The title of the article was are we getting value for our tax dollar - our taxes pay for both state and private education. Private education is funded on the basis that it conforms to standards set by the state - I know this because one of my past jobs was to approve funding for private schools. So the essay needs to be seen not as discussing the nerits or other wise of state versus private education but rather on the assumptions that policy makers make about what constitutes a good education and therefore merits funding.
My experience in education at all levels is that we are short changed - the assumptions on which public policy is constructed do not serve us well - the Aspergers discussions mnay lead some to assume that its a minority that is not wekll served - none of us are well served by the current system

BAYGON,

It's a stunning indictment of the system that your colleagues judged that your newly achieving students weren't receiving a rounded education. In this case, it seems the term "rounded education" was code for uniform, inflexible and systematic learning practices.

It's beyond reason that the decision was taken to close down your program when these previously disengaged students had responded so well.

I've said many times on this forum that the covert intention behind mass education is to train young people to merge effortlessly with the system - not to bring about a genuine love of learning.

The best thing we can do for our children is to instill in them a confidence for self-directed learning. Our system works hard to remove the very young child's natural motivation for self-directed discovery. Self-motivated seeking and learning turns out to be the hallmark of great minds - pure gold!

I have no idea, however, how the present system could be changed. There would have to be overwhelming agitation from both parents and those involved in education for it to happen.

Anti - will get back to you a little later.

Poirot - there are models that do work. The Waldorf schools are such an example. The problem that they run into is that for students to matriculate they have to be dragged back into the system so they rarely go beyond year 10 - when they do the parents have enough confidence in their children that they do not need a matriculation certificate to lead worthwhile lives.
You will also find that in every school there teachers who instinctively encourage their students to be self directed but as you will know from teaching your child - self-directed learning is far more demanding on the teacher than following a set pattern.
For example even when I was in the 'fold' my classes were still self directed - whether I taught maths, physics or English the starting point was always the students interests and I worked from there to fit the syllabus around those interests but that meant preparing sometimes 7 different lesson porgrammes - worked fine for a while but it did burn me out - so I finished my career as an administrator.

Antiseptic,

We do some formal work using books, but I really think he gets the most insight from following his passions.

It's probably best to give you an example. One of the things he doesn't like to do is writing...so written expression is a challenge.
So...how does a child use his imagination and express himself in a demonstrative way?
Well, he's a big fan of LEGO. He decided to build his LEGO sets and fashion his characters, then photograph them. These he uploaded onto the PC (having worked out the sequence of the story before he started filming) - then he made frame-by-frames films to tell the story. He used a micro-phone to do voice-overs and also added background music. Da Dah! There we have an original story and quite a bit of technical prowess to boot. That's just one example of the freedom he's afforded. Our Ed Dept. moderator sat and watched his "films" and was more than happy to sign off on that. She appreciates my son's situation and could see that he was meeting the curriculum standards, albeit using an alternative mode for expression.

We also do projects and such like. We're investigating sound at the moment and have made sound cannons, a tin and string telephone and a burglar alarm (radio is next)

He spends all day asking questions (without having to put his hand up) He gets loads of info from me and his own independent investigation.
It's thinking outside the square.

The other important thing is that he is usually at liberty to get up during the day and take off out the back for a run around or whatever. It seems to help centre him - and I'm sure it's something that he feels impelled to do, and he does this probably about six times during the day.

My advice to you is to keep reading on autism/Aspergers...you'll learn quickly, knowing what a clever cookie you are : )

Baygon, does the Steiner method actually achieve good pedagogical outcomes for most of the particiapants? The schools don't have a particularly good reputation as far as I can tell, but that may be a reaction to the fact that they are so different to mainstream schools. I feel a a little uncomfortable with the idea of putting too much emphasis on intangible outcomes myself.

Poirot, that sounds very creative. I'll certainly be looking more deeply into the subject, both for myself and my children. Looking back I suspect my Mum, but not my Dad, may have had some mild form of asperger's as well. She was almost constantly rhythmically rubbing her fingers and thumbs together in a circular motion and she was very "nervy", suffering a "nervous breakdown" not long before I came along. She didn't "do" sudden changes well. I understand there is some genetic component.

Both my kids are very bright. It'd be a great shame if they missed opportunities for lack of the right assistance. I'm very grateful to Mollydukes and yourself for bringing this up.

antiseptic
The Steiner schools I inspected seemed to me to be as educationally sound and well run as the 'ordinary' schools that were part of my inspectorate. BUT you hit the nail on the head - they are difficult to assess if there are no tangible outcomes.
But our demand for tangible outcomes is precisely the reason much of our education system is so poor. It reduces us to value only that what can be measured which then in turn becomes a yardstick for determining whether a child receives a sound education.
For example our obsession with standardized testing ignores the most important activity that teachers do: error analysis. Thus good teachers
when they see a child has given 1 as the answer for 2+ 2 will ask how they arrived at that conclusion and may discover that instead of adding the child divided 2 by 2. The teacher now knows that the problem is not with numeracy but possibly with dyslexia.
Maybe we should have a little more trust and confidence in one another for much of what we value in life is intangible so to reduce education to the tangible is to tell kids that this is all that is of value.