I highly doubt it.

I only learned of many of these issues through some of the more prominent people in the ND field. I can’t think of a single issue you’ve raised that hasn’t been endlessly discussed on blogs, conferences and in services.

If you’re only sticking to the blogs and websites of those self-identified as ND, then it’s no wonder you keep claiming ‘ND doesn’t do this, ND doesn’t do that’, you literally need to be hand-held and have it pointed out to you.

“ND should at least be clear on what their overall goals are.”

Why? That’s the responsibility of the organisations and services that adopt ND thinking. ND’s ‘overall goal’, is itself the adoption of ND thinking.

There’s nothing unique about autism advocacy, we’re also going through all this with physical conditions (notably diabetes), and mental health conditions (especially dementia and schizophrenia).

Emily, think of one professional knowledgeable in the fields of learning, education, and intelligence, who will support what you imply. Stop ignoring reality and tell the truth. Until you prove that sufficient education is possible for those with any IQ, you cannot be taken seriously. What can you say to back up what you’re contending?

The outcome of my research is intended to provide more effective ways of using video in teaching autistic adults a variety of skills and self awareness. My aim is to become a teacher of those future professionals, imparting the fruits of mine and others research.

Perhaps the most important thing that any of us can do is to pass on our skills to another generation.

ND is a philiosophy, autism as neurological condition or a behavioural condition would be a framework, TEACCH or SPELL would be approaches.

“When they say education should be provided..”

Er, how about we have a big WTF? Autism education focuses on exactly those ‘impairments’ and how we can get round them.

Lurker appears to be saying that ND is somehow wrong because s/he doesn’t know enough about it. ND is somehow wrong because it doesn’t provide enough detail, when the detail being asked for is highly dependant on the selected approach, the service setting, the skill being worked on, and the broader social context.

This is all coming across as if lurker views things in black and white. It’s as if lurker believes not doing things to perfection is like not doing things at all.

Lurker – who exactly are your examples of ND?

Sure everyone has a limit to what they can learn as you are amply demonstrating, nobody says the autist with the PhD is the norm,

However there certainly are skills that can be and are taught, for heaven sakes all too many neurotypical kids leave school illiterate, and they do not have reading disabilities or retardation, they have been educated badly in an environment that mitigates against there aquiring those skills.

This is the irony, you are accusing something you typify as neurodiversity as abandoning autistic children to a state of nature, but what on earth are you saying here, are you saying it is not worth educating autistic kids, that they should be automatically institutionalised, or worse

Where is your concern for this group of people, You contradict yourself by your own arguments, better surely that people like me do care about the welfare of all autistics regardless of intellectual funtion, and that I lobby alongside parents for better services so that no autistic kid is left behind.

I am situated at the University of Birmingham in the school of education, with qualifications specialising in the education of autistics.

My colleagues are and have been involved in pragmatic research into interventions.

It is everyones right to an appropriate education so that they achieve the maximum that is within there potential. The attitude that sees autistics as train wrecks is one of the most harmful to progress that I can see. There are no magic medical cures, we have to work with what we have, this is the same accross the entire field of intellectual disability which is as complex a field of study as autism.

40 years ago, my parents generation, people (some of whom I know) who are the age my parents would be if they were alive formed the NAS.

They formed it because the authorities at the time said that there children were ineducable, and proved that was wrong, catalysing the provision of services for autistics everywhere.

You seem to be going back to the old position that autistics are write off’s.

Yes I believe in an education that is informed by neuroscience but your position seems to be the most abusive of “low funtioning” individuals there is, you have allowed yourself to be led astray by all the bad science, and then you dare to accuse “ND” of caring not for “LFA” !!!!!

As for the dependency argument, how independent are you, you depend on a vast industrial and commercial structure to survive.

Can you spin and weave your own clothes, grow your own food, and mend your own broken bones?