Asperger's and Culture: Who Needs to Change?

For some time now, the site Aspergia.com has pushed the culture model of Asperger's in a very provocative way.  By arguing that individuals with spectrum disorders are a unique genetic pool with a unique neurology, they are attempting to "culture-ize" rather than "pathologize" this group.  They welcome group identification as a means of connecting with each other and with their unique characteristics:

"I think it is time we thanked the researchers, theoreticians and professionals who helped identify the phenomena and make it public. The work of Dr Asperger and the follow up by the likes of Wing and Atwood has been pivotal in identifying that there is indeed a group of people who are born with a neurology which is inherently different to that of the general population. This group processes information differently, has a different set of social interactions and a wide variety of uncommon traits such as a high sensitivity to external stimuli."(www.aspergia.com)

I think that Roland Tharp and his colleagues at Kamehameha Schools and the University of Hawaii did a much better job of utilizing a cultural model in the 1980's and 90's with their revolutionary approach to adapting educational practices to fit the local Hawaiian culture (rather than forcing the local culture to fit the dominant educational culture and its practices).  Adapting to the smaller, less dominant culture is no easy task...in the case of Tharp's work, it required years of anthropological and psychological study of Hawaiian living and learning practices, and then experimenting with ways to incorporate these cultural "styles" in to workable educational programs.

In today's podcast, I begin to scratch the surface of cultural issues and Asperger's/Autism.  I address the fundamental question of "Who changes?"

Click on the MP3 download below to listen:

Download pr9-10_complete.mp3 (9mins 04secs; 3.11MB)

Comments

[Dave]

I learned a great deal about this issue in a book by Herb Lovett entitled Learning to Listen; also in a book by Monty Roberts (the horse whisperer) entitled Horse Sense for People...the idea in the latter being that Monty came to understand that horses indeed had a language (equus), that we needed to understand and use. So often, in the world of human services, we do expect people to, in a sense, learn our language, but rarely vice-a-versa! I agree that the cultural issue is somewhat amorphous...but it never hurts to listen.

[Erin Shelton]

Its very rough for anyone to have to accommodate to a different culture. Both the neurotypical culture and the asperger culture need to understand each other rather then just one culture understanding the other. A better understanding comes from knowledge on both sides.

[Erin Shelton]

Its very rough for anyone to have to accommodate to a different culture. Both the neurotypical culture and the asperger culture need to understand each other rather then just one culture understanding the other. A better understanding comes from knowledge on both sides.

[Rachel Schmitt]

I think that accomodating to a new culture would be something very difficult for anyone to do. People need to understand eachother, and actually need to listen what one another is saying before we can fully understand anything. I agree that we have to listen to knowledge from both sides of the spectrum, in order to understand.

[kara]

I enjoyed listening to this weblog beacuse of what the two students described their experiences with the special needs peron. I thought they both did a great job explaing the importance of hearing their voice and their feelings of how the act and how they want to act.

[l. tagen]

it is very hard accomodating to another culture, yet both seem to have new insight. There's a difference between hearing and listening...listening is key here.

[Lauren Levinstim]

It is hard to answer the questtion of who needs to change. I think that the neurotypical community needs to make changes to meet the needs of persons with Asberger's just as much as person's with Asberger's should try to understand the neorotypical community. Tuning into other cultures is a very difficult thing to do. If these two communities could listen to eachother they would be able to help one another.

[Andy Sylvia]

I say we secede and make our own country somewhere. Still, I don't look forward to being Temple Grandin's neighbor; I have a feeling her house will smell like cows...