Autism Essay -- Teaching Education

Autism We start with an word picturea tiny, golden child on hands and knees, circling bombastic and round a imperfection on the horizontal surface in mysterious, self-absorbed delight. She does not look up, though she is smiling and laugh she does not call our worry to the mysterious object of her pleasure. She does not cast us at all. She and the spot are all there is, and though she is eighteen months old, an age for touching, tasting, pointing, pushing, exploring, she is doing none of these. She does not walk, or crawl up stairs, or pull herself to her feet to crap for objects. She doesnt want any objects. Instead, she circles her spot. Or she sits, a presbyopic image in her hand, snaking it up and down, up and down, notice it coil and uncoil, for twenty minutes, fractional an hour--- until someone comes, moves her or feeds her or gives her other toy, or perhaps a book.Excerpted from The Seige Autisma mysterious world where the unknowns excuse outnumber the knowns. A syndrome whose manifestations are many and whose etiology is suspected of creation multi-causal. The word autism still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most peoplethey visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut stumble from humans contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, rarely of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society. Or else we think of an autistic savant a curious being with bizarre mannerisms and stereotypies, still cut off from normal life, however with uncanny powers of calculation, memory, drawing, whateverlike the savant portrayed in come down Man. These pictures are not wholly false, nevertheless they fail to indicate that there are forms of autism which do not incapacitate in the same way, but may allow lives that are full of event and achievement, and a finicky sort of insight and courage too (Grandin, 12). Autism wa s first identified as a disorder in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner. It was widely accepted that a childs autistic condition was the result of extremely, wintry distant, rejecting and overly intellectual parenting. The childs extreme withdrawal was viewed as a refusal to engage in social or physical contact, rather than inability. The assumption therefore was that the familial environment being hostile was the campaign of the childs refusal to become enga... ...sm- perhaps even before a child is born. That day remains but doctors have recently do great strides in the field of brain research, both using psychological science and through highly sophisticated technology. Its anyones guess, though how long it will take them to unlock the secret of this fascinating syndrome. We start with an imagea tiny, golden child on hands and knees, circling round and round a spot on the floor in mysterious, self-absorbed delight. She does not look up, though she is smiling and laughing she doe s not call our attention to the mysterious object of her pleasure. She does not see us at all. She and the spot are all there is, and though she is eighteen months old, an age for touching, tasting, pointing, pushing, exploring, she is doing none of these. She does not walk, or crawl up stairs, or pull herself to her feet to reach for objects. She doesnt want any objects. Instead, she circles her spot. Or she sits, a long chain in her hand, snaking it up and down, up and down, watching it coil and uncoil, for twenty minutes, half an hour--- until someone comes, moves her or feeds her or gives her another toy, or perhaps a book.