  Short term measures:

Specialized linguistic training will focus on

  • skills in interpreting electoral rules so as to penalize or disqualify those candidates who have won, but who are undesirable due to their lack of intuitive progressive thought.
  • design of ‘election results’ web page which will obscure the number of votes won by undesirable candidates, or be similarly conducive towards positive reactions to progressive candidates.
  • phrasing of ‘electoral board rulings’ against undesirable candidates in  a way that will raise the least journalistic interest and minimize any attention to the techniques employed to achieve the desirable ends
  • how to engage popular – but not appropriate – candidates in conversations calculated to make them loose temper.  Any resulting ‘strong response’ will be a useful weapon against such a candidate, while an absence of a ‘strong response’ will indicate the best methodology for marginalizing said candidate.

In preparation of this course, a pilot project has trained some progressive candidates in the 2009 Carleton University Student Association (CUSA) elections in these skills.  As can be seen from the CUSA 2009 election results, the pilot was successful beyond expectations!

Points of particular success:

  • Within 4 hours of winning the largest number of votes, the undesirable candidate for CUSA president, Bruce Kyereh-Addo, was notified that he has been disqualified as a candidate, and therefore did not win.
  • To ensure that the ‘progressive candidate’ won, the pilot study graduates outdid themselves in also disqualifying the other non-desirable candidate for CUSA presidency, Cameron MacIntosh.  Thus, Erik Halliwell, the progressive candidate, was the only candidate who was not disqualified, ensuring his election to the post of ‘President of CUSA’.
  • Only anecdotal evidence exists that the electoral board was ‘stuffed’ with Haliwell’s friends, making it easy to dismiss any charges of ‘partiality’ as ‘hearsay’.  The praise here falls on the previous CUSA councillors:  having failed to stop ‘Shinerama’ fundraising to go to support a research into a non-inclusive disease which “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men”, they have now redeemed themselves in ensuring that the right people staffed the CUSA elections office – and, more importantly, they have not left tangible trails.
  • The CUSA election rules are so well written, the disqualified and/or ‘ruled against’ candidates were completely unaware of how the election rules could be applied.   This has left them unprepared and unable to effectively defend themselves.  Kyereh-Addo is quoted as saying:  “This is just ridiculous. I can’t believe what’s going on right now.”
  • Had this been a credit-course, rather than a pilot, high marks would have been awarded to the person(s) who devised the successful application of the rule that ‘unapproved Facebook messages sent by their supporters’ – without the candidates’ knowledge or approval’ – are a misconduct’ which earns the candidate(s) a ‘ruling against them’.
  • Another sign of brilliance among the ‘election rule drafters’ is that it is a breech of the rules if there are any posters/promotional materials – or electronic messages, approved or not, by the candidates or their supporters – which promote more than one candidate – or which are posted in ‘non-approved areas’!  Simply brilliant!
  • The ‘linguistic training’ also scored a major success when an electoral board officer managed to involve Mr. Kyereh-Addo in a conversation so frustrating, Mr. Kyereh-Addo lost his temper and punched a wall.  As this was on the grounds of Carleton University, the electoral board promptly charged him with “damaging university property in a physically violent manner”:  and thus supplied the grounds for his disqualification of Mr. Kyereh-Addo as a candidate.  Kudos!
  • Much praise also goes to the pilot programme graduate who managed to handle the press coverage of the event, as can be seen in the ‘Charlatan’ (campus newspaper) coverage of the election.  There is not hint of ‘scandal’, ‘electoral fraud’ or even ‘serious controversy’.  This is success beyond expectation.  When reading the article, please note the successful spin which does not even identify that Mr. Kyereh-Addo simply ‘punched a wall’, but leaves the reader with the impression that he had indulged in wanton destruction of University property.  Well spun!
  • The ‘election results’ webpage:  brilliant!  Conveys the ‘information’ without letting people know what happened, does not even make the appropriate candidate look like a looser!  Not including the ‘total number of votes cast’ per category on the website hides the truth without telling a lie!!!  Faultless!!! Simply brilliant!

The above notes are only a few of the examples of the many successful applications learned by the progressive students in the pilot study on the basis of which ‘CUFSE 101’ was developed.  The Carleton University Faculty of Social Engineering is confident this success will lead to an establishment of a large number of courses in this area in the future.

The instructor for this specific course has not been named yet, though among the leading candidates are such role models as Warren Kinsella, Richard Warman and our own Matthew Crosier.

For any additional information, please, contact the information officer of CUFSE.

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Apergers and reading – practical strategies

February 17, 2009 — xanthippa

Recently, I received this comment on my Aspergers and Reading post which I thought deserved a longer response… one which might be helpful to other parents (or Aspies) out there!

My Aspie son is 10 and we have homeschooled since first grade. He was extremely behind in his Reading skills in K and made very little progress. Teaching him has been very trying. He is resistant to reading at all. He is able to read about 200 common sight words on cards, but then can’t seem to read them in text. Generally if he sees a word like “has” he will not recognize it, but will get the word if I spell it. I have no idea why this works for him and I haven’t been able to find more information on how to capitalize on this strength. He has an incredible vocabulary, very good comprehension, and generally is at grade level for other language skills.

It sounds to me like there are at least two separate problems your son is dealing with.  One is the mechanics of the reading – but that is the simpler one of them to solve (and the one I will address in this post).  The most pressing problem here, the one that is the greater stumbling block, is that it sounds like your son has a bit of a ‘block’ when it comes to ‘reading’.  Until that is solved, addressing the mechanics of teaching him to read will do very little.

