Autistics and Educational Formats

What format for educational institutions do autistics prefer?

The answer may not be what you might expect.  Unschooling or Home-schooling are often preferred.  That is in part due to safety, sensory, and sensibility issues that will exist for some, even should our schooling system - in respect of autistics - ever be fixed.

The models preferred by anti-autistic organisations like Autism Speak$ or even the UK's NAS and New Zealand's Autism NZ Inc are non-autistics preference, are about cure, normalisation, exposure - not anything good. The harm done in such schools ranges from poor messaging and stigmatization, through stunting and undermining, to damaging to terrorising.  ABA dehumanisation, in the school form of PBS/PBIS/EBS is in every one of these major schools, busily ruining lives flat-out, daily, hourly.

----- what metrics matter?

The idea that some major educational establishments developed for just autistics are places where we thrive is absolutely wrong on three accounts:

- some admit the children are not thriving

- some have establish wholely anti-autistic measurements of 'thriving'

- some are incredibly good at undermining autistic children to such an extent that they think they are doing well by anti-autistic standards.

----- ND schools

There are specialist neurodivergent schools that have ND staff well-versed in how to moderate the schooling environment and have leeway to modify the curriculum... but even there, they should not have to constantly justify such intervention, seek such modification, battle uphill.

----- ASAN perspective

Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) advocates for systems that respect neurodiversity and promote full inclusion. 

They believe that segregating autistic individuals into specialized schools could perpetuate stigma and limit opportunities for interaction with neurotypical peers. 

ASAN encourages educational practices that focus on removing barriers to participation within mainstream schools, ensuring that autistic individuals can thrive without being isolated or treated as inferior.

----- FDM perspective

Foundations for Divergent Minds (FDM), another autistic-run organization, emphasizes creating supportive environments that respect the dignity of all neurodivergent people. 

They focus on practical, inclusive frameworks that help neurodivergent students succeed in mainstream educational settings through sensory integration, executive functioning supports, and communication scaffolds. 

Their mission is to address disparities without isolating autistic students but instead by changing how educational systems approach neurodiversity.

----- ASNZ perspective

ASNZ support mainstreaming with whatever resources are required to ensuring accessibility, equality, agency, with - for example - break-out rooms for when anxiety levels are high and affect our ability to remain in socialized spaces or negative environments.

The people that DO require exclusion-for-a-time, separation, for safety reasons, are those who bully autistics, not autistics who need protection from them.

All seclusion and restraint practices must end, and all measures to ban mobile phones, ear defenders, AAC devices, service animals, fidgets, autistic styles of communication, asocial recess opportunities, rest breaks, etc. must themselves be banned.

The schooling system has undergone massive changes from silence, orderliness, rote-learning, low socialization, etc. that have massively disadvantaged many autistics, and the bill for that, expenditure and otherwise, must now be paid in full, or we risk things much worse than truancy, failure, and revenge ideation, the destruction of a people.

----- Autistic Topics opinion

Autistics are against Forced Inclusion - a separate matter that is not what many initially think it is: https://www.autistictopics.com/autistics-and-forced-inclusion

Autistics have identified some things they wish to see absent from educational settings, and some things the demand or wish for: https://www.autistictopics.com/autistics-and-school-needs