A History of Autism Developments

A History of Autism Developments In Autistic Space Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior. She completed her PhD in Animal Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana and invented the hug box, a device to calm those on the autism spectrum. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. Grandin was diagnosed with brain damage when she was two. She could not speak until age three and struggled with severe behavioral issues through her teens. She thanked her mother who never lost faith in her and fought many battles to ensure that she got an education, and her high school science teacher, William Carlock, who built up her confidence and channeled her teenage fascination with cows into a career in animal science. At the University, she came to see her profound emotional connection with animals as autistic, and crucial for her work. In May 1989, she moderated a round table discussion at the conference of autism professionals and educators in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her presentation prompted Rimland to introduce her 1986 memoir, Emergence, as the first book written by a recovered autistic individual. By then, she was on her way to becoming the most recognized autistic people on earth. In his 1995 book An Anthropologist on Mars, neurologist Oliver Sacks depicted Grandin as a mature autistic person with a complex inner life. The title of his book was inspired by Grandin when she said all her life she felt like an anthropologist observing human interactions from a distance. But by now, Grandin wouldnt consider herself as a recovered autistic. Autism is part of who I am, she told Sacks, If I could snap my fingers and be non-autistic, I would not, because then I wouldnt be me. But Grandins perspective did not take root among the advocacy organizations. When parent-run advocacy organizations get online in the 1990s, they continued to feature images of children on their websites, as if autistic adults didnt exist. The presentation at conferences dwelled on the usual deficits and impairments, rather than on exploring the atypical gifts that Grandin found so useful in her work. Jim Sinclair, a young man in the audience, determined to change that. Besides being on the spectrum, Sinclair was born with the physical characteristics of both genders. His parents had raised him as female on the advice of their doctor, but he had never felt female. He was speaking in echolalia until he was twelve. The complex rules of the social world seemed incomprehensible to him when he was a teenager. By the time he was in graduate school, his efforts to pass as non-autistic fell apart. When Sinclair saw Portrait of an Autistic Young Man, he had a profound sense of recognition. He could see what the experts in the film could not see: that Joseph was trying to communicate through his behavior. He wanted to connect with other autistic people, so he subscribed to a quarterly publication called the MAAP (for more able autistic people) and submitted poems and letters to the editor hoping his peers would contact him. One of Sinclairs poems attracted Gary Mesibovs attention. Mesibov, a cofounder of TEACCH, offered Sinclair a scholarship to attend the Chapel Hill conference and write an essay about his experience. Sinclairs essay on the conference appeared in a TEACCH anthology along with contributions from Lorna Wing and Catherine Lord. A year later, Sinclair was invited to sit on a panel in California by the Autism Society of America. He felt like a self-narrating zoo exhibit. Rather than being the token autistic on a panel at a conference in Indianapolis, Sinclair conspired with other members of the MAAP list to make their presence visible throughout the proceedings. Each of them would make a point of raising their hands during the QA sessions, identifying themselves as autistic people, and then asked questions or make a relevant comment so that people would notice they were there. *** In 1992, Sinclair launched the first autistic-run organization in history, called Autism Network International (ANI), with Donna Williams and Kathy Lissner. ANI would stand up for the civil rights and self-determination of people all across the spectrum. ANI organized its first Autreat at Camp Bristol Hills in Canandaigua, New York, in July 1996. The theme of the conference was Celebrating Autistic Culture. Autreat became an annual event and provided a template for similar conferences in other countries. *** A new idea was brewing in the autistic community. It turned out to be an old idea from Asperger that people with the traits of his syndrome have always been part of the human community, standing apart, making the world a better place. In the late 1990s, Judy Singer, an autistic student of anthropology and sociology in Australia called it neurodiversity. After her daughters diagnosis of Asperger syndrome at age nine, Singer recognized autistic traits in herself. She joined a mailing list called Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum (InLv). People with dyslexia, ADHD, and other conditions were also welcome to join the list. It was in telephone conversations with Harvey Blume, a list member and writer in the New York Times, that Singer came up with the term neurodiversity. *** In 2004, two teenagers named Alex Plank and Dan Grover launched Wrong Planet, one of the first autistic spaces in the internet. They were both digital natives with Asperger syndrome. The community grew slowly and steadily at first, and then it went viral with Planks interview with Bram Cohen, the autistic creator of BitTorrent. *** In December 2007, a series of billboards appeared on street corners in Manhattan. One ad read, We have your son. We will make sure he will not be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning. These ads were sponsored by the Child Study Center (CSC) of New York University to alert the public to the silent public health epidemic of childhood mental illness. Then from out of nowhere, an organization called the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) along with outraged parents and prominent disability rights groups launched a storm of e-mails and blogs in NYUs direction objecting to the demeaning wording of the ads. This is the first time in history that autistics were challenging the mainstream media without the help of a parent-run organization. The architect of the protest was a nineteen-year-old cofounder of the ASAN named Ari Neeman. Neeman was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when he was twelve years old. On December 6, the day after the CSCs ad campaign, Neeman called the CSC expressing his concerns and left phone messages, but got no reply. Two days later, ASAN blasted out an action alert. The next day when the major media outlets were running stories on the controversy, the CSC agreed to pull the ads. In 2010, President Obama nominated Neeman to the National Council on Disability (NCS). In recent years, the ASAN had played a significant role in formulating the federal disability policy. *** For parents like Craig and Shannon Rosa, the neurodiversity movement has offered ways of fighting for a better future for their children that dont depend on hopes of recovery. One of the most important lessons they had learned on their journey with Leo is patience. They have to accept that he is unfolding at his own pace. Shannon and her circle of friends launched a website called Thinking Persons Guide to Autism for parents just starting out on the journey so that they dont have to go through the ordeal that the Rosas did.