I am basing this presumption on the fact that you wrote that your son is resistant to reading.

I understand!!!

And, I have done my best to address this ‘block’ in an earlier post: Aspergers – ‘reluctance’/’freezing up’ explained. It might also be useful to read my posts on how I motivated my older son to learn how to read (he is now a speed-reader, with 100% comprehension of what he reads at a rate of ‘2 paperbacks/day’…) and how I tought my younger son to speak…

Now, to the ‘mechanics’ of teaching an Aspie to read:

Aspies like rules.

We like to apply rules.  Especially (or, perhaps, only) rules that make ‘sense’ to us.

This makes the world make sense to us.

However, we have a very bad memory.  Especially ‘rote learning’ is something we are poor at – much poorer than our intellectual peers among ‘neurotypicals’.  Yet, if we ‘figure something out’ ourselves (i.e. our mind creates an ‘internal rule’ for it), we retain the knowledge better than our non-Aspie peers. I explored some of this in  Aspergers and memory – part 2: rote memory vs. reasoning.

One thing in the comment ‘jumps out’ at me: “sight words on cards”!!!

This suggests that the Aspie child is being taught to read by ‘whole-word method’.  Using this ‘technique’, a child is not taught to read by synthesizing the word from its constituents sounds.  Instead, one is expected to recognize ‘the visual symbol’ of the ‘whole word’.  This may be partially plausible for people who have truly amazing memories, but – in opposition to the fanciful theory that spawned this idea of  ‘holistic perception’, the practice reduced ‘reading’ to ‘rote memorization’ of ‘words’ as ‘pictograms‘.

In the words of one critic of the ‘whole-word’ approach to teaching reading and literacy (my emphasis):

My research pinpoints three factors that effectively render Whole Word null and void.

1) English is vast, almost a million words and names. A child learning Whole Word is aiming for a mere 800 words a year, thus guaranteeing that the child is illiterate through high school. Real literacy probably requires a vocabulary of more than 50,000 words; virtually no human could memorize that many ideographs, which is what Whole Word turns our words into.

2) A second obstacle you never see mentioned is that while Chinese ideographs are written in only one way, all English words routinely appear in multiple forms–lower case, UPPER CASE, Mixed Cases, scripts, handwriting, and exotic typefaces. Imagine how bewildering this profusion would be for a child.

3) English, like Greek and Latin, is an alphabetic language. Sounds are built into every nook and cranny. If you force a child to ignore these sound-clues, and focus only on design-clues, the child will probably experience great frustration and may well develop a reading disability, such as dyslexia.

–   Bruce Deitrick Price

Now, this is an observation of ‘neurotypical’ children – ones whose propensity for ‘memory’ or ‘rote’ learning varies greatly.  Children with Aspergers fall into the ‘low-rote-learning’ and ‘high-rule/comprehension learning’ category – we are talking the ‘2 standard deviations from the mean’ area here…where this method would fail an ‘average’ kid…  Trying to teach an Aspie kid to ‘read’ using ‘sight cards’= ‘whole word method’ is a guarantee for failure.

So, what do I suggest?  Phonics?

Well, it is not a bad beginning – for an Aspie child ‘starting out’.  Once some reading skill has been attained, one needs to be a little more creative and tailor the ‘method’ to the individual child.  Phonics alone will not be ‘sufficient’ for a child to learn to read English (though it might be perfectly adequate in languages where there is less variation in the way individual letters are pronounced).

The key to success for this child is also something contained in the comment:  “Generally if he sees a word like “has” he will not recognize it, but will get the word if I spell it.”

This seems a pretty good indication – extrapolating from the short comment – that this child falls into the ‘#2’ category of the criticism ‘whole word method’ received from Dr. Price, above!!!

If the word is in a ‘familiar form’, on the ‘cue-card’, he can ‘remember it’ – but within a text, where the presentation is altered, the word appears so ‘different’ that he has no ‘means’ of deciphering what the word is!!!  It must be so very confusing and frustrating for this child….

Whatever the reason, the “will get the word if I spell it” is the key to the solution!!!

If it ‘works’ for him to hear you, the parent/teacher ‘sound it out’, then the next logical step in learning to read himself is to teach him to ‘sound it out himself’!

Now, we just have to ‘find the right lock’…

It is difficult for me to guess how well this particular 10-year-old Aspie handles other, non-language related tasks:  these can (and should) be ‘harnessed’ as the ‘vehicle’ through which to ‘unlock’ this.  So, I am going to make a few ‘blind’ suggestions and hope one – or a combination of a few – will help.

First and foremost, it is essential to ensure that the Aspie is familiar with all the different letters, the various ways they are pronounced (not just the ‘one way’ as ‘recited’ in the alphabet’).  Included in this must be all the ‘two letter’ sounds:  it is best to teach these as a ‘double-letter’, matter-of-factly, not making a big deal about it.  Just another rule… when they appear together, the ‘double-letter’ sound takes priority.  These ‘double letters’ will include things like ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘th’, ‘ee’ and so on.  If the child does not know them, use games to teach them – and read them out loud every time they are encountered (separate from surrounding sounds).

Independantly of (but, hopefully, complementing) learning to read the ‘sounds’ above, it will help to play games ‘picking out sounds’ in words.  You might have a ‘th‘ day:  encourage the child to identify any object (or word) in the house – or wherever you happen to be – to identify anything with ‘th’ in it by over-eaggerating the sound of ‘th‘ as they say the word.  For example:  ‘TH-umb!’ or ‘TH-ank you’.  Do not introduce it as a ‘reading exercise’, but rather as a game.  Get other family members involved.  Laugh at the exaggeration:  it’s the joke of the day!

