The need for anti-ableist learning space for neurodivergent and disabled people is now.

My kids have been kicked out of many, many places for being different—just like I was.

The question is simple: Is there room for disabled kids at a piano school? On a swim team? In most classrooms?

The answer, right now, seems to be no.

Catapult | The World Doesn’t Bend for Disabled Kids (or Disabled Parents)

We create anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability. We create space for those most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“. We create paths to equity and access for our learners so they can collaborate on distributed, multi-age, cross-disciplinary teams with a neurodiverse array of creatives doing work that impacts community.

A human-centered classroom is needed now more than ever. In a time of growing uncertainty, global challenges, and increased threats to democracy, children need space to question, reflect, and actualize a meaning to their lives. These young people, along with their educators, will build a new future of love, care, and respect for all.

A Guide to Human Centric Education

The Need

Space without Behaviorism, Segregation, or Ableism

The Answer

Reframing and Respectful Connection

The Feeling

Electric Belonging and Soaring Inclusion

The Learning

Passion-Based, Human-Centered Learning Compatible With Neurodiversity and the Social Model of Disability

The Gift

We have created a system that has you submit yourself, or your child, to patient hood to access the right to learn differently. The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis.

♿️ The Need: Space without Behaviorism, Segregation, or Ableism

Therefore, eugenics is an erasure of identity through force, whereas radical behaviorism is an erasure of identity through “correction.” This all assumes a dominant culture that one strives to unquestionably maintain.

Empty Pedagogy, Behaviorism, and the Rejection of Equity

Neurodivergent and disabled learners need anti-ableist space, and we need it now.

➗ In anti-ableist space, there is no segregation of “special”.

Although human diversity, the social model of disability and inclusion as human rights framework concepts are developing traction, for much of society the “special story” still goes like this:

A child with “special needs” catches the “special bus” to receive “special assistance” in a “special school” from “special education teachers” to prepare them for a “special” future living in a “special home” and working in a “special workshop”.

Does that sound “special” to you?

The word “special” is used to sugar-coat segregation and societal exclusion – and its continued use in our language, education systems, media etc serves to maintain those increasingly antiquated “special” concepts that line the path to a life of exclusion and low expectations.

“He ain’t special, he’s my brother” – Time to ditch the phrase “special needs” – Starting With Julius

The late Herb Lovett used to say that there are only two problems with “special education” in America: It’s not special and it sure as hell isn’t education. The field continues to be marinated in behaviorist assumptions and practices despite the fact that numerous resources for teachers, therapists, and parents offer alternatives to behavior control.

Autism and Behaviorism – Alfie Kohn

🥢🥕 In anti-ableist space, there is no behaviorism.

But even more compelling is the testimony of young people who understand the reality of this approach better than anyone because they’ve been on the receiving end of it. It is nothing short of stunning to learn just how widely and intensely ABA is loathed by autistic adults who are able to describe their experience with it. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that, until about a year ago, I was completely unaware of all the websites, articles, scholarly essays, blog posts, Facebook pages, and Twitter groups featuring the voices of autistic men and women, all overwhelmingly critical of ABA and eloquent in describing the trauma that is its primary legacy.

How is it possible that their voices have not transformed the entire discussion? Suppose you participated in implementing a widely used strategy for dealing with homelessness, only to learn that the most outspoken critics of that intervention were homeless people. Would that not stop you in your tracks? What would it say about you if it didn’t? And yet the consistent, emphatic objections of autistic people don’t seem to trouble ABA practitioners at all. Indeed, one critical analysis of ethics in this field notes that “autistics have been excluded from all committees, panels, boards, etc., charged with developing, directing, and assessing ABA research and treatment programs.”

Autism and Behaviorism

Plenty of policies and programs limit our ability to do right by children. But perhaps the most restrictive virtual straitjacket that educators face is behaviorism — a psychological theory that would have us focus exclusively on what can be seen and measured, that ignores or dismisses inner experience and reduces wholes to parts. It also suggests that everything people do can be explained as a quest for reinforcement — and, by implication, that we can control others by rewarding them selectively.

Allow me, then, to propose this rule of thumb: The value of any book, article, or presentation intended for teachers (or parents) is inversely related to the number of times the word “behavior” appears in it. The more our attention is fixed on the surface, the more we slight students’ underlying motives, values, and needs.