The Inevitability of School Violence: No Need for School Reform Essay

The Inevitability of School Violence: No Need for School Reform â€Å"Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,† I have often heard. We know people kill people. The real issue now is whether or not people can change people. Some are of the opinion that we are capable of doing so; by implementing new reforms and tightening school security, people are, in effect, saying they have the solutions to the problems. The violence of recent school shootings has wrought anxiety and fear in parents, teachers, and administrators across the nation. The massacre of Columbine turned a public school library into a cemetery. The shooting in Oklahoma ripped us from the comfort of a stereotypical and easily recognized threat; now popular straight-A students pull guns without black trench coats. The violence has become unpredictable and, in all cases, extremely frightening. In response to the threat, schools have engaged in extensive prevention programs, often banning book-bags, implementing dress codes, setting up metal detectors, or requiring studen ts to attend anger management classes. Such attempts at reform sound efficient on paper and may to some extent alleviate the anxieties of parents, but they are like storming castle walls with slingshots. The object of reform in this case is not tangible or always plausible. The object of reform is the human heart, the internal person. We need to understand that the problem is bigger than a trench coat or a gun; therefore, dress codes or metal detectors cannot solve it. These reforms are often vain attempts at prevention. They hinder education and provoke students. Policy makers and schools need to be aware that no simple public mandate can suffice as a solution. In response to the massacres, schoo... ...ain—is wider than the sky—†. We cannot implement a reform that will change human nature. There is no dress code that will bring self-esteem to the outcast or humble the popular. There is no metal detector that can sufficiently alert a student population to an angry and violent peer. The problem this nation faces is that of hurting hearts and minds. To present a concrete solution one must have a concrete problem, but this problem is complicated and its factors at times inexplicable. Its enormity resides in human emotion, its source as large as the capacity of the human mind. It is, therefore, as Dickinson aptly put: â€Å"wider than the sky.† Works Cited Mathis, Deborah. â€Å"Schools Fail at Stopping Violence.† The Cincinnati Enquirer 7 December 1999, Final ed./Warren: A3. Miller, Mark. â€Å"The Haunting Memories.† Newsweek 13 December 1999, Final ed./Warren: 75.