The goal here is to use this child’s audio-processing preference to begin to identify the sounds – and groups of sounds – that make up the words we use – without any reference to reading or anything visual.  Aspies learn best using rules:  if they learn the ‘rule’ of the ‘sounds’ which make up a specific word, recognizing the written symbols for these ‘sounds’ will make it easier to ‘decipher back’ the ‘full sound’ – and thus read the word.

It is harder to play this game with vowels – ‘see’ sounds like ‘sea’ and so on, and one does not want to set the child up for failure by trying to ram down the differentiation in letters, when there is no ‘sound’ basis to do so.  Avoid the problem by ‘searching for ‘ee’ sound’ – regardless of how it is spelled!  That can come later…

Next, let’s get to ‘reading’.

Start by using groups of 3-4 letter words which ‘sound’ similar, but alter one letter only.  Words like ‘cat’, ‘hat’, ‘sat’, ‘bat’ – and so on – should be introduced as a ‘group’.  Do NOT introduce any exceptions at this time.  The idea is to reinforce the ‘rule’ that they ‘sound’ the same – except for the ‘beginning sound’…or, later, in other groups (e.g. ‘hot’, ‘hop’, ‘hock’) they share the ‘ending sound’… but NOT ‘how’ – ‘how’ would be grouped with ‘now’, ‘brown’ and so on.  Eventually, alter the ‘middle sound’, like ‘map’ and ‘mop’, ‘hip’ and ‘hop’, ‘tip’, ‘tap’ and ‘top’ – and so on.

It is essential that – because he is ‘audio-processing’ – the young Aspie first learns to sound out each word, one letter at a time.  And, it is important to teach the Aspie to listen to himself say each letter/’sound group’!

The second most important step in learning to read fluently is to transfer this skill to ‘similar’ words. That is the point of the ‘group’ of ‘similar’ words:  Aspies can ‘grasp’ the rules.  The idea here is for the Aspie to LEARN:  NOT to READ a particular word, but to LEARN to CREATE A RULE of pronunciation for a particular sequence of letters!

(Aside:  recently, my mom admitted to me that she can only read IF she says each letter out loud and then processes the sound…even if she ‘says it’ only in ‘her mind’.  Without going through this ‘virtual sounding-out’ of each letter, my mom – who spent decades as an award-winning teacher of biology, who succeeded in developing new and demonstrably successful teaching methods in getting all children interested – and successful – in science, while she also taught gym, art and languages…and continues to teach art to this day – is unable to make sense of written words in any language without resorting to ‘sounding out’ each letter!!!  Yet, she speaks quite a few languages fluently!!!  In other words, many professionally successful people can – and do – succeed using ‘sounding out’ as their ‘coping mechanism’ to process ‘visual information’ when their brain will only effectively process ‘audio information’….  Did I mention ‘Aspergers’ is very hereditary????)

It is an extremely useful tool for Aspies in this situation (especially if ‘sounding it out’ is just ‘not enough’) is to use other ‘bits of the brain’ to help get the ‘information to be processed’ to the right ‘processing bit of the brain’. Using the ‘saying it out-loud’ method helps, because it engages the ‘audio’ input of the brain:  if there is a problem/blockage in the ‘visual-processing-passing-information-to-language-processing’ bit of the brain, the act of hearing one-self ‘say’ the letters will help by-pass this – even if one eventually trains himself/herself to only say it ‘in their mind’!

Audio-processing – as in ‘sounding out’ – is only one of these methods.  It is easy, well understood, and as the person learns it, they can also learn to attenuate the volume at which the ‘letters’ are ‘deciphred’, until the voice can only be heard inside one’s own head.  Yet, if that does not work, there are other mechanisms one can try.  And, this next one has been particularly successful in helping several Aspies I know. (This advice comes from an aunt-in-law who, as a professional educator, headed a large school-board’s ‘special education – with particular focus on Aspergers – section’ – and whose ‘brain’ I often ‘pick’ for help… )  Actually, I was shocked at how well this worked for many of the adult Aspies I know…

When looking at (or hearing, or ‘sounding out’) a letter (or a phone number, or a new name – for that matter), use a finger of one hand to trace it on the palm of the other hand.

This introduces two new methods of bringing the information to one’s brain:  the process of writing (which, I must admit, is what I use as my personal ‘memory aid’… I often ‘take notes’ while speaking to someone, not because I will ever read them, but because the ‘act of writing’ something down will help me remember it) as well as the process of ‘feeling it written’ on the palm of the hand are two other, tactile ‘ways’ to ‘bypass’ the ‘blockage’ many of us Aspies have in our ‘reception centres’.  Alternately, the young Aspie can ‘trace’ the letter on very fine sand-paper, to create the ‘tactile input’…(while working in a controlled environment).  It sounds crazy, but – try it!  It just might w0rk!

Next – and this will require some significant ‘rule learning’ by most native ‘English speakers’ – introduce the actual rules of pronunciation in English!  For example, the difference in the way a vowel is pronounced (‘open’ vs. ‘closed’) when it is followed by one consonant, or by two consonants, or by one consonant and then a vowel, and so on.

I realize most ‘English-as-a-first-language’ schools today (to their shame) do not teach these rules, but that does not mean the rules do not exist.  In most non-North-American schools of English-as-a Second-Language, these rules are taught as a matter of fact:  in order to properly teach an Aspie how to read, it is essential that one becomes familiar with these rules, and is comfortable explaining and teaching them.  English pronunciation is nowhere near as ‘random’ as many native-English-speakers seem to think…  So, get educated…and get ready!