It’s been decades since academic psychology took seriously the orthodox behaviorism of John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, which by now has shrunk to a cult-like clan of “behavior analysts.” But, alas, its reductionist influence lives on — in classroom (and schoolwide) management programs like PBIS and Class Dojo, in scripted curricula and the reduction of children’s learning to “data,” in grades and rubrics, in “competency”- and “proficiency”-based approaches to instruction, in standardized assessments, in reading incentives and merit pay for teachers.

It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn

Trainers are rejecting behaviorism because it harms animals emotionally and psychologically. What does that say about classrooms that embrace it?

Empty Pedagogy, Behaviorism, and the Rejection of Equity

I make the right mistakes
And I say what I mean

Spare Me From The Mold

--Spare Me From The Mold by Gossip

🪙 In anti-ableist space, there is no “earning your token”.

• Why I Left ABA | Socially Anxious Advocate
• I Abused Children For A Living – Diary Of A Birdmad girl
• I Abused Children And SO DO YOU: A Response To An ABA Apologist – Diary Of A Birdmad girl
• Is ABA Really “Dog Training for Children”? A Professional Dog Trainer Weighs In. » NeuroClastic
• I’m an ABA therapist, I’ve noticed a lot of the… –  neurowonderful
• I’m sorry, but that’s not earning your token
• ‘Cardgate’ Scandal Uncovers Widespread Disrespect of Autistic People | NOS Magazine
• The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists
• Applied Behaviour Analysis – Personal Reflections
• Read what one autistic adult had to say the day she realised that the therapy she went through as a child was actually ABA.

Please complete this simple task
Push the buttons just like we ask
This step first and that step last
Over and over and do it fast
I’m watching everyone, feeling like a simpleton
Why can’t I get it done? I just want to scream and run

I don’t think like you
But I’m the one that’s called abnormal
This construct
Was built by petty tyrants

Am I on the level yet? (Level yet)
How did I do on your little test?
Get my brain to reset (Reset)
'Cause everything you say is static
Do I make a good pet? (Good pet)
Obey the commands or get the back of the hand
'Cause the world wasn’t built for a brain like mine
Change my mind, change my mind, change my mind

This construct
Was built and can be dismantled

We stand together
We think apart
We stand together
We think apart

-- Neurodivergent by Rabbit Junk

While some may perceive ABA as misinterpreted (Morris, 2009), argument stems from experiences of intervention and the impact of forced behavioural intervention has upon the processes and development of self-perception. Adapting autistic behaviour and identity to meet those of typically developing (TD) peers is at the core of ABA opposition. Indeed, current research has suggested ABA as causing a severe level of trauma from childhood participation (Kupferstein, 2018). Autistic individuals continue to highlight the suffering felt through ABA’s inability to acknowledge the negativity inflicted through forceful coercion (see, for example, Kedar, 2011; “My experiences with ABA”, 2017). Such a conclusion raises further doubt as to both the efficacy of early intervention as well as the long-term implications and impact on participants. While arguments put to those who oppose ABA claim methods and approaches have changed (“The Controversy Around ABA”, 2019), opposition to ‘current’ ABA mirrors autistic attitudes to intervention (Klein, 2002) and ‘cures’ (Harmon, 2004) from nearly two decades ago. So many coming forward and indicating the harms for autistic children, which they themselves have experienced, to improve for the next generation is indicative of a disparity. Yet, with many being ignored or dismissed as ‘radicals’, ‘too autistic’ or ‘not autistic enough’ to speak for their own community, the bridge between academia and community is further fractured. To begin re-building these bridges, we seek to work alongside autistic reflections of ABA in order to bring voice into empirical constructs. Translating voice into academic comprehension of ABA in terms reflected by the autistic community addresses a vitally unaddressed gap in current research knowledge.

“Recalling hidden harms”: autistic experiences of childhood applied behavioural analysis (ABA)

Despite decades of usage as the primary method for this population worldwide, ABA has never been shown to be even slightly efficacious for the nonverbal Autism population.

The research utilized in the response does not pertain to the population discussed, does not present any neuroscientific research, and does not address intrinsic motivation, elevated levels of anxiety, or various other pertinent issues associated with the nonverbal autism population.

