I teach 2Es including many autistic kids...this is VERY true. I hate that we have shunted critical thinking and the rigor of focus largely into some sort of neurodivergent superpower. Doing so as well as overly-broadening our definitions of being on the spectrum is a threefold hit: it cheats the truly autistic savants out of recognition for what makes them extraordinary, it excuses the edge-of-the-spectrum crowd from working toward better social skills, and it excuses the non-autist from developing intellectual rigor and discipline.

In much the same way that the hyper-categorizing of sexuality has now labeled any girl who is a tomboy suddenly "on the gender spectrum," we now are awfully quick in early education to suspect a gifted child's natural hyperfocus on what delights him as a sign of autism. ADHD, too, while very much real, has been misused in such a way to medicate a whole generation of boys and many girls into coping with a very broken system.

Please know I am NOT dismissing the truly awesome pedes out there on the spectrum--quite the opposite! Rather, I am speaking to my own experiences in that the over- and mis- labeling diminishes the understanding of both autistic and everyday intellectuals and serves to weaken the robustness of both types of minds.

I teach 2Es including many autistic kids...this is VERY true. I hate that we have shunted critical thinking and the rigor of focus largely into some sort of neurodivergent superpower. Doing so as well as broadening our definitions of being on the spectrum is a threefold hit: it cheats the truly autistic savants out of recognition for what makes them extraordinary, it excuses the edge-of-the-spectrum crowd from working toward better social skills, and it excuses the non-autist from developing intellectual rigor and discipline.

In much the same way that the hyper-categorizing of sexuality has now labeled any girl who is a tomboy suddenly "on the gender spectrum," we now are awfully quick in early education to suspect a gifted child's natural hyperfocus on what delights him as a sign of autism. ADHD, too, while very much real, has been misused in such a way to medicate a whole generation of boys and many girls into coping with a very broken system.

Please know I am NOT dismissing the truly awesome pedes out there on the spectrum--quite the opposite! Rather, I am speaking to my own experiences in that the over- and mis- labeling diminishes the understanding of both autistic and everyday intellectuals and serves to weaken the robustness of both types of minds.