Tag: changelog

I updated “Mindset Marketing, Behaviorism, and Deficit Ideology”, “Neurodiversity in the Classroom”, “Surveillance, Positive Behavior Support, and Intrinsic Motivation”, “Reading Logs and Intrinsic Motivation”, “We don’t need your mindset marketing.”, and “Cambridge Analytica, Mindset Marketing, and Behaviorism” with selections from “It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn”.

Plenty of policies and programs limit our ability to do right by children. But perhaps the most restrictive virtual straitjacket that educators face is behaviorism – a psychological theory that would have us focus exclusively on what can be seen and measured, that ignores or dismisses inner experience and reduces wholes to parts. It also suggests that everything people do can be explained as a quest for reinforcement – and, by implication, that we can control others by rewarding them selectively.

Allow me, then, to propose this rule of thumb: The value of any book, article, or presentation intended for teachers (or parents) is inversely related to the number of times the word “behavior” appears in it. The more our attention is fixed on the surface, the more we slight students’ underlying motives, values, and needs.

It’s been decades since academic psychology took seriously the orthodox behaviorism of John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, which by now has shrunk to a cult-like clan of “behavior analysts.” But, alas, its reductionist influence lives on – in classroom (and schoolwide) management programs like PBIS and Class Dojo, in scripted curricula and the reduction of children’s learning to “data,” in grades and rubrics, in “competency”- and “proficiency”-based approaches to instruction, in standardized assessments, in reading incentives and merit pay for teachers.

In preparing a new Afterword for the 25th-anniversary edition of my book Punished by Rewards, I’ve sorted through scores of recent studies on these subjects. I’m struck by how research continues to find that the best predictor of excellence is intrinsic motivation (finding a task valuable in its own right) – and that this interest is reliably undermined by extrinsic motivation (doing something to get a reward). New experiments confirm that children tend to become less concerned about others once they’ve been rewarded for helping or sharing. Likewise, paying students for better grades or test scores is rarely effective – never mind that the goal is utterly misconceived.

It’s time we outgrew this limited and limiting psychological theory. That means attending less to students’ behaviors and more to the students themselves.

Source: It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn

Selected quotes from the piece as a Twitter thread:

I updated “Straws, Neurodiversity, and Disability” with selections from “051: Alice Wong Says #suckitableism — boss barista”.

The straw ban really is visceral. It really hit me in the gut because this is about a daily activity: drinking. If that was threatened by, if your right to drink and eat was threatened, I mean, it’s very real. And I think what’s really-and it’s not exaggerated, right-I think it’s this is what’s really sad is that people think, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” I’ve had so many non-disabled people online tell me, “Don’t worry. You know, these bans, these exemptions, you’re gonna be fine, you know? There’s no way you would be denied a straw.” And I’m just like, if you just kind of understood what it’s like to be disabled and how every day, even with an apparent visible disability like mine, you are constantly scrutinized. And the microaggressions are just so real that people just assume that everything is going to be OK and that we should all-pun intended-suck it up for the greater good. And I think that’s what’s really missing is that the conversation has always been about if you’re not with us, you’re against us. And we’re saying this is just another erosion in our way to participate in public, in our ways to be part of society.

Some of my friends online have already shown me these little signs posted at restaurants that are really passive-aggressive about, “We’re not serving, we’re not providing any straws anymore because we care about the environment. Thanks anyway!” People are actually being really proud of not providing straws, and that, to me, is like another sign that you know- Let’s say, people saying, “Straws are bad,” and they say, “Oh, people with disabilities should bring their own straws.” So let’s say they bring their own straws and start using them? In this kinda climate, you can imagine the kind of like possible harassment or criticism they’ll get just for using a straw in a public space. If you look at Santa Barbara, where they have one of the most punitive bans with really steep fines and even jail time for establishments that provide plastic? I mean that’s really where you’re creating conditions that send a message to people with disabilities, older adults, all kinds of people that may need straws that your way of life is not welcome. Your way of life is not normative. And what do you do with that? You just basically are marginalizing us, shoving us away, and telling us that we don’t belong in the same place as you do.

And this is you know, 18 years after the American with Disabilities Act, after decades of disability rights activism that really fought against segregation and against the days where there were laws called Ugly Laws. So I’m not sure if you realize this, but in the old days, there were laws that disabled people and all kinds of people were not allowed in a public space because they affected people. Just their mere existence made people uncomfortable. And I really do see a connection between these straw bans and these kinds of historic laws that discriminate.

