The California State University East Bay campus in the Hayward hills is the site of an unusual experiment in higher education for people with autism. Starting in the fall quarter, college-age autistics will be encouraged to attend and build an educational community; one that draws on the autistics’ unusual academic strengths. The experiment will test the possibilities for autistics in a university setting, and more generally the possibilities for a range of students with disabilities…
…The emerging Center for College Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders is an attempt to open wider higher education for autistics. The young adults with autism, born in California in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the number of diagnosed cases of autism grew geometrically, are now reaching college age. They and their parents are faced with life after high school. In particular, they are challenged to find alternatives to a life of dependency and Social Security payments that has been the main lot of adult autistics in California.
An estimated 70 percent of adults with autism in California are unemployed, with the majority enrolled in the Supplemental Security Income/Social Security Disability Insurance systems. Much of the growing literature on autistics focuses on their limitations and disabilities: the socially awkward behaviors, the large gaps in cognition and conceptualization, the self-stimulating behavior like spinning or rocking and self-talking.
But it is also true that many students with autism possess academic skills more advanced than many students in computation, observation and documentation. They often bring a different way of looking at the world and a singular creativity. Can these skills and insights be harnessed in ways that allow the students with autism to succeed in college and in the larger world and work world? This question is central to the experiment about to begin in Hayward. Read more…
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Autism
