First Lady Michelle Obama released a rap video encouraging young people to go to college, and I have to say it's much better than one would expect from the wife of a President. The message hits a sore spot for me, though, because college was such a difficult time for me that I wasn't able to finish.
It's common for autism spectrum individuals to have difficulty transitioning to independent life, with or without the stresses of school on top of it, and a good portion of us don't have a clear path forward. Then there's the fact that college is designed to best serve the average to above-average neurotypical student, not tailored to the peculiar needs of the exceptional.
Elon Musk deplored the "slow download speed" of standardized schooling, a complaint I shared as a student, and Mark Zuckerberg has recently listed developing personalized education as one of his goals. Every student would benefit from a system that focuses on advancing their talents and interests while slowing the pace for challenges. In a system like that, even Special Education kids can achieve surprising results.
The Internet is the most likely platform to support such a system; online classes have been available for years and are becoming more accessible, and technology is improving at unprecedented rates. Easy access to quality education online is already having a worldwide impact, but we could take it so much further.
I had a college reading level by fourth grade, when the rest of my classmates were just getting into chapter books. This was hardly a secret from my teachers, but I had to sit through the same slow paced literature lessons as the rest and wasn't given any kind of ability-appropriate assignments. The Extended Studies program was better than nothing and got me a head start in math, but still failed to help me reach my full potential.
I know someone else on the spectrum who had similar experiences. He was a self-taught artist and decided to take a drawing class in his teens. The first day of class, the students were instructed to draw the person sitting across from them so the instructor could gauge their levels of skill. She had barely finished giving instructions when my friend stood up to turn in his drawing. One look at it and the teacher told him, "I have nothing to teach you."
In addition to trouble finding educational systems that fit our needs, the talents of spectrum individuals are often unusual and our interests obscure. Finding the right career can be daunting or impossible. Vincent Van Gogh is an excellent example- today, people look at his work and think that he obviously found his niche in painting. But even for world class talent that the public remembers for generations, art is not considered a "valid" career, and he was known to forgo food to buy paint.
Like Van Gogh, spectrum people tend to have obsessions they desperately desire to pursue, but society tells us we must be useful and make money, and that our goals may not be good enough. People frequently suggest that we keep our interests as a hobby, but if Van Gogh had taken a job waiting tables, it would have eaten into the time it took to paint the several thousand canvases he completed in his lifetime, and masterpieces like "Starry Night" would likely never have come to be. To paraphrase the magician Jeff McBride, it takes making a lot of bad art to produce something really good.
Inside that person flipping burgers at McDonald's may be the potential to create world class poetry, but if there's no visible path to recognition and financial gain, their family may see their efforts to be a futile waste of time. I feel Called to be a Wiccan Priestess; I have spent well over 20,000 hours on study and practice, with little to show for it. But it brings me satisfaction I can't express, like nothing else ever has. My mother asks how I expect to make money in this endeavor, and I have no answer for her. Perhaps, as she is a Christian, the answer lies in the question "What would Jesus do?" Today is Christmas, after all...
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