Source: 051: Alice Wong Says #suckitableism — boss barista

I updated “The Segregation of Special” with selections from ““Special needs” is an ineffective euphemism”.

Although euphemisms are intended to put a more positive spin on the words they replace, some euphemisms are ineffective. Our study examined the effectiveness of a popular euphemism for persons with disabilities, special needs. Most style guides prescribe against using the euphemism special needs and recommend instead using the non-euphemized term disability; disability advocates argue adamantly against the euphemism special needs, which they find offensive. In contrast, many parents of children with disabilities prefer to use special needs rather than disability. But no empirical study has examined whether special needs is more or less positive than the term it replaces. Therefore, we gathered a sample of adult participants from the general population (N = 530) and created a set of vignettes that allowed us to measure how positively children, college students, and middle-age adults are viewed when they are described as having special needs, having a disability, having a certain disability (e.g., is blind, has Down syndrome), or with no label at all. We predicted and observed that persons are viewed more negatively when described as having special needs than when described as having a disability or having a certain disability, indicating that special needs is an ineffective euphemism. Even for members of the general population who have a personal connection to disability (e.g., as parents of children with disabilities), the euphemism special needs is no more effective than the non-euphemized term disability. We also collected free associations to the terms special needs and disability and found that special needs is associated with more negativity; special needs conjures up more associations with developmental disabilities (such as intellectual disability) whereas disability is associated with a more inclusive set of disabilities; and special needs evokes more unanswered questions. These findings recommend against using the euphemism special needs.

Source: “Special needs” is an ineffective euphemism

I also linked to this tweet in the section about identity and community.

I updated “Wanted: psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychiatrists, and neurologists who…” with selections from ‘“Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Smarty”: Why Anti-Authoritarian Doctors Are So Rare’.

Anti-authoritarian patients should be especially concerned with psychiatrists and psychologists—even more so than with other doctors. While an authoritarian cardiothoracic surgeon may be an abusive jerk for a nursing staff, that surgeon can still effectively perform a necessary artery bypass for an anti-authoritarian patient. However, authoritarian psychiatrists and psychologists will always do damage to their anti-authoritarian patients.

Psychiatrists and psychologists are often unaware of the magnitude of their obedience, and so the anti-authoritarianism of their patients can create enormous anxiety and even shame for them with regard to their own excessive compliance. This anxiety and shame can fuel their psychopathologizing of any noncompliance that creates significant tension. Such tension includes an anti-authoritarian patient’s incensed reaction to illegitimate authority.

Anti-authoritarian helpers—far more commonly found in peer support—understand angry reactions to illegitimate authority, empathize with the pain fueling those reactions, and genuinely care about that pain. Having one’s behavior understood and pain cared about opens one up to dialogue as to how best to deal with one’s pain. Because anti-authoritarian mental health professionals are rare, angry anti-authoritarian patients will likely be “treated” by an authority who creates even more pain, which results in more self-destructiveness and violence.

It is certainly no accident that anti-authoritarian psychiatrists and psychologists are rare. Mainstream psychiatry and psychology meet the needs of the ruling power structure by pathologizing anger and depoliticizing malaise so as to maintain the status quo. In contrast, anti-authoritarians model and validate resisting illegitimate authority, and so anti-authoritarian professionals—be they teachers, clergy, psychiatrists, or psychologists—are not viewed kindly by the ruling power structure.

Source: “Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Smarty”: Why Anti-Authoritarian Doctors Are So Rare

I updated “Classroom UX: Designing for Pluralism” with a selection from “The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids”.

Parallel to the topic of who designs for children lies a bigger question: Do children need design at all? Or, rather, how might they be enabled to design the toys they need and experiences they desire for themselves? The act of making that designers find so satisfying is built into early childhood education, but as they grow, many children lose opportunities to create their own environment, bounded by a text-centric view of education and concerns for safety. Despite adults’ desire to create a safer, softer child-centric world, something got lost in translation. Jane Jacobs said, of the child in the designed-for-childhood environment: “Their homes and playgrounds, so orderly looking, so buffered from the muddled, messy intrusions of the great world, may accidentally be ideally planned for children to concentrate on television, but for too little else their hungry brains require.” Our built environment is making kids less healthy, less independent, and less imaginative. What those hungry brains require is freedom. Treating children as citizens, rather than as consumers, can break that pattern, creating a shared spatial economy centered on public education, recreation, and transportation safe and open for all. Tracing the design of childhood back to its nineteenth-century origins shows how we came to this place, but it also reveals the building blocks of resistance to fenced-in fun.