Once the Aspie has mastered the basics of reading, it is time to introduce English grammar:  without a ‘formal presentation’, we will not ‘grasp’ it!  So, please, take pity on us and actually teach us the rules of grammar in a formal, to us easy-to-understand way!  (I used Latin to do this for my older son, with incredible success.)

Next- and this is the beautiful part of this process – is to trace specific words and their roots.  One of the beauties of English (it is my favourite language – along with my ‘mother tongue’) is that it is an ‘amalgam’ language.  As different peoples migrated into Europe, they ‘pushed’ the ‘previous settlers’ further West….and, the British Isles (including Ireland – no prejudice intended) are just about as ‘West’ as one can ‘push’ a population inside Europe… In addition, English adopted words from other ‘literate’ and ‘scientific’ languages, retaining the original language’s convention of how to pronounce the word.  Thus, by learning the ‘roots’ of words, an Aspie can not only gain a pleasurable mastery of English, it can prepare him/her for the further study of other languages!!!

It is all about patterns:  something most Aspies find fascinating…  but only if they are presented it in a particular way!

Of course, this is just the icing on the cake…(if you like icing, that is – many Aspies find icing overpowering!)

Please, do let me know if this works for anyone!!!  (The corrollary, of course, stands as well – please!)

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Posted in Aspergers, education, language, society. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

Disbelief

December 30, 2008 — xanthippa

Perhaps it seems counterintuitive to define ‘disbelief’ before defining ‘belief’.  Yet, in this case, approaching things ‘from behind’, can allows a definition of what does not constitute belief.  Since belief is such a complex matter, it may, in fact, be effective to define ‘disbelief’ first so as to better focus on the different concepts we all lump together as ‘belief’.

Disbelief is simply ‘absence of belief’.

If I were to present you with the statement:  ‘my great-grandmother’s eyes were blue’, and if you would have no way of knowing if it is true or not (no facts are supplied along with the statement and there are no means for you to obtain the facts/you do not dig for the facts).  You would now be faced with two choices:

 

1. Believe

Having read some of what I have written, you could conclude that I am a reliable source and that if I say that ‘my great-grandmother’s eyes were blue’, then they truly were.  While this particular belief may not alter your life to any significant degree, you  invest your trust into me  and accept the statement at face value. 

You believe that at least one my great-grandmothers indeed had blue eyes.

 

2. Disbelieve

You may find that even though there is no reason for my statement to be false, without any supporting evidence, there just is not enough there for you to believe the statement. 

The following sub-categories of ‘disbelief’ are in not somehow official, scholarly, or in any way learned from any source.  Please, do not consider these divisions as somehow ‘authoritative’ or based on any specific philosophy (something I chose never to train in – but that is tangential to the issue….) – they are just my way of looking at the principle of ‘disbelief’.  Yet, I hope they will help to clarify the concept of ‘disbelief’, because it seems to me to be terribly misunderstood in current popular culture.

  • Tentative acceptance (conditional acceptance) 

You may decide that the information came from a credible source, so it is likely to be true.  You have no reason to doubt it.  Yet, you reserve committing to belief  in the veracity of the statement: if more information were to come along (like, say, a statement from several people who knew my great-grandmothers, or some other unforseen event which provided contradictory data), you would have no problem changing your mind on the matter.

On an intellectual level, in the absence of further evidence, you tentatively accept the statement as true, but you do not putt any emotional investment into its veracity.  Were you to learn that the statement is false, you might change your opinion of me as a source of information, but it would not greatly trouble you.  Though, for now, you may behave as if the statement were true, the absence of any ’emotional investment’ in its veracity means you disbelieve it.

This is why I contend that Pascal’s wager  does not constitute belief, but tentative acceptance.  Therefore, in my never-humble-opinion, it is a form of disbelief:  it is an acceptance on an intellectual level, but not on an emotional one.  The emotional investment is, in my opinion, necessary to constitute ‘belief’.

The tentative/conditional acceptance is what, in scientific terms, is termed a conclusion.  It is similar to belief, but not quite there.  It asserts that according to the best information currently available, this seems likely – it is the best conclusion from currently available information – yet, this conclusion is open to ammendment as additional information comes to light.  This is as close to belief as science ever gets….and, irritatingly (to me, anyway), many scientists refer to their conclusions as beliefs.  In reality, when a scientist replaces conclusions with beliefs, they cease being a scientist!

  • Possibility/probability assessment

Here, instead of believing the statement, or tentatively (conditionally) accepting the premise pending further data as truth, you may entertain its veracity as a distinct possibility.  Perhaps you might even give it a ‘probability rating’ – whether scientific or subjective.  Whether this probability is 1% or 99%, it is still a probability assessment – not a belief.

Back to scientists:  if a scientist assesses a conclusion to have a  high probability of being true, they may express this.  Again, this is not in any way the same as belief:  it is a probability assessment, without the emotional investment necessary to cross the boundary between possible or probable on the one hand and belief on the other.  Irritatingly, many people (including scientists – most of whom are not really all that up on liguistics and the nuances of expressions, and many of whom are rather deaf to ‘social nuances’ to start off with) erroneously lump this position in with belief when they speak about it – yet they do not, in any way, imply belief in the religious sense..

  • Absence of opinion

You may read the statement, file away in your mind that I had made it, but make no conclusion about its veracity.  You simply do not care enough to believe it.  It’s there, you can recall that this statement had been made, but that is really the end of it for you. 