Memo- Gazprom and Itera Essay

In the case study of Gazprom and Itera, we see how different companies and governmental organizations can potentially be able to exploit a large company such as Gazprom for a large profit. Gazprom is a large gas and oil company that is valued very cheaply compared to other large oil and gas companies (such as Exxon Mobil). Browder is a shareholder of Gazprom that identifies several questionable transactions that were done by Gazprom and other organizations that have relationships with Gazprom. He is questioning why the undervaluation could have occurred based on the business being conducted by the oil giant. The problem that exists for Gazprom is that the market perceives the company to have lost 99 percent of its assets, completely devaluing the price of its goods. In reality, only 10 percent of its assets were stolen, and the market is slowly trying to catch up to that truth. Browder is attempting to identify the transactions in order to solve the large problem at hand. These transactions include organizations that work with Gazprom such as Itera (a gas trading company) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (their internal auditor) devaluing the gas and oil Gazprom held in certain situations and reselling it for a profit. In one example, Itera bought gas valued at $35 a barrel from Turkmen gas and resold it to Gazprom for $45 a barrel. PwC thought this difference was acceptable due to transportation costs, even though those were already taken care of separately. In general, the lack of transparency and accountability being administered by management in Gazprom and its partner companies was a fail ure to its stockholders. Browder’s recommendations to the Russian government are vital, mainly due to the fact that it has a 38% controlling stake in Gazprom. Because the vast majority of the operations conducted by Gazprom occur within Russia’s boundaries, it is up to the government to set the correct standards and close loopholes so that organizations and individuals will not exploit such situations. Browder’s recommendations to the U.S. and to the Board of Directors of Gazprom could be essential for enacting change within the  corporate environment to prevent such scrupulous transactions. Though these changes could prove helpful in the reorganization of the company in the long run, the international political environment does not provide Gazprom with the best situation. The fact that Russia’s governmental body has so much stake in the company can greatly complicate things due to the personal influence of those running the government. Several members of the Russian government could fulfill a personal agenda using the government’s stake in the company as leverage (this could have been the case potentially with these transactions). This is also the case with PwC and Itera, both with a lot of power to take advantage of loopholes and other lucrative situations when it comes to Gazprom. There are several things Browder can do to combat this situation, but I think his strategy will be a difficult one to execute alone. He would need to collect more shareholder power before he steps forward with the resolutions. Involving the U.S. and Russian government will be difficult due to the lethargic manner in which these situations can be resolved. Taking care of the company from within should be he first move, but only with the appropriate number of people backing his plan.

Oscar Romero and the Role of the Catholic Church in El...