Source: Lange, Alexandra (2018-06-11T23:58:59). The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids (Kindle Locations 185-196). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

I updated “Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing” with selections from “Ann’s Autism Blog: What do I mean by “We’re OK being Autistic” ? #TakeTheMaskOff”.

I’m really autistic now. But thanks to a lifetime of being told that I must disguise the pain, at all costs, I learned to mask. To put on a false front, be the person that others wanted me to be. Smile when in pain. Be really nice when in pain. Cope when in pain. Not Be Me. Never, ever be me. Never. If I was the real me, I would experience hatred from others, more isolation, more loneliness, more condemnation, more false accusation (because of ignorance of autistic culture and communication).

And, do you know what happened? It broke me.

I look around at my fantastic autistic family, friends, colleagues. The ones who have done the best masking, the best disguising? Broken. Or sitting amongst a trail of debris from broken relationships, broken job situations, broken health. I look at the research showing the suicide rates, the average age of death (54). Not from some genetic malfunction. From relentless pressure, relentless humiliation and pain. Anyone would die early from that. We need less focus on pleasing shareholders with news about ‘genetic cures’, and more listening to autistic people. More realising that actually we don’t need to be in that level of pain.

There is a myth that if we disguise being autistic, it’ll all go away. The future will be lovely. All will be well. A myth that autism was some sort of behavioural choice by us to annoy people around us. Rhubarb, to use an apt word.

It’s a myth. There is no perfect future from having to pretend we’re not ourselves. Only the extra hell of having to mask each day. Having to pretend that we are not autistic, and still endure the ridiculous expectations, sensory hell and social overload that non-autistic people place upon us.

So…

I’m OK being autistic.

Source: Ann’s Autism Blog: What do I mean by “We’re OK being Autistic” ? #TakeTheMaskOff

I updated “The Double Empathy Problem: Developing Empathy and Reciprocity in Neurotypical Adults” with selections from “The belief in a theory of mind is a disability — Semiotic Spectrumite”.

And this is where the neurotypical belief in theory of mind becomes a liability. Not just a liability – a disability.

Because not only are neurotypicals just as mind-blind to autistics as autistics are to neurotypicals, this self-centered belief in theory of mind makes it impossible to mutually negotiate an understanding of how perceptions might differ among individuals in order to arrive at a pragmatic representation that accounts for significant differences in the experiences of various individuals. It bars any discussion of opening up a space for autistics to participate in social communication by clarifying and mapping the ways in which their perceptions differ. Rather than recognize that the success rate of the neurotypical divining rod is based on mere statistical likelihood that the thoughts and feelings of neurotypicals will correlate, they declare it an ineffable gift, and use it to valorize their own abilities and pathologize those of autistics.

A belief in theory of mind makes it unnecessary for neurotypicals to engage in real perspective-taking, since they are able, instead, to fall back on projection. Differences that they discover in autistic thinking are dismissed as pathology, not as a failure in the neurotypical’s supposed skill in theory of mind or perspective-taking.

Ironically, constantly confronted with the differences in their own thinking and that of those around them, and needing to function in a world dominated by a different neurotype, autistics are engaged in learning genuine perspective-taking from the cradle on. The perceived failure in that perspective-taking is thus based on the fact that autistics do not rely on and cannot rely on neurological similarities to crib understanding by projecting their own thoughts and feelings onto others.

As such, autistics talk about themselves rather than others, a feature of autistic narrative that has been pathologized as “typically autistic” by researchers like Ute Frith. The fact that much of autistic writing is dedicated to deconstructing neurotypical fallacies about autistic thinking set in the world when they spoke about (or for) us, and to explaining differences in autistic thinking in order to broker mutual understanding remains unremarked upon, as it would have required adequate perspective-taking to have identified this.