  • Belief in the opposite

OK, I admit it:  I am uncomfortable including belief in the opposite into the category of disbelief.  Why?  Because unlike the other positions, listed above, it involves holding a belief.  Not a belief in the statement itself, but rather, a belief in the opposite of the statement in question.  What would be the opposite?  Here, you might believe that my great-grandmother’s eyes were green or brown, so long as you believe they were not blue.

This is disbelief=withholding belief with respect to the statement in question, even if it is not general disbelief. 

  • Belief in unknowability

Again, I am not happy to include this positive belief in the category of disbelief, but, it must be included because it constitutes disbelief with respect to this statement.  The positive belief held here is that there is no way of finding out whether or not the statement is true:  that the veracity of the statement is unknowable.

 

This is not a perfect division – and I am aware that not everybody will agree with the lines I have drawn up to distinguish belief from disbelief.  Yet, I have attempted to apply logic consistently throughout.  I would welcome any and all comments which would help enrich this discussion.

 Aside:

If you are interested in a great documentary on the topic of disbelief, I would recommend ‘Jonathan Miller’s Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief’.  While I am not sure if I agree with everything he says (I’ve only been pondering it for a little over a year – and I am a slow thinker), it is interesting and thought provoking.  It is available for sale, or order over the internet in various places.

Alternately, the 3-hour series can be found many places on the web…  YouTube has many channels which feature it.  One of them has broken it up as follows:

Part 1.1,   part 1.2,  part 1.3,  part 1.4,  part 1.5,  part 1.6

Part 2.1,  part 2.2,  part 2.3,  part 2.4,  part 2.5,  part 2.6, part 2.7

Part 3.1,  part 3.2,  part 3.3,  part 3.4,  part 3.5,  part 3.6

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Defining some more terms…

December 28, 2008 — xanthippa

Words matter.

Words matter a lot.

They carry a direct meaning (and, perhaps, an implied meaning) as well as hidden ‘colouring’ with a number of associations, sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious.

This ‘colouring’ changes and evolves within a culture – and can be quite different in another language.

I am not a linguist.  Yet, during my life, I have picked up a few languages:  some of them I am fluent in, some are shadowy and hiding in the recesses of my memory… and will only come ‘flooding back’ if I immerse myself in that language.  In other words, I am not speaking as an expert, rather as just an observer.  (And, I must admit, misuse and misrepresentation of the core meaning of words causes my blood pressure to rise.)

Yes, in my ever-obsessive way, I have contemplated starting a ‘Wiki’ where people from all over the world could post their particular linguistic and cultural colouring associated with a particular word….  But, at this point, this is just a fun contemplation!

Let me give a few ‘simple’ examples: 

Cat – this word’s plain meaning is rather straightforward:  a domestic animal, felis catus, of the family felidae…  Cute and cuddly, clever and aloof – we have all met cats we have loved, and perhaps a few we disliked (I know I have met both kinds). 

Yet, in English, ‘cat’ can also mean a ‘guy’, when in the context of jazz.  And, calling a woman ‘catty’ is no compliment – it implies she is gossipy, capricious and petty.

Switch to Slavic languages – calling a woman ‘catty’ (or a ‘cat’) means she is graceful in a very sexy way!  By culturally highlighting very different aspects of ‘cat’, it is a compliment, not an insult, to call a woman ‘catty’!

Bitch – the plain meaning means ‘female dog‘:  a domesticated animal, canis lupus familiaris, of the family canidae…  Dog is a loving and loyal companion of humans, the first domesticated animal to be ‘in’ the house, rather than ‘outside’ it… and thus ‘in’ the social sphere of humans, inside our ‘monkeysphere’, rather than ‘outside’ it!  A dog is ‘man’s best friend’!

In English, the feminine form, ‘bitch’ has some very definite negative connotations:  from ‘submissive’ (as in, someone was ‘made somebody’s bitch’) to argumentative and quarrelsome (especially as applied to women).  The explression ‘son of a bitch’ is definitely an insult – and is understood as such.  Curiously, the word ‘bitch’ does not carry any of the positive connotations of the term ‘dog’.  (I wonder why – and what it says about the attitude of the ‘Anglo-linguistic culture’s’ attitude towards ‘female friendships’…but that is going off on a tangent…)

Again, looking at Slavic languages, the word ‘bitch’ has quite unrelated connotations!

In Russian, for example, the direct translation for ‘dog’ is (and I am transliterating – perhaps not perfectly, as my Russian if very rusty) ‘sobaka/sabaka’ (spelled, it transliterates as ‘sobaka’ but due to emphasis, it is pronounced more like ‘sabaka’) is a feminine word.  Thus, the word ‘dog’, directly translated into Russian, becomes ‘female dog’=’bitch’!  Yet (and I would like to be corrected here if I am in error) the term does not carry the negative connotations of ‘bitch’!

In Czech, the most direct translation of ‘bitch’ is ‘psina’, which carries the connotation of ‘having a really fun time – while remaining within the social boundaries of politeness/proper etiquette’.  There are other terms for ‘female dog’, but they are either scientific (‘fena’) – devoid of cultural colouring – or or extremely contrived and ‘artificial’-sounding (psice).  And while I am not fluent in all the Slavic languages, I do speak a few – and in none of the ones I speak (as far as I am aware) does the core expression for ‘female dog’ have negative connotations!

I recall, as a kid, reading books translated from other languages, which contained the insult ‘son of a bitch’:  I was puzzled!  I could not understand why somebody would think this expression was in any way insulting, even though from the context I understood it was meant to be bad….