The Role of Romero vs. the Catholic Church: The Salvadoran Civil War The tragedies of the civil war in El Salvador brought focus to the many issues of oppression, under-representation, and inequality apparent amongst the Salvadoran working class during the later twentieth century. The outbreak of the war began much like civil wars in neighboring countries, consisting of the lower class demanding land and policy reformations, as elites feared the uprisings would result in socialist-geared politics that jeopardized their status. Amidst the fighting between the two social classes, the Catholic Church, as a whole, maintained a somewhat neutrality status and refused to publically support one group over the other. Thus, much opposition to the†¦show more content†¦Author Edward T. Brett argues that Romero had a very â€Å"prophetic approach [that] was a highly effective method of leadership during his three-year tenure of office† (Brett 717). He uses the term â€Å"prophetic† to refer to the similar ways in which Romero preached his se rmons to the underprivileged campesinos in order to also publically represent them, much like Jesus preached to the poor to represent the persecuted Christians. However, the term itself can be problematic because also like Jesus, Romero was tormented by his fellow bishops for catering to the needs of the poor. Not all bishops and clergymen at the time had captured the essence of liberation theology teachings and feared they were too radical to preach to the campesinos. However, Romero believed that the equality of Salvadorans was more important than their integration into the elite society. He focused many of his preachings on the need to put an end to violence and determine a right from wrong. In Romero’s last sermon, just before â€Å"he called for soldiers to refuse to obey orders,† (Wood 27) he gave special attention to the need to reinstall distinct human rights within a country in â€Å"its own exodus† (Romero 3) and that both groups alike should call for, â€Å"respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity’s common good, and the transcendence that look before all to God and onlyShow MoreRelatedOscar Romero Stood Up for the Poor and Troubled Nation of El Salvador551 Words   |  3 PagesÓscar Romero was a Roman Catholic priest that stood up for the poor and injustice in the troubled nation of El Salvador. In the early stages of his life, Romero had entered a boarding school for priests at the age of thirteen. Then he went to the national boarding school in San Salvador. He finished his studies at the Gregorian University in Rome, and was appointed a priest in Rome in 1942. Although Romero wanted to acquire a doctorate in theology, he had to go home to El Salvador in 1944 due toRead MoreOscar Romer: A Symbol for Citizens725 Words   |  3 Pages Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez was born in the year 1917 in the month of August on the 15th day. He was born to Santos Romero and Guadalupe de Jesus Galdamez. He grew up with six other siblings. Oscar Romero was born in the city of Barrio in El Salvador. Romero was baptized by Father Cecilio Morales at two years old. He went through a miracle at seven when he healed from an unknown illness. Oscar was so effective as an apprentice in carpentry that his father wanted him to learn more about itRead MoreEssay on Oscar Romero, Liberation Theology and the Catholic Church3831 Words   |  16 PagesOscar Romero, Liberation Theology and the Catholic Church In the post-World War II era, the globe was polarized by two idealistically divergent superpowers; the United States and the Soviet Union, two nations that strived to promote capitalism and communism, respectively, throughout the globe. Nowhere was this struggle more apparent than in developing countries with shaky political and economic backbones. Specifically, in Latin America the old, corrupt and often totalitarian regimes were threatenedRead MoreJustice in Romero Essay1239 Words   |  5 PagesJustice in Romero The influential and gripping film, Romero, directed by John Duigan, portrays the life and death of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The movie shows the world through the eyes of the El Salvadorian people during the 1980s, when poverty and military rule flourished over the people. The country of El Salvador was run by an elite group of few who controlled most of the power and money, leaving the majority of the people deprived and powerless. This imbalance in the social system leftRead MoreThe Conflict Of The Civil War1053 Words   |  5 Pagesamong the Salvadorians and ultimately led to a civil war. The Salvadorian Civil War was a tough time that brought out individual’s true spirits. Social justice issues remained the root caused, and therefore, induced participation from the Catholic Church, a church that took an oath to stand by its poor. I look to explore this complex time in Salvadorian history. A time where basic norms were turned upside down for all people. This time of st ate induced violence transformed ordinary people into veryRead MoreHow Living as a Christian Disciple May Influence the Lives of Christians Today1894 Words   |  8 Pageswith all your mind, and, Love your neighbour as yourself. (Luke 10 vs. 27) A person needs to be willing to give up luxuries in order to gain better things. For instance a Christian must give 10% of their total income to either a church or a charity. But the more essential factor is time. Time is more precious than rubies. Time must be taken out of your day to think about God or even the elderly lady next door who lives all alone. Your attitude towards people is veryRead More Religion in the World Today Essay5782 Words   |  24 Pagesrights activism in these countries can be traced back to the first Indian freedom- fighters against Spanish rule, over five- hundred years ago.† (www.amnesty.org) Even during the past history of civil conflict in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, people have demonstrated for basic human rights and personal and religious freedoms. Among the religious conflicts between the nations and its people, there is also a long tradition of persecution of the autonomy of individuals who defend humanRead MoreRise Of The American Sanctuary Movement1906 Words   |  8 Pagessupported and funded the El Salvadorian government — a military government that ran death squads in opposition to anti-capitalist rebel forces. The Salvadorian government, as a means of subverting communism through violence, killed and displaced tremendous numbers of civilians. The Center for Justice and Accountability, an American-based Human Rights NGO, estimates that the government-led death squads are responsible for the deaths of roughly 75,000 civilians (El Salvador: 12 Years of Civil War)Read MoreDiscipleship: Christianity and Jesus3114 Words   |  13 Pagesmisunderstand their role as disciples, and on many occasions, Jesus has had to correct them. In Mark 9:33-37, the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest disciple and Jesus has to tell them, If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all. Mark 9:35. It was here that Jesus taught his disciples the difference between greatness and humility, and that they were here on earth to serve others. Another example of the disciples misunderstanding their role is when JamesRead More Discipleship Essay3068 Words   |  13 Pagesmisunderstand their role as disciples, and on many occasions, Jesus has had to correct them. In Mark 9:33-37, the disciples are arguing about w ho is the greatest disciple and Jesus has to tell them, â€Å"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.† Mark 9:35. It was here that Jesus taught his disciples the difference between greatness and humility, and that they were here on earth to serve others. Another example of the disciples misunderstanding their role is when James