No, I’m not saying things can’t be improved, I’m saying that the blanket statements being thrown around are reductive and ethnocentric.
The idea that your state of the issue is the high bar for it is reductive and ethnocentric. The idea that your activism or proposal is the cutting edge and will set the solution set to proliferate is reductive and ethnocentric. This is a common pattern in western, and especially US activism, and it can get really annoying.
It’s fine to want to make things better, but some care to acknowledge that not everybody is in the same place structurally and not every solution may be universal seems prudent and when that framing isn’t top of mind for people I tend to notice.
Can you name an education system globally that has solved the problems of diverse needs in education, and especially the type of neurodiverse needs that these types of memes generally reference? Because I do agree that activism that ignores diverse needs across a cultural and national axis is a problem, but it’s only a problem that applies here if there’s a place on Earth where this doesn’t apply.
I used to have a sort of wishful thinking-esque belief that there were better places for the education of neurodivergent children. When I was much younger I thought it must be one of the other local districts near me. Then I thought maybe another US state or western country. Then I finally tried to think globally. But I’ve yet to hear a description, in all of that desperate searching, of a widespread approach to education that actually addresses these problems or even considers them problems. I’m open to being wrong though. Can you show me one? Can you point at even one? Because if my cultural bias has blanked one out I really want to know which.
“Solved”? What is “solved” in that scenario? Neurodivergent kids not having to deal with being neurodivergent?
I can point at different approaches to the issue in different places and take notice of different outcomes, but even now, having kids around me who do need support due to specific issues that I won’t share here, and having received that support in different ways in different countries… I don’t even know what the “solved” status is.
I want them to be happy and get better at the things where getting better is an option, and I want them to be accepted and supported on the things where it’s not. There’s a reason why those kids are being supported by professionals and not just going with whatever my best guess is, and I’m certainly not assuming that our local answer is either the best or the worst, or even that there is a single, blanket right answer, for that matter.
The ethnocentrism is an issue in general, not just in this issue, but I disagree that it’s only a problem if there is a marvellous utopia where the problem is fully resolved. Maybe that assumption is part of the ethnocentrism problem itself, I don’t know.
Systemic ableism is the problem, not “having to deal with being neurodivergent”. Otherwise there would be no “solved” state. Though a solved state is pretty easy to get a decent definition of: A state wherein neurodivergent people have a equal outcomes in each area with respect to their neurotypical counterparts with the same base aptitude in the same subject matter, regardless of the differences in the path needed to realize whatever that aptitude is.
Now, that said, that only describes something that is lacking. I haven’t even heard of an education system that doesn’t specifically punish neurodivergent behavior, which, worse than something that is missing everywhere, is a negative that is present everywhere. So let’s call eliminating this a compromise solve.
As far as the ethnocentrism argument and it only being relevant if it’s solved somewhere, well, I guess the poor construction of that would be: “The ethnocentrism argument is only valid if there is an example of the problem being completely solved.” which I guess you sort or addressed effectively and I may have sloppily implied by accident. What I really was trying to say though, was, “The ethnocentrism argument only applies to this specific observation if you have an example of a school system to which the observation does not apply.” which I still stand by and still doubt you have such an example.
I disagree with that last characterization. I think the ethnocentrism only applies if there is an example to which that observation applies less than to the reference example.
Because that was my original question, if you go back to that: which system is the cartoon supposed to depict?
Because if the answer is “all of them”, then there is no way to define a gradient that we want to be moving towards. The movement is going to be relative to a starting point. So I don’t feel I have a onus to prove that there is a system to which the (very generic and simplistic) observation doesn’t apply. My point stands if it doesn’t apply to all systems equally or to the same degree.
No, I’m not saying things can’t be improved, I’m saying that the blanket statements being thrown around are reductive and ethnocentric.
The idea that your state of the issue is the high bar for it is reductive and ethnocentric. The idea that your activism or proposal is the cutting edge and will set the solution set to proliferate is reductive and ethnocentric. This is a common pattern in western, and especially US activism, and it can get really annoying.
It’s fine to want to make things better, but some care to acknowledge that not everybody is in the same place structurally and not every solution may be universal seems prudent and when that framing isn’t top of mind for people I tend to notice.
Can you name an education system globally that has solved the problems of diverse needs in education, and especially the type of neurodiverse needs that these types of memes generally reference? Because I do agree that activism that ignores diverse needs across a cultural and national axis is a problem, but it’s only a problem that applies here if there’s a place on Earth where this doesn’t apply.
I used to have a sort of wishful thinking-esque belief that there were better places for the education of neurodivergent children. When I was much younger I thought it must be one of the other local districts near me. Then I thought maybe another US state or western country. Then I finally tried to think globally. But I’ve yet to hear a description, in all of that desperate searching, of a widespread approach to education that actually addresses these problems or even considers them problems. I’m open to being wrong though. Can you show me one? Can you point at even one? Because if my cultural bias has blanked one out I really want to know which.
“Solved”? What is “solved” in that scenario? Neurodivergent kids not having to deal with being neurodivergent?
I can point at different approaches to the issue in different places and take notice of different outcomes, but even now, having kids around me who do need support due to specific issues that I won’t share here, and having received that support in different ways in different countries… I don’t even know what the “solved” status is.
I want them to be happy and get better at the things where getting better is an option, and I want them to be accepted and supported on the things where it’s not. There’s a reason why those kids are being supported by professionals and not just going with whatever my best guess is, and I’m certainly not assuming that our local answer is either the best or the worst, or even that there is a single, blanket right answer, for that matter.
The ethnocentrism is an issue in general, not just in this issue, but I disagree that it’s only a problem if there is a marvellous utopia where the problem is fully resolved. Maybe that assumption is part of the ethnocentrism problem itself, I don’t know.
Systemic ableism is the problem, not “having to deal with being neurodivergent”. Otherwise there would be no “solved” state. Though a solved state is pretty easy to get a decent definition of: A state wherein neurodivergent people have a equal outcomes in each area with respect to their neurotypical counterparts with the same base aptitude in the same subject matter, regardless of the differences in the path needed to realize whatever that aptitude is.
Now, that said, that only describes something that is lacking. I haven’t even heard of an education system that doesn’t specifically punish neurodivergent behavior, which, worse than something that is missing everywhere, is a negative that is present everywhere. So let’s call eliminating this a compromise solve.
As far as the ethnocentrism argument and it only being relevant if it’s solved somewhere, well, I guess the poor construction of that would be: “The ethnocentrism argument is only valid if there is an example of the problem being completely solved.” which I guess you sort or addressed effectively and I may have sloppily implied by accident. What I really was trying to say though, was, “The ethnocentrism argument only applies to this specific observation if you have an example of a school system to which the observation does not apply.” which I still stand by and still doubt you have such an example.
I disagree with that last characterization. I think the ethnocentrism only applies if there is an example to which that observation applies less than to the reference example.
Because that was my original question, if you go back to that: which system is the cartoon supposed to depict?
Because if the answer is “all of them”, then there is no way to define a gradient that we want to be moving towards. The movement is going to be relative to a starting point. So I don’t feel I have a onus to prove that there is a system to which the (very generic and simplistic) observation doesn’t apply. My point stands if it doesn’t apply to all systems equally or to the same degree.