Therefore, in my ever-obsessive way that cannot let go of ‘patterns’, I find ‘words’ to be important: not due to their primary meaning, but because of what they imply outside of this narrow interpretation.

(Aside:  I suspect that some kids – especially ones who are obsessively concerned with ‘accuracy’ of expressions – may start out learning language naturally.  Then, as they discover that the words have additional meanings they were not aware of – the ‘colouring’ of the word, in my description – they may become unable to use that word any longer as they know they cannot use it accurately, without this additional layer of meaning…  This is just an anecdotal observation, but I would not be surprised if the ‘natural early language development’ followed by ‘regression’ which is sometimes seen in Autistic children was, in some nebulous way, connected to this principle.)

If this ‘colouring’ is so very different, affects so much the non-primary meaning of words as simple as ‘cat’ and ‘dog’, how much deeper are these different connotations experienced – consciously or not – when we talk about concepts as personal and deeply held as spirituality, faith and religion?  They have the power to affect our reasoning without us being aware of it!  Yet, if I plan to present a comprehensive view of ‘The Big Picture’, I cannot avoid the area of influence on individual humans – as well as on the evolution of whole societies – which ‘spirituality’, ‘faith’, ‘religion’, ‘dogma’ and ‘belief’ and their specifics have. 

I must admit – the concept of ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ has always fascinated me.  Perhaps because as an Aspie, I lack the bit of brain structure required for ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ (religious meaning), the ability other people had to ‘believe’, to ‘have faith’, had puzzled and attracted me from when I first became aware of it.  While in my teens, I did a lot of reading up on different faiths.  And even though my education is in Physics, every one of my ‘electives’ was used to study anthropology and sociology of religions (I actually came only 1/2 credit short of a minor in this, but thought a degree in Physics with a minor in Anthropology of Religion was not likely to make me ’employable’… so I made a conscious choice not to take that last course.  Yet, this did not prevent me from doing the reading, plus more…)

Therefore, before I delve into examining the role of various religious beliefs and various religious organizations (they truly are very separate from each other, even if related) on ‘The Big Picture’, I think it essential that I take some time to define a few terms.  Yes, these are not going to be ‘new’ terms…  However, tracing their origins and ‘pure’ meaning, as well as the cultural change they had undergone (and defining in what sense and with what ‘colouring’ I use these terms) is important if I am to convey my perceptions of what is happening accurately.

In the next little while, I will make a post for each of the ‘big’ terms I am talking about, in the hope that this will both aid in linking to them when I use them in my later descriptions of ‘stuff’, but also in order to generate ‘term-specific’ comments, corrections and recommendations.  So, if you have something to add to these upcoming posts, please, do so.  It will be most appreciated!

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Aspergers: paying attention

October 27, 2008 — xanthippa

Paying attention at school can, at times, be trying for anyone.  It can be even harder for kids with ADD.  Yet, for Aspie kids, there can be an additional thing at play!

I am an Aspie, married to an Aspie, raising a couple of kids who are Aspies – not a professional in this field!  For a ‘boilerplate explanation’, please see my ‘Guide to my Aspie posts’ page.

One of the ‘things’ that define Aspies’ is the inability to innately read and comprehend body language.  However, many of us (especially ‘girl Aspies’, or ‘Aspiettes’, if you’d like) tend to realize we have this ‘blind spot’ and we try to compensate for it.

This often involves becoming more ‘observers’ than ‘doers’.  It means an Aspie trying to ‘decipher’ this is more likely to choose to be present for a lot of ‘social’ situations, but not actually actively participate.  Yet, the Aspie will keenly observe everything that happens in order to try to analyze the situation for behaviour patterns which would give us our personal ‘rosetta stone’ to non-verbal communication.

This process, by itself, is enough to alienate (‘creep out’) many ‘neurotypicals’ who are our peers – resulting in more ‘shunning’ and greater social isolation….which leads to more ‘Aspie frustration’!  After all, you are only trying to learn the patterns in non-verbal communication:  with your usual OCD intensity…  Yet, THAT is not the point of this post!  The point here is to point out how many Aspies’ attempts to pay attention are really misunderstood.

Let me use myself as an illustratory example:

I was raised in Central Europe – with a somewhat different schooling system.  50% of our mark was based on written tests – just as 100% of it is in North America now.  The other 50% was based on ‘oral/verbal testing’:  the person ‘being tested’ gets called up, stands in front of the class and the teacher, and is asked a question they must answer.

There IS quite a lot of merit to this form of testing.  For one, many of us (especially Aspies) are WAY better at demonstrating our knowledge verbally than in writing.  Also, if we have concerns about the question (often, test questions are so vague as to be meaningless), we can ask the teacher for clarification.

The other – and often unnoticed – benefit of this form of testing is that no two people will explain the same material in exactly the same manner and wording.  So, when a student is being tested, the whole class is being presented with a repeat lecture presenting the material, but in a slightly altered manner.  The teacher conducting the test will correct any incorrect statements by the student – and this is really key in helping other students correct their own misconceptions and learn!

Thus, testing students by calling a student to the front of the class and asking them to demonstrate their understanding of the material taught acts to both reinforce the lesson to the rest of the students, as well as correcting misconceptions and presenting alternate explanations of the material.  To me, this seems like a win-win-win situation…as it also helps people overcome fear of speaking in front of an audience.

Usually, there is several days of ‘study time’ between the time new material is presented to students and when their testing on it begins.

Sorry for the long explanation – but it is important to ‘set the stage’, if you will.

