The Guardian has reported that Ofsted's has decided to drop guidance linking autism with susceptibility to extremism.
First, congratulations are due to those campaigners, including Chris Packham, Paul Whitehouse and others, who challenged what was a deeply flawed piece of official thinking. They were right to do so. But there is a wider issue here.
People who are described as neurodivergent are, almost by definition, extremists in the eyes of those who think the world as it is should remain largely unchanged.
Why? Because many such people question assumptions that others accept without a second thought. They spot inconsistencies. They see patterns that others miss. They notice flaws in systems that most people have learned to live with. And, very often, they want to put those flaws right. That is not extremism. It is critical thinking.
The problem is that institutions frequently regard anyone who challenges established ways of doing things as somehow difficult, disruptive or outside the norm. If your ambition is to preserve existing power structures, then anyone who persistently asks awkward questions can appear to be an extremist, just by deviating from the mean that they have chosen to define. Never has a standard deviation been so misinterpreted.
History suggests the opposite. Many of the people who have driven scientific, social and political progress have done so because they refused to accept that prevailing assumptions were correct. Had they simply fitted in, little would ever have changed.
The danger in Ofsted's abandoned guidance was not simply that it risked stigmatising autistic and ADHD children. It was that it confused independent thought with radicalisation. Those are not the same thing.
A healthy democracy depends upon people who question, analyse, challenge and imagine better alternatives. We should be encouraging those qualities, wherever they are found, not treating them as warning signs.
These people are the canaries in the mine. They are the ones who deliver the signal that something is wrong, and we need to act. Their way of thinking is not deviant, divergent or abnormal. It is just different, and valuable for precisely that reason.
The real risk to society is not that some people think differently. It is that too many people stop thinking differently at all.
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Agree 100%. As the father of two autistic sons, I can say that is something that they do. It should be seen as a positive. Sadly, it is not. Probably because it challenges the status quo.
Craig
Thank you.
Greta Thunberg!
The Government’s Prevent duty training describe:
“Terrorist ideologies [..] are categorised as:
Islamist terrorist ideology; extreme right-wing terrorist ideology; left-wing, anarchist and single-issue ideologies”
The implication is that “normal” right-wing ideologies are acceptable while “left-wing” groups are not. Before it was updated, the Prevent framework identified socialism as a terrorism warning sign.
I am sure these descriptions are no accident.
See also: “Socialism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion on Prevent list of terrorism warning signs” (The Guardian, Mar 2024)
Those definitions certainly set off alarm bells within the Scottish independence movement.
Thanks Richard, for publicising this. I couldn’t agree more.
Might it be that a submerged facet/purpose of OFSTED is to facilitate/impose unquestioned and unquestionable conformity?
That has to be possible.
this ties in nicely with an article by the guardian about MR I’m going to stigmatise autistics for the next 20 years, Simon Baron Cohen, whose finally decided that the male theory of autism is no longer helpful. I would love to know how we got to the point that if we don’t understand something or someone we create and unsubstantiated fear about it. I still have what you said in mind. What is the opposite of fear but curiosity…. Love that
It sounds like Witchfnder General!
I hope someone tells Avon & Somerset police, so they can adjust the “pre-crime” algorithms (“predictive analytics” to give it its official name) that they run our data through – so far, about 75% of our residents are apparently in there.
https://www.wired.com/story/british-police-built-a-sprawling-crime-prediction-machine-some-results-couldnt-be-trusted/
One way of challenging this stuff is through Data Subject Access requests, under GDPR (while we still have it) – but be prepared for an exhausting journey through the DSA challenge/appeal process, including a lot of ineffectual ICO hand-wringing.
Like facial recognition software, one big problem is that it doesn’t seem to actually work very well.
As our cash-strapped justice system can’t offer timely justice to victims and suspects, as things are now, what will they do with all the “pre-criminals” these algorithms highlight? Give them “pre-trials” and “pre-sentences” to be served in a “predictive prison system”?
I predict (expensive) trouble.
I have long since come to the conclusion that the institutional pathologising of those who see the world through a different lens is a groupthink kneejerk reaction to any who threaten unregulated capitalism and its cruel, too often fatal, consequences. Those who can not, or will not, shut down an empathic social conscience can never really do well in today’s neoliberal hegemony.
’To be a poet is a condition not a profession’ Robert Graves from The White Goddess
Thanks
First, this was outrageous! I hadn’t heard this before. Second, Ian Tresman’s generalised examples are an equally unthought out designation. Is there a government definition of terrorism?
…and yet – Tuesdays (July 7th) front page of the Times is a deeply misinformed rubbish. ‘No Need to seek work for those with ADHD’
PIP has NOTHING to do with looking for work! Same as Attendance allowance. PIP is for help with extra living costs for disabled.
Never let a vile headline get in the way of the facts, eh?
When will we ever get a media that reports facts and not misinformed fantasy that suits them!