978-1572305441

162 A MIND APART
and sailed straight up into the sky. All this was charming and amusing,
and it gave him and his parents much joy and pride. But now his interest
in things that blow in the wind was causing considerable distress
and making it difficult for Frankie to learn anything at school. He was
in danger of being marginalized and excluded from his school community.
* * *
One of the challenges that teachers face in dealing with children
with autism and AS is that it’s difficult to get their attention or to motivate
them to do any schoolwork. They are generally not interested in
following the standard curriculum—in learning math facts, writing an
essay, or playing with other children in the schoolyard. A teacher standing
at the head of the class will not catch the attention of a child like
Frankie. He will not necessarily look at the teacher, process what the
teacher is saying, or follow directions. Frankie may be daydreaming,
replaying in his mind certain cartoons or movies he saw years ago, remembering
the video game he played last night, or mentally running
though the collection of flags he has at home. His body is there, but his
mind is somewhere else. What takes place in the social context of the
classroom does not have meaning in a compelling way for the child
with ASD.
The other difficulty is that the learning style of a child with ASD is
different from that of more typical children. Frankie has a prodigious
memory for facts and for visual details. It may take him a while to learn
something, but when he does, he learns it very well. The problem is that
he cannot generalize from the facts to more abstract or conceptual rules;
he has difficulty categorizing his experiences and his learning. So, for
example, Frankie can learn how to solve a mathematical word problem
involving apples and oranges but not if the same concept is presented as
shoes and socks. He can learn about the meaning of a word such as
”history” by reference to early settlers to this country but not in reference
to early settlers in South America. He can learn why it’s wrong to
hit a child because he has taken something that belongs to him but cannot
apply it when the other child will not share a toy. He can learn specific
rules but cannot always apply those rules to new situations.
At home, Frankie’s parents had learned that everything has to be
broken down into component parts and each part taught in detail. The
parts then have to be assembled one by one into a new concept. His par-