Archive for May 21st, 2012
Autism advocate Ari Ne’eman, Barack Obama’s appointee to the National Council on DisAbility, spoke to the Bloomfield community April 26, 2012.
Obama’s appointee to the National Council on DisAbility, Ari Ne’eman spoke to the Bloomfield community about what it means to be “different†in an America built on equality and “justice for all.â€
When autism advocate Ari Ne’eman, Barack Obama’s appointee to the National Council on DisAbility, recently spoke in Essex County, the discussion was not about autism, per se, but about civil rights.
Specifically, Ne’eman discussed how the role of the disabled person relates to history and human rights, and what it means to be “different†in an America built on the tenents of equality and “justice for all.â€Â
“Nobody should have to pretend to be something that they’re not, as a means of being included in their own society,†he said in an one-hour speech at Bloomfield High School last month. “We are taught at a very young age that to be ‘different’ is to be ‘wrong.’ [For those who are different] that’s a horrendous way of living.â€
Ne’eman, who is himself autistic, addressed a range of issues facing disabled Americans, specifically those with autism. The definition of ‘normalcy,’ he said, largely determines a school district’s attitude toward classroom inclusion, as well as host of other issues from social acceptance to employability.
Ne’eman spoke movingly about his own experiences as an autistic child, where he faced isolation and segregation from his non-afflicted peers and was forced to leave his neighborhood school and attend a faraway “special school.â€Â There, scrubbing dishes and mopping floors was seen as appropriate life training for the students.
Today Ne’eman, in addition to being Obama’s appointee, is the president and co-founder of the national Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. He maintains that the ultimate goal of autism advocacy efforts is inclusion, not just in schools but in the larger world, and that anything less is a violation of human and civil rights.
Still, the challenge and complexity of inclusion becomes evident when one considers the wide range of autism diagnoses. Children with the mildest form of autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, often attend regular schools and later, can live without discrimination within “mainstream†society. But inclusion may be nearly impossible for those with severe autism, who are sometimes non-verbal and lacking the most basic forms of self-reliance. Even children who engage in disruptive outbursts and repetitive motions can be seen as unlikely candidates for inclusion in the eyes of many educators.
For this reason, treatment of autism has historically focused on helping patients acquire traits that allow them to fit more neatly into the existing social order. Citing one renowned researcher, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, Ne’eman noted that rendering autistic patients “indistinguishable from their peers†– in other words, able to mimic ‘normalcy’– was widely seen as “success†in the field of autism treatment.Â
In describing Lovaas’ methods, his own website states, “half the children with autism who received his intensive treatment become indistinguishable from other children on tests of cognitive and social skills by the time they completed first grade.â€
“I don’t know many people whose goal, when they wake up in the morning, is to be indistinguishable from their peers,†noted Ne’eman wryly in his speech. “Lovaas’ studies weren’t measuring independent living skills or academic skills like science or math, they were measuring indistinguishability from peers. Is that meaningful?â€
Designing treatment methods based on conformity to an opposing ideal automatically defines the starting point, “acting autistic,” as “wrong,” Ne’eman said.
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