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• The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals
  

Protože tito lidé dělají práci, která je nenaplňuje, jsou v ní průměrní a nebo špatní. Situace je tak zlá, že jakýsi citovaný celoevropský průzkum (bohužel jsi již nepamatuji jaký) odhalil, že 80% Evropanů dělá práci, která je nebaví nebo ke které si nemyslí, že mají vlohy. To je naprosto tragická vizitka pro Evropu, protože pouze člověk, který dělá práci, která ho baví nebo v ní je dobrý, v ní může něco dokázat a být v ní úspěšný.

Evropané a Američané se nacházejí v tzv. údolí komfortu. Je to místo, kde jsou lidé sice slušně materiálně zajištěni, ale nejsou šťastní. Lepší představu o údolí komfortu je možné najít na následujícím grafu. Jak je vidět, tak šťastnější jsou jak lidé chudší, kterým k uspokojení z práce stačí ještě peníze (to souvisí s Herzbergovou motivační teorií) a na druhé straně jsou pak štastnější i lidé mnohem bohatší.

Do pravé horní části by se asi chtěl dostat každý. Je to oblast, kde jsou lidé bohatí a spokojení. Jenže do této oblasti se lidé nedostanou tím, že dělají práci, která je nebaví a ve které nejsou dobří, jediná cesta vede přes využití silných stránek. Zajímavé například je, že společnost Microsoft ještě někdy kolem roku 2000 razila filozofii, že si každý zaměstnanec musí vybrat několik slabých míst a ty zdokonalovat, ale před pěti lety došli k zjištění, že pomocí zlepšování slabých míst se lidé dostanou tak leda na průměrné hodnoty. Proto se raději místo toho zaměřili na zlepšování silných stránek, kde je potom člověk schopen podávat naprosto ojedinělé výkony.

Řekněme, že abychom se dostali z údolí komfortu do pravé horní části grafu, tak musíme začít podnikat v něčem, co nás baví a v čem využijeme naše silné stránky. Jenže bohužel než projdeme z údolí komfortu do stádia bohatství a spokojenosti, tak musíme projít údolím smrti. To je ta část každého podnikání, kdy je nejvíce pravděpodobné, že podnik zkrachuje a vy utratíte jen hromadu peněz za nic. Je to ta část podnikání, kdy jen dřete a nic z toho nemáte a je to přesně ta část, kdy vás podporují jen kamarádi, blázni a rodina - tzv. FFF (friends, family and fools).

Není se pak čemu divit, že lidé v Evropě, dokud ještě nechápou o co jde, podnikat chtějí (97% dětí, které jdou do školky chtějí prý jednou podnikat), školství je však natolik zdecimuje, že když odcházejí z vysoké školy, tak chce podnikat jen 17% z nich a nakonec jen 3% ze všech to opravdu udělají. Důvod? Z údolí komfortu vede k bohatství a spokojenosti jen cesta přes údolí smrti a do toho se skoro nikomu nechce.

By Lisa M. Krieger, Mercury News, article Launched: 12/20/2008 08:00:00 PM PST

Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.

More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person's cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist.

"In a dramatic way, it illustrates that under certain circumstances people will act in very surprising and disturbing ways,'' said Burger.

The study, using paid volunteers from the South Bay, is similar to the famous 1974 "obedience study'' by the late Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the wake of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's trial, Milgram was troubled by the willingness of people to obey authorities — even if it conflicted with their own conscience.

Burger's findings are published in a special section of the journal reflecting on Milgram's work 24 years after his death on Dec. 20, 1984. The haunting images of average people administering shocks have kept memories of Milgram's research alive for decades, even as recently as the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The subjects — recruited in ads in the Mercury News, Craigslist and fliers distributed in libraries and communities centers in Santa
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Clara, Cupertino and Sunnyvale — thought they were testing the effect of punishment on learning.

"They were average citizens, a typical cross-section of people that you'd see around every day,'' said Burger.