I was in grade 6 when I became most acutely aware of the whole ‘facial expression/body language’ method of conveying ‘colouring’ to one’s statements.  Predictably, I became completely fascinated by this weird and counterintuitive phenomenon!  When someone would speak, I would begin to obsessively ‘superfocus’ on their ‘non-verbal’ message, so that I could relate the two to each other later, when I ‘replayed’ the experience (in my memory) for analysis.

Except that there was one tiny-little problem:  when I would superfocus, I would – wanting to or not – block ALL other stimulations!  Unfortunatelly, this meant that if I focused on ‘non-verbal communication’, I could not help but block out all sounds…  Yes, it kind of defeated the purpose.

Well, this one day, I was in a history class.  The teacher (who had issues with my Aspieness – without understanding it was Aspieness) was actually presenting an extremely interesting lecture!  I was totally fascinated by it, and did not want to miss a single word!  I was determined to pay full attention and not miss a single word, no matter what!

Yet, I knew that if I started looking at the teacher, I would ‘skip’ into the ‘superfocus’ mode, where I would ‘record’ every bit of her body language and facial expression nuance – but I would loose everything she said!  And I was too interested in the lesson to want to miss what she was saying!!!

So, I did EVERYTHING I COULD to pay attention to what my teacher was saying!

To keep myself from ‘getting stuck watching my teacher’, I forced myself to pointedly stare out of the window.  When that started failing, I looked at the ground under my desk.  Then I stretched my arms out on my desk and tried to burry my head in them – as aggressively as I could – so that I could prevent any visual stimulation which would distract me from listening to my teacher!  However, the temperature in the classroom was pretty cold, so even this was difficult.  So, I started hitting my head on my desk – just a little bit – to force myseld not to look at my teacher – just enough to keep focus so that I could pay attention to what she was saying.

I got told off for disturbing the class!

You must understand, back then and there, NOBODY knew (or was allowed to know) about Aspergers.  Even migranes – which I suffered terribly from since early childhood – were not a ‘legal’ diagnosis….  My mom, who got me to see a doctor at the hospital (not an easy task in a socialist country where the medicare is ‘free’ – she had to call in a bunch of ‘favours’ and give out a number of non-monetary ‘gifts’ to get me to be seen by a specialist) was told that my symptoms ‘would be’ a textbook example of migranes, except that officially (read ‘political correctness dictating medical diagnosis’), migranes were ‘something upper-class, bored ladies pretended to get to make themselves more interesting’ – and as such, ‘migrane’ was not a permissible diagnosis in a progressive, socialist country that did not have ‘bored rich ladies’…  It was CERTAINLY not an acceptable diagnosis for a little school-girl! The doctors would loose their jobs…

IF Aspergers had even been part of either the educator or medical training, it would still have been stigmatized, along the lines of ‘migranes’….but, it most definitely was NOT taught or mentioned at all!

Predictably, in the classroom, my many attempts to pay attention were greatly misunderstood!

I got into trouble for NOT paying attention!

Frankly, there was nothing I could do to pay attention more!  Yet, my teacher seemed (as usual) extremely angered by  my behaviour… 

And she did something unusual and unexpected!  (I knew it was unusual, because I had not witnessed this before.  I realized it was unexpected by analyzing the surprised and shocked noises and (YES! I had learned this much!) facial expressions of my classmates:  my teacher called me up to the front of the class to test me on the material she had just finished presenting!!!

Frankly, I think I shocked her.

I could repeat everything she said, every date she presented, understood and could explain every ‘reasoning’ she had presented to us in her lecture!  As she gave me an ‘A’, she said she was shocked because she ‘saw’ I was ‘totally not paying attention’ during the whole class, and this was meant to ‘discipline me’!  Looking back, I think she thought me defiant when I truthfully said I had NEVER tried to pay attention as hard as I had that day!

So, what is the point of this post?

When Aspies look like they are doing everything NOT to pay attention – they might truly be escaping into their own world of interests….OR, they might be doing their best to truly and honestly listen to what the teacher is saying!!!  Just because their behaviour does not conform to that of other children who are paying attention does NOT mean that Aspies are not paying attention, nor does it mean that they are not TRYING to pay attention!

Just as Aspies ‘suck’ at ‘reading’ body language, there are times when we just as much ‘suck’ at PRESENTING body language!  We are VERY BAD at emulating the ‘cultural norm’ external body language ourselves (especially when we are young and before we have learned to emulate/fake it).

Yet, just as WE are bad at ‘reading’ the body language of ‘nerotyoicals’, the ‘neurotypicals’ are eaqually as bad at reading OUR body language!

This may lead to ‘Aspergers’ so called ‘specialists’ of the past (hopefully not the present) to put inappropriate emotive labels on Aspies:  claiming we are lacking in empathy, social belonging, inability to sympathize, stunted emotions and so on.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

These false charges and many misunderstandings only hurt young Aspies and further undermine our regard for our abities, our self-confidence.  It is one of the many ‘drops of poison’ which causes many Aspies to shut themselves away from ‘the world’ and limit ourselves to our ‘internal worlds’, where such hurtful undermining of us is not a daily reminder of our inadequacies.

So, the next time you see a person whose body language you think inappropriate, please, consider the possibility that you are simply unable to understand THIS person’s non-verbal communications – just as much as that person is unable to understand yours.  Respecting this difference – and learning from it – is constructive.  Rejecting or ridiculing such a person – well, this is not so nice…and can ruin a person’s ability to EVER truly believe in themselves again.

Posted in Aspergers, education, freedoms, language, opression, society. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Aspie sense of ‘fair play’: kids and ‘rules of the game’

October 22, 2008 — xanthippa

One of the characteristics that many people notice about us Aspies is that we tend to have an overdeveloped sense of ‘fair play’.  This is the first look at how this may manifest itself.

