conuly

Generally, I don't know. They're just things that I saw in the news, or on my friends page, that were interesting. Sometimes, a discussion caused me to look something up, and I posted the information for posterity. Occasionally, I store up links for some occasion or another.

This one, I can tell you how I chose it. It was the phrase "decrease behaviours". WTF is a behaviour? Do they want the kids to be completely comatose or something?

So, for your reading pleasure, I give you "All children can learn" is the saying Lisa Martz lives by.

I would really have thought that this was obvious, but I suppose some people don't realize that living creatures learn.

Communication and social skills have to be taught, Martz explained.

"We work on increasing communication and decreasing behaviors," Martz said.

Apparently, a behaviour is something that isn't communication. Or something. Now, you and I both know that sometimes behaviours *are* communication, but... right.

Autistic children use sometimes unruly behaviors to get what they want, so instructors have to find that motivation the children "will die for" and use that to modify behavior, Martz explained. For instance, to reward good behavior during a class Monday, students were handed a piece of candy.

All children will sometimes use unruly behaviours to get what they want. That doesn't mean that this is what those kids are doing.

Part of the assistants' jobsin Martz's classroom is to keep track of each child's communication during the day and help eliminate unwanted behaviors. For instance, one child was placing his communication symbols in his mouth before handing them to his teachers, so they were working to eliminate that behavior.

I'm cutting a lot of stuff out of this article, but even with that, they never say *how* they're going to "eliminate that behavior". If it's something like "give him something else to chew", that makes sense. He's clearly not just randomly biting stuff. But they don't say. How can we judge anything without more information?

Mark has mild autism and is helped to learn idioms, slang and general knowledge. "He takes speech literally and doesn't understand why if it is raining cats and dogs outside, you can't see them falling to the earth," said Kleinstuber.

Minor peeve: there's no such thing, diagnostically speaking, as "mild autism". And I suspect that if he were so mildly autistic, he would not have had to start, at age three, with the PECS (as we're told in a deleted paragraph) and have such a relief from his parents that he "finally" was able to communicate with them.

Shaud said the teachers at the consortium are very dedicated, especially Martz. "When the children have made enough positive behaviors, they receive a reward," she explained. "Mark was in her class and his reward was French fries, so Lisa would go to McDonald's on her lunch hour to get him French fries."

Made enough positive behaviours? Who the hell talks like that? Gah. (Besides, I thought they wanted to eliminate behaviours. Where does this "positive" come from?)

Not a very interesting article, or even commentary. But that phrase really irks me.