Thus, if we were to summarize the effect of neurotypicals sitting in wells that are structured in much the same way, delimited in much the same way, oriented in the same general direction and located in the same geographic location, manifested as an unassailable belief in their natural gift of theory of mind, we would have to conclude that this belief in theory of mind severely impairs neurotypicals’ ability to perceive that there is sky or even the great sea outside the narrow limits of their purview. It also necessarily impacts their cognitive empathy vis-à-vis autistics and, sadly, their affective empathy as well.

This deficit in neurotypicals needs to be remediated if autistics are to have a chance to participate as equals, because the truth is, in this regard, autistics suffer and are excluded from social communication not because of our own disability, but because of neurotypical disability.

Source: The belief in a theory of mind is a disability — Semiotic Spectrumite

I updated “To the family Trumpists” with selections from “Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race (pp. 12-13). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.”.

Race was not only created to justify a racially exploitative economic system, it was invented to lock people of color into the bottom of it. Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior. This profit itself is the greater promise for nonracialized people—you will get more because they exist to get less. That promise is durable, and unless attacked directly, it will outlive any attempts to address class as a whole.

This promise—you will get more because they exist to get less—is woven throughout our entire society. Our politics, our education system, our infrastructure—anywhere there is a finite amount of power, influence, visibility, wealth, or opportunity. Anywhere in which someone might miss out. Anywhere there might not be enough. There the lure of that promise sustains racism.

White Supremacy is this nation’s oldest pyramid scheme. Even those who have lost everything to the scheme are still hanging in there, waiting for their turn to cash out.

Even the election of our first black president did not lessen the lure of this promise to draw people to their support of racism. If anything, the election strengthened it. His election was a clear, undeniable sign that some black people could get more, and then what about everyone else’s share? Those who had always blatantly or subconsciously depended on that promise, that they would get more because others would get less, were threatened in ways that they could not put words to. But suddenly, this didn’t feel like “their country” anymore. Suddenly, they didn’t feel like “their needs” were being met.

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.

Even in our class and labor movements, the promise that you will get more because others exist to get less, calls to people. It tells you to focus on the majority first. It tells you that the grievances of people of color, or disabled people, or transgender people, or women are divisive. The promise that keeps racism alive tells you that you will benefit most and others will eventually benefit… a little. It has you believing in trickle-down social justice.

Yes, it is about class—and about gender and sexuality and ability. And it’s also, almost always, about race.

Source: Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race (pp. 12-13). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.

I updated “Transitioning from invisible to visible disability” with a selection from “I’m Not ‘Bound’ To A Wheelchair; I Was Freed By One | HuffPost”.

People with mobility challenges use mobility aids; they aren’t confined or bound by them. They are tools, not traps. We are no more held back by them than is someone using a plane or boat to cross an ocean. They are all simply means we use to get places we wouldn’t be able to navigate without them.

I regret not acknowledging my need for help earlier. I wish I had not equated a walker with defeat or shame. I now talk about walkers, wheelchairs and other disability aids with anyone who will listen in hopes of destigmatizing them and the people who use them. Freedom, not confinement. Tools, not traps. I will keep repeating this until everyone who needs to break free feels comfortable using them.

Source: I’m Not ‘Bound’ To A Wheelchair; I Was Freed By One | HuffPost

I updated “Design is Tested at the Edges: Intersectionality, The Social Model of Disability, and Design for Real Life” with selections from “Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm – Los Angeles Review of Books” to further emphasize nuance and context.

Neurodiversity is a movement that celebrates difference while remaining deeply nuanced on questions of (medical) facilitation and the necessity of rethinking the concept of accommodation against narratives of cure. The added emphasis on neurology has been necessary in order to challenge existing norms that form the base-line of existence: the “neuro” in neurodiversity has opened up the conversation about the category of neurotypicality and the largely unspoken criteria that support and reinforce the definition of what it means to be human, to be intelligent, to be of value to society. This has been especially necessary for those folks who continue to be excluded from education, social and economic life, who are regarded as less than human, whose modes of relation continue to be deeply misunderstood, and who are cast as burdens to society.

Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say that this enhanced perceptual field is an aspect of much autistic experience and something neurotypicals could learn a lot from, not only with regard to perception itself, but also as concerns the complexity of experience.

What is needed are not more categories but more sensitivity to difference and a more acute attunement to qualities of experience.

Source: Histories of Violence: Neurodiversity and the Policing of the Norm – Los Angeles Review of Books