Other-Abled+Minds

by Kate Hutchinson The “Rain Man,” in the 1989 award-winning film, was modeled after a real man named Kim Peek who can memorize half the phone book in one evening. Daniel Tammet, the young English author of //Born on a Blue Day//, knows prime numbers up into the 40,000s and can speak multiple languages fluently, including Icelandic which he learned in two weeks as a challenge by scientists. My own son, Ramon, has made a complete set of books on tape for the Dr. Seuss books with himself as narrator, remembers the birthdays and ages of every person he’s ever met, and can tell you exactly when any number of children's movies was on TV over the last ten years. Date AND time. And he is never wrong.
 * ** Other-Abled Minds **

All three of these men have autism and are incapable of other, “normal” activities like playing a baseball game or driving a car. So are their brains storing completely worthless information, random details, for no good purpose? Or could these unusual minds also be capable, one day, of storing other details or patterns that might have importance for the future of humanity?

Myths and legends throughout the world have often centered around the unique individual, the person who thinks and acts outside the box, who is usually misunderstood, sometimes feared, always outcast and made to suffer for his differences.... and often redeemed at some crucial point later in the tale. From Hercules to Quasimodo to Harry Potter, the outcast-as-hero is an ever-popular story. But why? What is it that makes such characters resonate with us? Could it be that we all see something of ourselves in that poor, shunned figure, the solitary character whose freakishness does not allow him to blend in with his peers? Why do we cheer at the part of the story when that outcast is welcomed back to his community....when in real life we stand by and watch the disabled and unusual wither away in isolation?

The other day I watched the Warner Brothers animated film, //Happy Feet//. It occurred to me that Mumble the penguin is another such character, a kid whose “inner voice” tells him to dance in a land where singing is the norm. Baby Gloria, the best singer of all the penguin children, explains how singing helps them discover their true identities: "We have to find out heart songs all by ourselves....It's the voice you hear inside, who you truly are." Yet she and the others reject Mumble because he cannot sing at all and instead feels his true inner self is expressed through dancing. In Mumble I saw my son and Rain Man – innocent human beings with joyful spirits whose behavior causes others to shun them. Just as Mumble is banished from his Emperor Penguin colony, so has my son been banished from the large, award-winning high school in our community. Both were told their presence was a danger. Both were denied the privilege of belonging simply because of who they are – because they behave in ways that cause disruption to the system.

In //Happy Feet//, Mumble goes on to try and redeem himself by saving his colony of starvation. And of course, this being a Hollywood feature film, he succeeds in his quest and is welcomed back to his colony where all the penguins suddenly learn to dance with the panache of Savion Glover. Yet in his own quiet way, my son has gone on the same quest, with the help of his parents and some pretty amazing teachers at the private high school he now attends. He is earning As and Bs and has said on occasion, “I’m learning in my own way at my own pace. Those teachers at my old school just didn’t know how to help me learn.”

Ramon may not save those previous teachers from starvation, but if they knew now of his successes, they might understand that there is much more they could be doing to help young people like Ramon be successful at learning. There is a kind of nourishment in that. Those teachers might be surprised to know that Ramon is so adept at computer searches that he frequently introduces new educational game websites to his astonished computer teacher. He can find which Go Roma restaurant is nearest by using the internet, and he could market his services to overworked mothers by accompanying them to any one of 30 grocery stores in our area and telling them in exactly what aisle the item is that they are seeking. He is never wrong. Not bad for a kid with an I. Q. of 70.

Don’t even get me started on the absurdity of I. Q. tests, which are supposed to measure our "intelligence." According to the //Psychology Today// Online Therapy Center, you can take an I. Q. test right now on the computer with just a few questions, which are supposed to determine five areas of intelligence: spacial, verbal, emotional, memory, and mental speed. Like any objective test, how accurate can that be? Three different psychologists who have tried to measure my son's I. Q. have said it is "impossible" to get an accurate result for a person with autism, because they don't understand or respond to the test's questions in the same way non-autistic people do.

Really, who knows what the autistic mind might one day be capable of? Daniel Tammet is still a young man, but he’s already spent a year by himself in Lithuania teaching English to adults and now operates a language instruction website (//Born on a Blue Day//, p. 222). Another young man with autism was featured in the //Chicago Tribune// a few years ago because he was awarded the CTA Employee of the Year. He claimed he had every route memorized – all the bus and train routes – helping more callers reach their destinations per hour than any other employee (Kogan.) Temple Grandin, another well-known woman with autism who has authored or co-authored nine books, has earned a Ph. D. in animal behavior and travels around the world helping corporate farmers maximize their livestock’s output by helping them re-build their barns and pens to make the animals feel calmer. Her first book, //Thinking In Pictures//, explains how she did not understand how words worked until she was eight years old, which got her kicked out of elementary school. She says, "I translate words into full-color movies complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head." (p. 1) Some researchers believe Albert Einstein had a form of autism. Today many in the autism community believe that Bill Gates might be on the spectrum, along with other computer geniuses whose lack of social skills has kept them working in the realm of machines. ("Diagnosing Bill Gates.")