In the study, conducted two years ago, volunteers administered what they believed were increasingly powerful electric shocks to another person in a separate room. An "authority figure'' prodded the volunteer to shock another person, who was playing the role of "learner." Each time the learner gave an incorrect answer, the volunteer was urged to press a switch, seemingly increasing the electricity over time. They were told that the shocks were painful but not dangerous.

Burger designed his study to avoid several of the most controversial elements of Milgram's experiment. For instance, the "shocks'' were lower voltage. And participants were told at least three times that they could withdraw from the study at any time and still receive the $50 payment. In addition, a clinical psychologist interviewed volunteers to eliminate anyone who might be upset by the study procedure.

Like Milgram's study, Burger's shock generator machine was a fake. The cries of pain weren't real, either. Both the authority figure and the learner were actors — faculty members Brian Oliveira and Kenneth Courtney. (When Courtney failed to scream convincingly, a professional actor had to be hired; his voice was recorded.)

Burger found that 70 percent of the participants had to be stopped from escalating shocks over 150 volts, despite hearing cries of protest and pain. Decades earlier, Milgram found that 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks. Of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator's end, at 450 volts. Burger's experiment did not go that far.

"The conclusion is not: 'Gosh isn't this a horrible commentary on human nature,' or 'these people were so sadistic,'' said Burger.

"It shows the opposite — that there are situational forces that have a much greater impact on our behavior than most people recognize,'' he said.

The experiment shows that people are more likely to comply with instructions if the task starts small, then escalates, according to Burger.

"For instance, the suicides at Jonestown were just the last step of many,'' he said. "Jim Jones started small, asking people to donate time and money, then looked for more and more commitment.''

Additionally, the volunteers confronted a novel situation — having never before been in such a setting, they had no idea of how they were supposed to act, he said.

Finally, they had been told that they should not feel responsible for inflicting pain; rather, the "instructor" was accountable. "Lack of feeling responsible can lead people to act in ways that they might otherwise not,'' said Burger.

"When we see people acting out of character, the first thing we should ask is: 'What's going on in this situation?'''

Americký analytik Nicholas Carr argumentuje v knize The Shallows (Mělčiny), že užívání internetu a neustálé nervózní přeskakování od jednoho média k druhému (internet, mobilní telefon, MP3 přehrávač, televize) mění neurální trasy v lidském mozku. Varuje, že to může připravit člověka o schopnosti, které mu umožnily vyjít z jeskyně a dojít až před obrazovku počítače.

V Knize Carr zkoumá takové základní lidské vynálezy, jako jsou mapa, hodiny a psací stroj a jak silně tyto vynálezy ovlivnily náš způsob myšlení (výrazně ovlivnily způsob psaní Friedricha Nietzscheho a T.S. Eliota). Carr argumentuje, že dnešní "kakofonie stimulů" z internetu daly vzniknout povrchnímu čtení, zbrklému a nesoustředěnému myšlení a povrchnímu vzdělávání". Ve věku knihy tomu bylo jinak - inteligentní lidské bytosti byly povzbuzovány, aby jednaly rozmyslně a imaginativním způsobem.

Dnes se ví, že lidský mozek je neurologicky velmi tvarovatelný a snad nejděsivější věta v Carrově knize je toto: "Kdybychom s dnešní znalostí tvarovatelnosti lidského mozku chtěli vymyslet médium, které změní naše mentální neurologické obvody co nejrychleji a co nejefektivněji, pravděpodobně bychom vynalezli internet."

V roce 2008 provedla trojice psychiatrů na UCLA pokus s 12 zkušenými uživateli internetu a s 12 lidmi, pro něž bylo užívání internetu novinkou. Publikovali výsledky svému výzkumu v knize s titulem Your Brain on Google (Váš mozek na Googlu).

Před začátkem experimentu byla oblast mozku, které se říká dorzolaterální předfrontální kortex, centrum krátkodobé paměti a krátkodobého rozhodování, u lidí bez zkušeností s internetem zcela pasivní, u webových veteránů absolutně aktivní.

