Discovering My Autism

Apologia Pro Vita Sua (With Apologies to Cardinal Newman)

Edgar Schneider

Paperback: £15.99 / $25.95

1999, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 144pp
ISBN: 978-1-85302-724-6, BIC 2: VFJD BG

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Learning

This penchant for solitude manifested itself even when I started school. My teachers were at a total loss to explain why it was that, although I appeared to do no work in the classroom (because I did not interact with my classroom environment), tests showed that I had both absorbed and mastered the material. Later on, when I was in the fifth grade, the school authorities wanted, as an example to the other kids, to set me back a couple of grades because I did not do any of the classroom work (even though, as earlier, I showed proficiency in the material). My mother preempted this by taking me for evaluation at New York University. (This was in 1942, before autism was first diagnosed. I seem to have had hard luck with that sort of thing.) I tested as quite gifted, and the people at NYU recommended to my school that I should actually be advanced a grade or two because the work in my current grade was too simple for me. The only compromise that the school would make was not to set me back, because advancement would have set a bad example.

If I did not do the work in class, how did I learn? Furthermore, how do I still continue to learn? Many people that know me have referred to me by the great compliment of 'walking encyclopedia', and ask me how I learned so much. The answer that I usually give is, 'I read a lot'. But, the fact of the matter is, I do not. Because of my attention deficit, I actually read very little. I find, though, that I am able to absorb, retain, and digest more information from an article than I do from a book. It does help that I have a love of learning. I could even call it a voracious appetite. I am hard put to think of a single course that I took, in either high school or beyond, in which I did not use the knowledge gotten there as a foundation for building further knowledge on my own. Yet, this would do me little good if I were not able to absorb this learning. To explain this seeming paradox, I considered an analogy between the human thinking process and a computer. The brain can be considered to be like the storage and the processor. Data for the computer to store and process must somehow be fed in via communication channels to the outside world. I liken these communication channels to the learning process.

Most autistic people have severe communication difficulties. This would indicate that they do not have the kind of communication channels possessed by most people, which is why they demonstrate learning difficulties when taught by conventional methods. It may be that autistic savants and high functioning autistics have extraordinary channels. (Extra is the Latin preposition for 'outside'. As a result, that word 'extraordinary' must be taken in the literal sense: 'outside' the ordinary.) I get the impression that little study has been done on this. Consequently, having only this smallest intuitive grasp of how I learn, I am extremely hard put to explain the process to others. I have suggested this hypothesis (of extraordinary communication channels) to a number of professionals in the field. One did tell me that this approach is being taken with a view to explaining parapsychology. In light of this, those who previously thought of me as mysterious might now consider me spooky. Considering that, in many ways (personal relationships excluded), I have been successful, I would have had to break out of that pattern of self-isolation somewhere in school. This happened in my sophomore year in high school. Before that, while I was able to learn, in my own way, I never really related to schoolwork. This was even true of 'mathematics'. The quotation marks are deliberate. In those days, it consisted of endless drilling in arithmetic calculations. I hated it, because I had understood what needed to be done, and was able to master the methods after working out a couple of examples.

In the year mentioned, I studied plane geometry. Here, instead of rote mechanical operations, I had come to deal with such things as universal and abstract principles, proof construction, and deductive logic. I loved it! I wanted to get deeply involved in the subject matter, and that made me also want to do the same in other subjects, in the arts and humanities, as well as in mathematics and the sciences. From that point on, I was able to shine in school, at all levels. I wrote earlier of a 'love of learning', and should like to go into what that all means to me. It is not just a phrase. In popular psychology, we are urged to 'get in touch with our inner child'. The Bible says we cannot enter Heaven unless we come as little children. What does all this mean? When people say 'childlike', they often mean trusting, almost to the point of gullibility. People would like a world in which they could trust others (a wish essentially nullified by their penchant for surreptitiousness). Many in business, in the churches, in schools, and in government would certainly like to encourage this. But children, ideally, live in an environment in which their more worldly elders protect them from the consequences of undeserved trust. They will not always be able to do so. In addition, Jesus did warn people to 'beware of false prophets'. St Paul wrote that he stopped acting like a child when he became an adult. So, the prudent adult person will not be too trusting.

Is there another facet to being 'childlike'? The answer is 'yes'. There is another trait that kids have that they lose all too soon: an insatiable curiosity, coupled with great joy in learning something new, or finding the answer to a question that has been hanging fire for a while. Even in the days when I would not get involved with the world, I always was like that, and from that high school sophomore year onward, it consumed me. I have to wonder, why do people lose the ability to wonder? At what point do they need to be 'cool'? I see that as quite unfortunate. These people are missing what could be a very full life. It is almost as if their epitaphs would read: 'Died at twenty-five; buried at seventy-five'.

By the same author

Author information

• Edgar Schneider

Subject areas

• Asperger Syndrome, Autism and other Syndromes

Keywords

• autism,
• memoirs

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