Noted autism self-advocate Temple Grandin is taking special educators to task for too often dwelling on the challenges students with disabilities face rather than the strengths they possess.
“Special educators need to look at what a child can do instead of what he/she cannot do,” Grandin writes in an essay on the website TakePart.
Rather than focus exclusively on trouble spots, Grandin said educators and parents should encourage kids with disabilities to expand their strengths, citing her own childhood interest in art. Though she preferred to draw horse heads repeatedly, Grandin said she was pushed to expand her skills by painting pictures of the beach, for example.
Eventually, Grandin said, her art skills led to her work designing livestock equipment.
“There needs to be more emphasis on building up and expanding the skills a child is good at,” Grandin writes. “Too often people get locked into a label such as dyslexia, ADHD or autism and they cannot see beyond the label.”
Grandin said she’s dismayed hearing about children who are dissuaded from pursuing their talents. In one case she heard about a teacher forbidding a student from drawing pictures. And at some schools, Grandin said, kids are limited to materials specifically for their grade level.
“If a teacher had stifled my art ability, I would have never become a designer of livestock equipment,” said Grandin, noting that equipment she designed handles half of the cattle in North America. “I think that this is a real accomplishment for a child that some people thought was mentally retarded.”
That is how the whole service system is built. They all focus on the difficulties, the struggles, the problems a person has, they focus on the label as opposed to what strengths they have. Going through intake to get services, you have to be sure to make your case sound as hopeless as humanly possible if you want even the slightest chance of getting any help. Because it is all based on the medical model, which is outdated, insulting, and condescending towards those who minds and bodies work differently. Until that begins to change, until we stop basing how we get services on how “horrible” the situation is for a person with disabilities, the outside world will continue to follow the service people’s example and act accordingly.
Temple Grandin wisely encourages us to focus on the possibilities, on the contribution that every person brings. I have yet to meet a parent who, despite a lifetime dealing with sometimes overwhelming physical and behavioral challenges, did not in the end feel their child had unique gifts to offer. I think, for example, of a mother whose adolescent daughter has profound developmental conditions that include being nonverbal, wheelchair-bound, tube-fed, and a frequent long-term guest at Children’s Hospital. The biggest challenge is not the tubes and diapers and medical worries, but rather the lack of play dates because her daughter loves other kids above all things. Her daughter is not a university professor or frequent talk show guest, but she has this in common with Temple Grandin – her differences, her very challenges, speak to her inherent worth as a human being and evoke wonderful qualities in everyone around her.
Temple, you are completely right about this. I could have gone much further in my life if this had been done for me when I was a child. Instead I was punished for my special interests, which only made me take them underground and intensify my attachments to them, to the detriment of developing other areas of my life until well into adulthood.
Temple Grandin is so right. As a college advisor I read school report after school report that details every area of weakness and offers almost nothing on the student’s strengths. We all need to focus on a students abilities and build on those to generate feelings of accomplishment and self worth. As it is the system tears special needs students down more often than it builds them up.
My modus operandi is “anyone can learn anything at anytime given the right supports and strategies”. Thank you for your tireless efforts to create more capacity based rather than deficit based thinkers. I, too, look beyond the label to the learning possibilities based on an individual’s strengths and interests.
Amen!
Lois Tannenbaum, L.I.F.E. Source Learning, Inc.