Often – especially during childhood – this takes the shape of very rigid adherence to ‘rules’.  I remember the genuine tears of my kids as other children would play a game ‘wrong’ or ‘with the wrong rules’.  I also remember the arguments of ‘you can’t change that – it’s a rule of …. ‘!

This can lead to difficulties in many social settings.  Aspie kids can be very good at board games or card games, so this is an excellent way to have them interact with other kids.  However, it is important to make sure that everyone agrees to the rules of the game exactly the way the Aspie had learned it…..or the Aspie ‘inflexibility’ and ‘obstinance’ will start a temper tantrum will end the game and result in further ostracism of the Asperger child.

Of course, I do not think of it as ‘inflexibility’ or ‘obstinance’ at all.  Instead, I see it as an issue of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  But then again, I am an Aspie…  Whatever the cause, however, the problem – this barrier to social interaction – is still there.

So, how to handle it?

Aspie kids can handle ‘different rules’ in variations of games IF things are presented in the correct perspective.  The key is recognizing WHY they are so opposed to ‘changing rules’.

Imagine yourself living in among a group of people whose language you did not understand.  Then, you begin to discern some ‘patterns’ in behaviour.  If you would indulge me in a personal story to help draw a parallel:

Two friends and I went down to visit another friend in a Spanish-speaking country.  None of the three of us spoke Spanish, but we were staying with our bilingual friend and her family, so we were not worried.  Except…through series of circumstances, our friend had to go to a different town and we were left with her non-English speaking family. 

Much to their credit, they took awesome care of us.  They took us places, showed us things, treated us extremely well.  Except that when they would come and tell us we are going somewhere in the car, we had NO idea whether we were going out for lunch to a fancy restaurant, to a tourist attraction, to a beach, or – as happened once – for a 3-day stay at a beach villa.  We had no idea how to dress, what to bring with us, when we’d be back.

After a bit, I began to notice some patterns – and these were my lifeline!  It set up some ‘rudimentary rules’ we could go by.  We clung to these – when you don’t know what is happening all the time, you feel very vulnerable!

Similarly, an Aspie child has a lot of difficulty understanding social communication.  We take it for granted that people can read and understand our body language and facial expressions (even tone of voice) – and so we do not comprehend just how much we do not actually say when we communicate.  We presume that much is understood from how we say something, not just the words we use to say it.

But Aspies cannot do this.  It is difficult to explain just how difficult it is to comprehend ‘communication’ – one even often questions one’s ability to understand the spoken language.  After all, ‘bad’ means ‘bad’ – but here it means ‘good’….  Without the ability to add body language, facial expressions and tone of voice to the word itself, the ‘rules’ of social interaction and even language can become incomprehensible.  Add to this that for very long time, many Aspie kids do not even know that there is such a thing as ‘body language’ which others understand and they have to learn to look for!

It is like pointing to a picture while talking about an apple – and expecting a blind person to know we are talking about the red apple in the picture.  The blind person does not even know there is a picture…..and does not understand how come everyone else knows the apple in question is red! 

Perhaps this is only one of the ‘contributing factors’, but it is one that is easy to explain as to why Aspies cling to rules they actually know they understand!

And that is they key:  understanding.

Activities like board and card games have very explicitly stated rules – rules that everyone understands before the game begins.  Aspies and therefore not handicapped and can participate on an equal footing with everyone else.  That means a lot.

So, starting to change the rules – that can bring up the whole overwhelming frustration right up!  It’s as if the Aspie is being robbed of the one glimmer of understanding of how things are supposed to be.  No wonder it upsets us to no end.

So, what is the solution?

When you teach an Aspie a game and explain the rules, make sure you explain these are the rules for THIS version of THAT game.  Explain there are MANY versions – we play version …. (name it something the Aspie child can relate to).  Then, you can say there can be versions of the game which have ALMOST identical rules, with just little variations – and that if they go to play the other version, everyone will make sure to teach them the NEW GAME!  Because that IS what it is:  each ‘variation’ is really a different game, with different rules:  they are called the same thing because they are a ‘family of games’ that has ‘similar rules’.  (You can even relate it to family name and first name – different people in the same family…)

This releases the tension of ‘changed rules’!

Instead, you are setting up the expectation of different rules because one is learning a ‘NEW’ (though similar/related) game.  This is a completely different situation – and usually quite acceptable.  Yes, there will be the inherent insecurity by the Aspie, wondering if he/she understands the rules of the new game sufficiently well to play with the others (and the Aspie may select to watch for several turns, precisely to make sure of the rules), but it is not turning the Aspie’s world upside down by negating their rare and precious understanding of at least some rules.

It is important to set this expectation up before encountering the situation, because once that meltdown has started, it is difficult to stop it.  Release of ‘pent up frustration’ is difficult to get back under control, especially in a young child.  So, making sure that the situation is properly framed before it occurs is very helpful.

No, this is not a magic wand that will make it 100% perfect every time – the Aspie may wish to get everyone to play by the rules they are familiar with, because they are more secure when dealing with the understood rules.  But when parents, educators and caregivers understand this, it may affect the way they approach the resolution, so it is more successful. 

My personal experience is that this approach usually results in a positive interaction with other kids and builds an Aspie child’s confidence in their ability to learn the rules of interacting with others.  And as they become more confident in their ability to play successfully with other children, more social skills can be built – and this is a good step towards a successful and happy Aspie child.

Posted in Aspergers, education, language, society. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »
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