O šest dní později, poté, co obě skupiny strávily každý den hodinu na internetu, byly vzorce mozkové aktivity příslušníků obou skupin už totožné. "Pět hodin na internetu a struktura mozku lidí bez předchozí zkušenosti s internetem už byla restrukturalizována."

Je základním principem mozku, že je nesmírně citlivý na veškerou stinmulaci a dochází k složité kaskádě neurochemických elektrických důsledků na každou formu stimulace. Jste-li vystaveni opakovaným stimulům, vaše neurální okruhy budou zaktivovány. Avšak pokud zanedbáte jiné stimuly, vaše ostatní neurální okruhy budou oslabeny.

A to je základem Carrova argumentu: Onlinový svět zaměstnává náš mozek povrchními a dočasnými skutečnostmi tak intenzivně, že hluboké myšlení začíná být nemožné.

Carr si povšiml, že u lidí, posedlých internetem, se ztrácí schopnost lidského kontaktu. Neumějí udržovat kontakt očima s lidmi, s nimiž mluví, nejsou schopni číst neverbální signály. Snaží se je naučit, aby si vypnuli mobil a sledovali očima člověka, s nímž mluví. "Je to velmi silné. Jedna mladá dvojice spolu začala chodit, poté, co prošla tímto cvičením."

Carr se také obává, že posílání esemesek také ohrožuje lidskou tvořivost, "protože nemyslíme samostatně, ale pořád si necháváme své myšlenky kontrolovat přáteli." Carr varuje, že multitasking, dělání více věcí najednou, není efektivním způsobem práce - děláme daleko větší množství chyb a vzniká tendence dělat věci rychleji, ale nepořádněji."

Firma Boeing je nejnovějším příkladem podniku, který se snaží odstranit internetovou saturaci svých mladých zaměstnanců a propojit je znovu s reálným světem.

Carr se domnívá, že máme všichni schopnost se zachránit před mentální degenerací, pokud si uvědomíme, co se děje. "Mozek se dokáže napravit, ale musíme přijmout zásadní rozhodnutí. Snažte se trávit podstatný počet hodin mimo internet. Jeďte domů, mluvte s dětmi."

Potíž je, že jakmile sedíme u počítače, je to nezvládnutelné. Nervózně pořád kontrolujeme emaily a trávíme čas na YouTube. "Je to těžké," říká Carr. "Internet nás láká. Náš mozek se na něm stává závislým. Musíme si toho být vědomi a nedovolit, aby nás internet ovládl." 

The Broken Society

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 18, 2010

The United States is becoming a broken society. The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis.

This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.

But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond.

He grew up in working-class Liverpool. “I lived in the city when it was being eviscerated,” he told The New Statesman. “It was a beautiful city, one of the few in Britain to have a genuinely indigenous culture. And that whole way of life was destroyed.” Industry died. Political power was centralized in London.

Blond argues that over the past generation we have witnessed two revolutions, both of which liberated the individual and decimated local associations. First, there was a revolution from the left: a cultural revolution that displaced traditional manners and mores; a legal revolution that emphasized individual rights instead of responsibilities; a welfare revolution in which social workers displaced mutual aid societies and self-organized associations.

Then there was the market revolution from the right. In the age of deregulation, giant chains like Wal-Mart decimated local shop owners. Global financial markets took over small banks, so that the local knowledge of a town banker was replaced by a manic herd of traders thousands of miles away. Unions withered.

The two revolutions talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.

The free-market revolution didn’t create the pluralistic decentralized economy. It created a centralized financial monoculture, which requires a gigantic government to audit its activities. The effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn’t produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers. In Britain, you get a country with rising crime, and, as a result, four million security cameras.

In a much-discussed essay in Prospect magazine in February 2009, Blond wrote, “Look at the society we have become: We are a bi-polar nation, a bureaucratic, centralised state that presides dysfunctionally over an increasingly fragmented, disempowered and isolated citizenry.” In a separate essay, he added, “The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures.”

The task today, he argued in a recent speech, is to revive the sector that the two revolutions have mutually decimated: “The project of radical transformative conservatism is nothing less than the restoration and creation of human association, and the elevation of society and the people who form it to their proper central and sovereign station.”

