A Lesson in Understanding

I haven’t yet posted here about “labels” or diagnoses. My feelings on the subject do tend to be rather ambiguous. In my ideal world, diagnosis would not be necessary. Within the context of the world we live in, I see both positive and negative effects of such “labeling.” For me, autism advocacy is largely about increasing the positives and reducing the negatives, hopefully. On the more negative side, we have Stephen Yoder, an adjunct professor who wrote a piece for Inside Higher Education entitled “My Semester With an Asperger Syndrome Student.”

Although Yoder admits upfront that he is not qualified to diagnose anyone, he claims to feel quite “comfortable” with his “lay diagnosis.” I am not opposed to lay diagnosis in certain circumstances, but a professor usually is not in the best position to do such an evaluation because they generally know students for a limited time period and in a limited context. Yoder’s effort in trying to understand this student is admirable, but he went about it in the wrong way.

Aside from the massive privacy issues—which many commentators, including abfh, noted in the comments section, the tone throughout the piece is simply bothersome. Take the way in which he opens the piece:

I completely miss the first clue that something is different about “Fred” during the first class of the semester in an undergraduate business school class: the white mesh gloves he wears throughout class.

When I first read this, I was puzzled because I’ve seen fellow students make far more unusual fashion choices. After I realized it was a business class, I understood a little better given my preconceptions of business students (as opposed to the liberal arts students I attend class with). Still, while mesh gloves may not be a popular fashion choice, I:

a) do not feel that they are objectively more bizarre than many “trendy” fashion choices. Pants hanging off the butt? Rubber clogs with holes in them? Heavy, impractical chains?
b) am bothered by Yoder’s insistence in singling out one particular student as “different” from the others, and his need to classify such eccentricities as “clues” to something.

Yoder goes on to describe more of Fred’s behavior. By the end of the first week, he seems to have decided for himself that Fred fits the profile for autism/Asperger’s Syndrome. We don’t know much about Yoder’s prior knowledge of autism, but we do know that a lot of it seems to be from media hysteria. He knows about the rising incidence rate and vaccination “controversy,” but there is little real knowledge.

Regardless, Yoder presses on with this diagnosis. I have to say that on some level, I am impressed by the amount of effort that he is putting into this. I don’t think there are many professors at any level who would voluntarily do this much research for the benefit of a single student. However, research is only as useful as its application. Here’s how Yoder applies his newly-found knowledge:

Fred wants to review most of the slides but mainly wants me to repeat back to him the points made in the slides. I recall the word I had learned from my Internet surfing on Aspergers the night before: “echolaic.” Several times, he says things like,“I already knew that.” If he ever makes eye contact with me, I do not see it.

If anyone ever asks me why it might be harmful to classify “autism spectrum disorders” as pathologies, I’m linking them to this. I don’t think professionals always do a good job of explaining echolalia, but I’m not sure Yoder is interpreting this situation very well regardless. Many students benefit from hearing and/or seeing material for the second time, even if they already knew the material on some level. I think it’s great that Yoder was so willing to help Fred process the material in this way, regardless of whether Fred is autistic or not. But did Fred know he was being observed while his actions were being evaluated for signs of a “disorder”? That his learning style and tendencies were being interpreted through a very medicalized lens? Yoder’s comment about eye contact can be taken in a similar way. Is Fred on the spectrum, or is he just not comfortable making eye contact with an authority figure? An observer cannot know for sure, and does it even matter? If Fred had been certifiably autistic, would Yoder have been more or less comfortable with the situation? If this situation had occurred 20 years ago, pre-faux epidemic and pre-DSM IV, would Yoder have reacted to the situation any differently?

I believe that on some fundamental that we all just need to accept and understand each other. Maybe this does sometimes require research using a very particular vocabulary which the medical establishment uses. But this type of research should be for understanding, not pigeon-holing. Reading this article almost felt like a case study to me, as Yoder chronicles the entirety of his experiences teaching Fred. Though Yoder’s decision to publicize all of Fred’s “odd” tendencies bothers me quite a bit, I am equally bothered by the manner in which Yoder reports items which appear to be of little consequence:

I am not able to have in-person office hours this week, so I experiment with the real-time “Chatboard” feature of Blackboard. There is only one student online, Fred.

Fred obviously cares a great deal about doing well in class. If only all students were so dedicated! This particular detail serves very little function in the narrative—except to portray Fred as a foreign object of curiosity, of course. Yoder reminds me of an animal behavior scientist who takes detailed notes about how a particular breed of cockroach defecates or something. (I’m not a scientist, that was the best example I could come up.) As I’ve said before, I am impressed with Yoder’s level of dedication to his students. It just frustrates me that he went about his “helping” in a way which is so obviously wrong.

Yoder did a truly impressive amount of reading. But the reading he did may or may not be applicable to Fred. For instance, he reads Temple Grandin’s “Thinking in Pictures.” As a result, he wonders whether the visual materials in class are useful to Fred. But as Grandin says pretty explicitly in her book, not all people on the spectrum are visual thinkers. So Fred may or may not be autistic and he may or may not be a visual thinker. Moreover, I think experts in learning styles have long established that there are a variety of learning styles, including visual learning, among the “general population.” Let’s look at the situation:

If Fred is autistic, he may be a visual learner or some other kind of learner or a combination.
If Fred is non-autistic, he may be a visual learner or some other kind of learner or a combination.

I don’t mean to be flip here, or to minimize the very real differences which exist between autistic and non-autistic individuals. I am saying that there are no absolute rules, and that everyone deserves to be treated as an individual whether they may fit into a diagnostic category or not. Yoder, from the first week of the semester, approached Fred as a student with possible-Asperger’s rather than just Fred, who may have x, y, and z qualities. I do think that Yoder’s time would have been better spent trying to understand Fred’s particular needs and challenges rather than researching a condition which may or may not accurately describe Fred and which features a huge degree of variance regardless. By jumping to the Asperger conclusion so quickly, he may have unwittingly completely skewed his perception of Fred.

Despite his very good intentions, and the fact that Yoder did help a student with a history of problems in college to earn a grade of a B, his methods were not ideal or even that helpful. I get the impression that Yoder is a committed and caring professor who would have put effort into helping a student who had challenges, but who very much wanted to succeed, regardless of whether he knew the words “autism” and “Asperger syndrome” or not. These terms should help us understand each other, but true understanding can’t happen when we rely on psychiatry’s vocabulary to do all of the work for us.