All these examples should make us wonder: might an autistic mind, with its amazing capacity for memory and detail, be capable of truly extraordinary things if given the chance to flourish? Might a person with autism one day memorize the genetic code and “see” the cure for cancer? Or employ a diligence so thorough that it discovers some new mathematical code which could unlock a mystery of the universe?

My friend Tracey once commented that my son’s energy and focus are so heightened that he seems more advanced than the typical person, not less. She floated the idea that perhaps autism is an evolutionary leap forward – where a person’s brain is not so concerned about the superficial aspects of socialization but can get right down to work on a real, concrete task. A person with autism is often freed up from the whims of hormones or the constraints of peer pressure and consumerism, enabling him to think about or memorize whatever his heart desires. Ramon couldn't care less about the brand of clothing he wears, but he knows the release dates of all the movies coming out this spring and summer that he wants to see -- as well as how many minutes long each film will be.

So as schools continue to segregate their special needs populations, claiming the demands for integration are too difficult and costly, might educators be missing an incredible opportunity? Couldn’t those “normal” brains of the many be stimulated and intrigued by the quirky and interesting minds of the few? Mightn’t neurotypical children gain insight and patience by sharing classrooms with their autistic and otherwise cognitively impaired peers, learning that they should not take their brains for granted? Mightn't they see that they should not assume their brains are “better” than their classmates’ “disabled” ones just because they think and process differently?

Twenty-five years ago I sat in a graduate class studying the works of Geoffrey Chaucer at a university in Chicago. In 1983 little was known about the autism spectrum, but looking back now, one young man in my class most certainly had autism. I’ll never forget his odd outbursts, making strange connections to images in the literature. Like the time we were reading excerpts from Chaucer's satire, “The Parliament of Fowls,” and the young man hollered out, “This reminds me of the Muppet Show!” The astonished professor, prudish and erudite, waited a beat and then simply burst out laughing. The rest of us followed suit. From Chaucer to the Muppets? Who else would have made such a connection? Or if they had, who else would have lacked the filter to say it out loud in a room full of serious adults but a person with autism? Now, all these years later, thanks to that quirky young man in my class, I still connect Chaucer with the Muppets. In fact, Chaucer’s gamey parliament actually does call to mind that row of chicken puppets clucking and squawking. Chaucer himself would probably have found the parallel amusing. It might have even made an excellent paper topic, comparing Medieval and contemporary satire.

So while my son will most likely live a long and happy life in a supervised group home surrounded by his TV, computer, books on tape, and a few close friends and family members, I can’t help but think about the long-range effects of this segregation. By keeping the growing thousands of persons with autism out of our way, maybe no real harm will be done. But are any of us better off for it?

Perhaps it’s time for us all to rethink our cultural norms and start to broaden the range of what’s “acceptable” behavior, at school, at the grocery store, in the work place. One young man at the school where I teach has autism and is known to stand and spin for long periods in the hallway. Students have noted that it is strange, and few have tried to befriend this boy. But who knows – maybe he has a symphony in his head. Or a funny joke that could make lots of people laugh. Maybe he will one day devise a better kind of vending machine, or a more efficient way to route traffic.

Or maybe not. Maybe the great majority of people with special needs will never think up or accomplish anything noteworthy. Yet how many of us non-disabled people will? The point is not that they might – the point is that they should be afforded the opportunity. We all stand to benefit from it.


 * Works Cited:** (NOTE: You are to indent the 2nd line of any entry that goes to a second line. This Wiki will not show indenting!)

"Diagnosing Bill Gates." Time.com. 1 Jan. 1994. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979990,00.html

Grandin, Temple. //Thinking In Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism//. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

//Happy Feet//. Warner Brothers Studios, Kingdom Features Productions, 2006.

"I. Q. Tests." Psychology Today Online Therapy Center. 14 May 2009. www.psychologytoday.com/pto/self_tests.

Kogan, Rick. "I Have All the Maps in My Head." //Chicago Tribune Magazine//, April, 2000, cover story.

//Rain Man//. United Artists, 1988.

Tammet, Daniel. //Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant.// New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2006. ||