Economically, Blond lays out three big areas of reform: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.

To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the “village college” so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations. His ideas have made a big splash in Britain over the past year. His think tank, ResPublica, is influential with the Conservative Party. His book, “Red Tory,” is coming out soon. He’s on a small U.S. speaking tour, appearing at Georgetown’s Tocqueville Forum Friday and at Villanova on Monday.

Britain is always going to be more hospitable to communitarian politics than the more libertarian U.S. But people are social creatures here, too. American society has been atomized by the twin revolutions here, too. This country, too, needs a fresh political wind. America, too, is suffering a devastating crisis of authority. The only way to restore trust is from the local community on up.

A Ruinous Meltdown

By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 19, 2010

A story that is not getting nearly enough attention is the ruinous fiscal meltdown occurring in state after state, all across the country.

Taxes are being raised. Draconian cuts in services are being made. Public employees are being fired. The tissue-thin national economic recovery is being undermined. And in many cases, the most vulnerable populations — the sick, the elderly, the young and the poor — are getting badly hurt.

Arizona, struggling with a projected $2.6 billion budget shortfall, took the drastic step of scrapping its Children’s Health Insurance Program. That left nearly 47,000 low-income children with no coverage at all. Gov. Jan Brewer is also calling for an increase in the sales tax. She said, “Arizona is navigating its way through the largest state budget deficit in its long history.”

In New Jersey, the newly elected governor, Chris Christie, has proposed a series of budget cuts that, among other things, would result in public schools receiving $820 million less in state aid than they had received in the prior school year. Some well-off districts would have their direct school aid cut off altogether. Poorer districts that rely almost entirely on state aid would absorb the biggest losses in terms of dollars. They’re bracing for a terrible hit.

For all the happy talk about “no child left behind,” the truth is that in Arizona and New Jersey and dozens of other states trying to cope with the fiscal disaster brought on by the Great Recession, millions of children are being left far behind, and many millions of adults as well.

“We’ve talked in the past about revenue declines in a recession,” said Jon Shure of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “but I think you have to call this one a revenue collapse. In proportional terms, there has never been a drop in state revenues like we’re seeing now since people started to keep track of state revenues. We’re in unchartered territory when it comes to the magnitude of the impact.”

Massachusetts, which has made a series of painful cuts over the past two years, is gearing up for more. Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, told The Boston Globe: “There’s no end to the bad news here. The state fiscal situation is already so dire that any additional bad news is magnified.”

California has cut billions of dollars from its education system, including its renowned network of public colleges and universities. Many thousands of teachers have been let go. Budget officials travel the state with a glazed look in their eyes, having tried everything they can think of to balance the state budget. And still the deficits persist.

In the first two months of this year, state and local governments across the U.S. cut 45,000 jobs. Additional layoffs are expected as states move ahead with their budgets for fiscal 2011. Increasingly these budgets, instead of helping people, are hurting them, undermining the quality of their lives, depriving them of educational opportunities, preventing them from accessing desperately needed medical care, and so on.

The federal government has tried to help, but much more assistance is needed.

These are especially tough times for young people. “What we’re seeing now in Arizona and potentially in New Jersey and other states spells long-term trouble for the nation’s children,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who is president of the Children’s Health Fund in New York and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

“We’re looking at all these cuts in human services — in health care, in education, in after-school programs, in juvenile justice. This all points to a very grim future for these children who seem to be taking the brunt of this financial crisis.”

Dr. Redlener issued a warning nearly a year ago about the “frightening” toll the recession was taking on children. He told me last April, “We are seeing the emergence of what amounts to a ‘recession generation.’ ”

The impact of the recession on everyone, of whatever age, is only made worse when states trying to balance their budgets focus too intently on cutting services as opposed to a mix of service cuts and revenue-raising measures.

As Mr. Shure of the Center on Budget noted, “The cruel irony is that in a recession like this, the people’s needs go up at the same time that the states’ ability to meet those needs goes down.”

