A tremendous book

[allenmurray]

The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal, by Jonathan Mooney. Mooney is a writer and disability advocate, who as a child was diagnosed with learning disabilities and severe ADHD. He spent most of his school years in special education programs, and did not learn to read until age 12. He later graduated from Brown University with honors, and went on to graduate school there.

This book touches on education of people with disabilites, but it is really about how we socially construct what is "normal" and how that is damaging to all of us - those defined as "disabled" and those defined as "normal".

I reccomend it to the following categories of people:

1. Special educators (or those who work with persons with disabilites),
2. Regular educators,
3. People who know human beings,
4. People who are human beings.

If you fall into any of those four categories you will be a better person for having read it. I found it incredibly moving and it challenged me in ways I did not expect. Anyone who has read it or who plans to read it, and who would like to have a on or off line conversation about it, please email me through the board.

[greybeard]

Or it might be "the Son rises"; a book and also a docu-drama of a very similar story, involving a boy born severely autisic; they told his parents to institutionalize him. They refused and refused to see anything about their son as "wrong." He too went on to graduate with high honors from an Ivy college.

His parents went on to found an incredible place in the Birkshires built on the methods they employed in living positively with themselves and their son. The Option Institute, which offers all sorts of programs. "Bear", as the old man is called, has been prolific, both in writing and tape/now cd offerings.

The Option Institute is located in Sheffield Conn., and is said to be primo special. The programs offered, including specialized programs for individual families, ditto. Check it out on-line.

[allenmurray]

Thanks for the reccomendation.

Only one of the chapter's in Mooney's book deals with autism, but it is a fascinating chapter that dispels some of the myths about folks with autism lacking the ability to make social connections. One of the things Mooney does well is to explain various disabilities in a way that makes them easy to understand, but does so in a way that is not overly simplistic.

[greybeard]

Thanks also. I'll definitely check it out.

I'm about to begin the second year of a four year training in something called the Feldenkrais Method. At bottom, it very much concerns itself with how people learn, using simple movement in an organized structure. Moshe Feldenkrais was a physicist and a judo expert, when he started dabbling in the realm of how individuals go about organizing ourselves for the tasks that we undertake and how we might recapture the ability to learn to pursue ways that are better. There are movies of his having helped children with severe cerebal palsey make considerable progress in a few short sessions with him. His work is an integral part of the educational system in Israel. Very effective technology. This is something that words do not capture nearly so well as experience.

I hope to use this and other "technologies" I have explored to work with young kids, or old ones like myself. We'll see.

There are about 2000 trained practitioners world wide; interesting stuff.