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Alien Superpowers
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Daniel Maskit |
TEDxKingAlfredSchool
• February 2020
Most of what people think they know about autism is wrong. No two autistic people are alike, and there is no easy way to capture what it means to be autistic. There are some areas where autistic people tend to have specific strengths or weaknesses, but there are no fixed rules. One of the generally true things about autistic people is that we tend not to interact with others in a commonly accepted way. We often come across as insensitive, or arrogant, or rude, because we don’t understand how social interaction works. Some of us have extraordinary, perhaps unique, abilities that can be of great value to companies. Unfortunately companies tend to fixate on how we act, and not on what we can do.
The social differences of autistic people pose a massive challenge in schools and in the workplace: businesses want colleagues, and schools want classmates, to get along with each other, communicate effectively, etc. The general approach to ‘accommodating’ autistic people in the workplace or school is to coach us about how we are supposed to behave and ask us to change our behavior and method of communication to suit others.
In this talk Daniel Maskit suggests that businesses and schools are asking the wrong question. Telling us to try to learn skills that, in all honesty, we will never be very good at, is far less productive than finding simple ways to change some of the office or school rules to allow us to be effective. If we all work together the end result will be better for everyone.