Budget cuts also tend to weaken rather than strengthen a state’s economy, especially when they entail furloughs or layoffs. Government spending stimulates an economy in recession. And wise spending is an investment in everyone’s quality of life.

All states have been rocked by the Great Recession. And most have tried to cope with a reasonable mix of budget cuts and tax increases, or other revenue-raising measures. Those that rely too heavily on cuts are making guaranteed investments in human misery.

Россияне перестают быть людьми в 8 лет
Депутаты оценили морально-нравственные качества подрастающего поколения

22 января, 12:41 | Аделаида СИГИДА

Стратегия развития системы воспитания в РФ, вынесенная Минобразования на общественное обсуждение, стала темой пресс-конференции в "Парламентской газете". Первый заместитель председателя Комитета Государственной думы РФ по образованию Олег Смолин считает, что стратегия крайне необходима. В качестве доказательства депутат привел социальные исследования: "По данным Российской академии образования, в 1993 году 58% подростков отличались альтруистическим типом, были способны сорадоваться, сопереживать, помогать другим и так далее. По последним данным, таких всего 16%".

Причем человеческий облик россияне теперь нередко теряют даже еще до школы. Так, "мальчики способны сопереживать до 8 лет, девочки сохраняют эту способность до 9 - 10 лет", сообщил депутат. "Способность сорадоваться мальчики имеют до 7 лет, девочки в школьном возрасте такой способностью не обладают. Я уже не говорю о том, что по данным МВД в России насчитывается 450 тысяч малолетних проституток. Но, как говорится, сам я не считал", - неожиданно признался депутат.

Из всего этого следует, что России просто необходима стратегия воспитания. "Документ, как ведомственный, вполне приличный. Во всяком случае, он как документ вполне юридически отработан. Как документ вполне годен", - считает Смолин.

Заместитель председателя комитета Государственной думы по образованию Виктор Шудегов оказался не согласен с коллегой. По его словам, документ является "сырым": "Если бы был принят хороший закон "Об Образовании", туда бы вошло все, и новый документ бы не понадобился. Он настолько расплывчатый. Одни термины, начиная от того, что такое гражданское общество, нация, человечество и так далее. Самое главное - не говорится, какие деньги и на какие цели будут выделяться".

Затем Шудегов тоже обратился к социальным исследованиям. После событий в московской школе 263, когда ученик десятого класса расстрелял учителя, были проведены соцопросы на тему "Какие личностные качества наиболее характерны для современной молодежи?. "И респонденты ответили следующим образом: на первом месте (46%) - эгоизм. На втором - агрессивность (39%). Далее с большим отрывом идут честность (8%) и патриотизм (6,5%). Действительно, идет "расчеловечивание" нашего общества", - заявил депутат.

Он вспомнил почему-то японского философа Фукуяму, предсказавшего появление недочеловеков. Затем депутаты обратились к Менделееву, который считал, что "обучение без воспитания - меч в руках сумасшедшего".

Впрочем, успокаивает то, что у нас и образование плохонькое и меч из него никакой.

Председатель Комиссии по безопасности Общественной платы РФ Антон Цветков предложил вернуть все лучшее из того, что было в советской системе образования: "Когда выходит неудачная компьютерная программа, лучше вернуться к предыдущей версии. То же самое - образование. Советская система образования являлась одной из лучших, если не самой лучшей, и многие страны брали с нас пример".

По словам Цветкова, виноваты 1990-е гг., когда из школ решили убрать воспитание и оставить одно образование. "Это было катастрофой, которая привела к росту правонарушений", - констатировал член Общественной палаты. По его словам, семьи не могут сами справиться с воспитанием детей, так как вынуждены большую часть времени тратить на работу. В итоге воспитанием детей занимается в основном интернет, возмутился Цветков.
 

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The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals

Structured learning didn't serve me particularly well. I was kicked out of kindergarten for running away too many times, and I have the dubious distinction of having dropped out of two undergraduate programs and a doctoral business and administration program. I haven’t been tested, but have come to think of myself as “neuroatypical” in some way.

