Poirot your last contribution is interesting for it seems that back in the seventies I may have stumbled on a way the school system could function effectively for kids with ADS. I set up a programme for what was then called resistant learners. I worked with a group of about 15 year 10 students - kids who had been given up by their teachers as incorrigible. I taught all of them all the various subjects in the core curriculum with one difference - they all worked on a project that was of interest to them. So for example one kid was interested in fish - we built a salt water aquarium, he researched and documented everything that one needed to know about fish - His maths was centred on doing the calculations needed to ensure the aquarium was a suitable habitat, his literacy was focussed on doing the reading and writing to document his experiments. My colleagues insisted that the programme be closed down because the kids were not getting a rounded education - so they went back to being their disruptive disengaged selves. I often wonder what would have happened if this programme had not appeared to be such of a threat to my colleagues.

BAYGON,

Very interesting....and a brilliant way to approach learning, especially for students with ASD. I sort of worked it out for myself as I learned more about the condition. I saw that my son was so self-motivated to direct his own information gathering on subjects that held his interest - so it seemed fairly logical to follow his lead.

There are all sorts of nebulous behaviours, preferences and talents that surface surrounding ASD. My son didn't have any language until just after he turned three - however 22 months later and before he turned five, he was reading fluently with comprehension at about a nine year-old level.

Will get back to you further when time permits.

Poirot, my parents did the same for me, to a large extent. I was also fortunate to have some really good teachers at Primary level in PNG. Unfortunately, at the Anglican Church Grammar school in Brisbane where I boarded for high school, the quality of teaching was nowhere near as good, with the teachers more interested in compliance and punishment than learning outcomes, on the whole. I still achieved pretty well, but only because the population average is pretty low - it wasn't in accord with the sort of

There were two things that have resonated for me especially in this subject. The first was Molly's mention that she prefers dogs to people. Really, so do I and always have. They're much more dependably predictable and less effort to deal with, on the whole.
The second was the wikipedia article, which used the phrase "the little professor", as I was known among family and friends as "the absent-minded professor" as a child. I've never really been able to adjust to a rigidly structured learning environment, but I learn very rapidly indeed when I'm interested in something. It's also hard for me not to follow an interesting digression or diversion, which often, in conversation or discussion, can be taken for either contrarianism or simple rudeness.

I do wish I'd known more about this when I was younger.

I didn't finish a sentence above, I should have said my high-school results were not in accord with the outcome predicted by either my primary school results or my IQ, which is quite high.

You are all giving reasons against a compulsory centralised bureucratic education system, not in favour of it. Poirot, you are perhaps better able than most others give your son a more personalised education. Yet you oppose the same right for those who are less able to do it, to simply buy it.

Even in the current highly restricted market, private education has done better than the state system in innovativeness, quality and price. For example I researched home schooling for the girl who got bashed. The whole idea of people sitting in rows like boiled eggs being bored stiff betting told what's what by some authority up the front, has got whiskers on it. The net should have changed all that. One of these programs I saw was a program that teaches the child how to teach themselves, how to find the relevant material. It customised itself to the child's own interest, as well as providing a rounded education, and set them on their own course of study. And cheap!

This obvious idea - of suiting education to the individual potentiality of the student - is what it should be. But with a centralised bureaucracy firstly innovation is anathema to their very fibre, because a bureaucracy is about carrying out directions and complying with regulations issued from the centre. And then, as Baygon has shown, even if you show them the idea, they have great difficulty taking it on board. And even if they do, change like that becomes a political decision. But why should it be? The needs of the child get lost in this, while the interests of institutional vested interests always come first. No-one has explained why the parents and child should not be the relevant decision-makers, rather than politicians, union leaders, and professional bureaucrats who pay no price for getting it wrong. It depends on the completely false idea that you, or those bureaucrats, know better what everyone else's values should be.

People should be free to choose, educators should go out of business if they don't satisfy the needs of the consumers, and no-one has given any decent reason in favour of state education. You admit its abuses, but can't provide any rational justification of any corresponding benefit. It's not just those with AS whose needs are being neglected. There's dozens of categories, people thoroughly normal as well as people who are not, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the majority who are worse off - and in any event, why should so many children's interests be sacrificed for the mainstream?