Asperger's From The Other Side

(Note: Asperger's Syndrome (and the other autism spectrum disorders) aren't technically learning disabilities, but that category seems to be where this post fits)

Update -- Moof, who writes at All Blogged Up, A Moof's Tale, had a strong response to Hans' story.

Update #2 -- D.P., who writes at Difficult, also had a strong response to Hans' story.

The blogger who writes as The Angry Professor at A Gentleman's C  is a "tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat."

She wrote a post about one of her students, Hans, who has Asperger's.

Hans has the worst case of Asperger's Syndrome I have ever encountered. My cousin has Asperger's; Hans makes my cousin look like Albert Schweitzer.

Go read the post and the comments, then come back.

The post, A Student Profile, generated a lot of comment from parents of kids with Asperger's.

She responded with a second post (also generating comments)

What parents need to know is that instructors at the university level are nothing like teachers in elementary and secondary school. Almost none of us have any formal teacher training. We are thrown in front of a classroom and expected to teach sometimes hundreds of kids at a time, never having learned anything about classroom management and different teaching methods. In particular, we have no training for and usually no experience at all with handling kids like Hans. And with over a hundred students, kids like Hans will be left out in the cold, no question about it. A parent myself, I can see how this would break any parent's heart.

[snip]

if you are the parent of a kid with special needs, please think twice about sending him or her to LSU or any other large university. Even those of us who are reasonably good-hearted don't know our asses from a hole in the ground.

To counter AP, while k-12 teachers have "formal teacher training", very few of them have any training in learning disabilities and neurological differences (AS, as I said at the outset of this post, isn't a "learning disability".  Neither are ADD and ADHD.)

Now comes the news that Hans is failing the course, but refuses to withdraw:

He told me that he's afraid to drop any classes, for any reason. Why? Because his father has been telling him, non-stop, that Hans will not and cannot succeed in university. Hans is determined to show him that he's wrong, and is afraid that dropping a class will just reinforce his father's poor opinion of him.

I wonder if Hans has ever had social skills training to help him modulate his behavior.

Social Skills Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Social Skills Training--National Association of School Psychologists
Social Skills Project
Aspergian Pride
Aspies For Freedom

Comments

[Moof]

Thank you for the head's up! I would like to link to this post ... may I?

[DP]

I hope you don't mind--I already linked to you!