“Neurotypical” is a term used by the autism community to describe what society refers to as “normal.” According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in 59 children, and one in 34 boys, are on the autism spectrum—in other words, neuroatypical. That's 3 percent of the male population. If you add ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—and dyslexia, roughly one out of four people are not “neurotypicals.”

In NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman chronicles the history of such non-neurotypical conditions, including autism, which was described by the Viennese doctor Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner in Baltimore in the 1930s and 1940s. Asperger worked in Nazi-occupied Vienna, which was actively euthanizing institutionalized children, and he defined a broad spectrum of children who were socially awkward. Others had extraordinary abilities and a "fascination with rules, laws and schedules," to use Silberman's words. Leo Kanner, on the other hand, described children who were more disabled. Kanner’s suggestion that the condition was activated by bad parenting made autism a source of stigma for parents and led to decades of work attempting to “cure” autism rather than developing ways for families, the educational system, and society to adapt to it.

Our schools in particular have failed such neurodiverse students, in part because they’ve been designed to prepare our children for typical jobs in a mass-production-based white- and blue-collar environment created by the Industrial Revolution. Students acquire a standardized skillset and an obedient, organized, and reliable nature that served society well in the past—but not so much today. I suspect that the quarter of the population who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education, and many others probably do as well.

Joi Ito is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, and his association with the magazine goes back to its inception. He is coauthor with Jeff Howe of Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future and director of the MIT Media Lab.

I often say that education is what others do to you and learning is what you do for yourself. But I think that even the broad notion of education may be outdated, and we need a completely new approach to empower learning: We need to revamp our notion of "education" and shake loose the ordered and linear metrics of the society of the past, when we were focused on scale and the mass production of stuff. Accepting and respecting neurodiversity is the key to surviving the transformation driven by the internet and AI, which is shattering the Newtonian predictability of the past and replacing it with a Heisenbergian world of complexity and uncertainty.

In Life, Animated, Ron Suskind tells the story of his autistic son Owen, who lost his ability to speak around his third birthday. Owen had loved the Disney animated movies before his regression began, and a few years into his silence it became clear he’d memorized dozens of Disney classics in their entirety. He eventually developed an ability to communicate with his family by playing the role, and speaking in the voices, of the animated characters he so loved, and he learned to read by reading the film credits. Working with his family, Owen recently helped design a new kind of screen-sharing app, called Sidekicks, so other families can try the same technique.

Owen’s story tells us how autism can manifest in different ways and how, if caregivers can adapt rather than force kids to "be normal," many autistic children survive and thrive. Our institutions, however, are poorly designed to deliver individualized, adaptive programs to educate such kids.

In addition to schools poorly designed for non-neurotypicals, our society traditionally has had scant tolerance or compassion for anyone lacking social skills or perceived as not "normal." Temple Grandin, the animal welfare advocate who is herself somewhere on the spectrum, contends that Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Mozart, and Nikola Tesla would have been diagnosed on the "autistic spectrum" if they were alive today. She also believes that autism has long contributed to human development and that "without autism traits we might still be living in caves." She is a prominent spokesperson for the neurodiversity movement, which argues that neurological differences must be respected in the same way that diversity of gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation is.

Despite challenges with some of the things that neurotypicals find easy, people with Asperger’s and other forms of autism often have unusual abilities. For example, the Israeli Defense Force's Special Intelligence Unit 9900, which focuses on analyzing aerial and satellite imagery, is partially staffed with people on the autism spectrum who have a preternatural ability to spot patterns. I believe at least some of Silicon Valley’s phenomenal success is because its culture places little value on conventional social and corporate values that prize age-based experience and conformity that dominates most of society and most institutions on the East Coast. It celebrates nerdy, awkward youth and has turned their super-human, “abnormal” powers into a money-making machine that is the envy of the world. (This new culture is wonderfully inclusive from a neurodiversity perspective but white-dude centric and problematic from a gender and race perspective.)

This sort of pattern recognition and many other unusual traits associated with autism are extremely well suited for science and engineering, often enabling a super-human ability to write computer code, understand complex ideas and elegantly solve difficult mathematical problems.

Unfortunately, most schools struggle to integrate atypical learners, even though it’s increasingly clear that interest-driven learning, project-based learning, and undirected learning seem better suited for the greater diversity of neural types we now know exist.

Ben Draper, who runs the Macomber Center for Self Directed Learning, says that while the center is designed for all types of children, kids whose parents identify them as on the autism spectrum often thrive at the center when they’ve had difficulty in conventional schools. Ben is part of the so-called unschooling movement, which believes that not only should learning be self-directed, in fact we shouldn't even focus on guiding learning. Children will learn in the process of pursuing their passions, the reasoning goes, and so we just need to get out of their way, providing support as needed.

Many, of course, argue that such an approach is much too unstructured and verges on irresponsibility. In retrospect, though, I feel I certainly would have thrived on “unschooling.” In a recent paper, Ben and my colleague Andre Uhl, who first introduced me to unschooling, argue that it not only works for everyone, but that the current educational system, in addition to providing poor learning outcomes, impinges on the rights of children as individuals.

MIT is among a small number of institutions that, in the pre-internet era, provided a place for non-neurotypical types with extraordinary skills to gather and form community and culture. Even MIT, however, is still trying to improve to give these kids the diversity and flexibility they need, especially in our undergraduate program.

I'm not sure how I'd be diagnosed, but I was completely incapable of being traditionally educated. I love to learn, but I go about it almost exclusively through conversations and while working on projects. I somehow kludged together a world view and life with plenty of struggle, but also with many rewards. I recently wrote a PhD dissertation about my theory of the world and how I developed it. Not that anyone should generalize from my experience—one reader of my dissertation said that I’m so unusual, I should be considered a "human sub-species." While I take that as a compliment, I think there are others like me who weren’t as lucky and ended up going through the traditional system and mostly suffering rather than flourishing. In fact, most kids probably aren’t as lucky as me and while some types are more suited for success in the current configuration of society, a huge percentage of kids who fail in the current system have a tremendous amount to contribute that we aren’t tapping into.

In addition to equipping kids for basic literacy and civic engagement, industrial age schools were primarily focused on preparing kids to work in factories or perform repetitive white-collar jobs. It may have made sense to try to convert kids into (smart) robotlike individuals who could solve problems on standardized tests alone with no smartphone or the internet and just a No. 2 pencil. Sifting out non-neurotypical types or trying to remediate them with drugs or institutionalization may have seemed important for our industrial competitiveness. Also, the tools for instruction were also limited by the technology of the times. In a world where real robots are taking over many of those tasks, perhaps we need to embrace neurodiversity and encourage collaborative learning through passion, play, and projects, in other words, to start teaching kids to learn in ways that machines can’t. We can also use modern technology for connected learning that supports diverse interests and abilities and is integrated into our lives and communities of interest.

At the Media Lab, we have a research group called Lifelong Kindergarten, and the head of the group, Mitchel Resnick, recently wrote a book by the same name. The book is about the group’s research on creative learning and the four Ps—Passion, Peers, Projects, and Play. The group believes, as I do, that we learn best when we are pursuing our passion and working with others in a project-based environment with a playful approach. My memory of school was "no cheating,” “do your own work,” "focus on the textbook, not on your hobbies or your projects," and "there’s time to play at recess, be serious and study or you'll be shamed"—exactly the opposite of the four Ps.

Many mental health issues, I believe, are caused by trying to “fix” some type of neurodiversity or by simply being insensitive or inappropriate for the person. Many mental “illnesses” can be “cured” by providing the appropriate interface to learning, living, or interacting for that person focusing on the four Ps. My experience with the educational system, both as its subject and, now, as part of it, is not so unique. I believe, in fact, that at least the one-quarter of people who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education. People who are wired differently should be able to think of themselves as the rule, not as an exception.

Zdroj: https://www.wired.com/story/tyranny-neurotypicals-unschooling-education/