Research in ABA continues to neglect the structure of the autistic brain, the overstimulation of the autistic brain, the trajectory of child development, or the complex nature of human psychology, as all of these factors were ignored in the response and are ignored in ABA practice itself. Providing a treatment that causes pain in exchange for no benefit, even if unknowingly, is tantamount to torture and violates the most basic requirement of any therapy: to do no harm. Lastly, there is also no discussion in the response on internal motivation and how the conditions created by ABA foster psychological ill-being. If paraprofessionals and professionals refuse to engage in critical thinking, refuse to become experts at the thing they treat, continue to practice outside of scope, and continue to ignore pertinent research, the future of Autism and other conditions ABA professes to treat is very bleak.

Long-term ABA Therapy Is Abusive: A Response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane | SpringerLink

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a harsher abstract. Genuinely spectacular.

“The research utilized in the response does not pertain to the population discussed, does not present any neuroscientific research, and does not address intrinsic motivation, elevated levels of anxiety” etc

Also: love how their earlier paper was titled “How much compliance is too much compliance: Is long-term ABA therapy abuse?”

Their response to the ABA researchers’ response settles the question. Yes: “Long-term ABA Therapy Is Abusive”.

Having evaluated the counterarguments: YES.

@MxOolong

Meanwhile, the autistic adults I saw who were ABA recipients–as well as several families I encountered in community advocacy whose autistic adult children had been in ABA programs–fared only marginally better in functioning, and presented with one or more of anxiety, depression, OCD, insomnia, and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

However, with so many independent personal accounts from autistic individuals and families, as well as a new scientific movement, any reasonable observer cannot confidently deny that ABA is negatively affecting the autistic population.

In 2019, a neuropsychologist released a co-authored article with a parent and service provider citing research that shows the unsuitability of ABA for autistic individuals, the current lack of scientific testing regarding ABA’s effect on “lower-functioning” and nonverbal autistic people, and highlighting the drivers of expanded use, including the potential current market size of $17 billion annually.

So, many families don’t realize they’re putting their loved ones through a costly and traumatic program because they feel this is the best care they can get and the outcomes they hope for are the closest to an idealized normal.

The autistic community is having a reckoning with ABA therapy. We should listen | Fortune

ABA’s monopoly is maintained by the scientific community’s lack of research into and investment in alternative techniques that address autism as both a cognitive and existential experience rather than just a behavioral one–an approach adult autistics who have undergone ABA have described as violating the fundamental tenets of bioethics, as well as the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The autistic community is having a reckoning with ABA therapy. We should listen | Fortune

But I don't need a cure for me
I don't need it
No, I don't need a cure for me
I don't need it
No, I don't need a cure for me
I don't need it
I don't need it

Please, no cure for me
Please, no cure for me

--Cure for Me by AURORA

Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general.

🫀🧠 In anti-ableist space, we are active agents in our own embodied experience.

Outcast stomp
Outcasts, do the outcast stomp

The freaks are coming
The freaks are coming

--Outcast Stomp by G.L.O.S.S

🧺 Main Takeaways

• The place where we belong does not exist. We will build it.
• The need for anti-ableist learning space for neurodivergent and disabled people is now.
• My kids have been kicked out of many, many places for being different—just like I was.
• The question is simple: Is there room for disabled kids at a piano school? On a swim team? In most classrooms? The answer, right now, seems to be no.
• Creating paths to equity and access for all children remains the grand challenge of public education in America.
• A humane education is one whose organizing principle is the innate capacity of students to be critical, empathetic agents in their communities and on the global stage.
• A human-centered classroom is needed now more than ever.
• We have created a system that has you submit yourself, or your child, to patient hood to access the right to learn differently. The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis.
• Neurodivergent and disabled learners need anti-ableist space, and we need it now.
• In anti-ableist space, there is no segregation of “special”.
• The word “special” is used to sugar-coat segregation and societal exclusion – and its continued use in our language, education systems, media etc serves to maintain those increasingly antiquated “special” concepts that line the path to a life of exclusion and low expectations.
• Special Education continues to be marinated in behaviorist assumptions and practices despite the fact that numerous resources for teachers, therapists, and parents offer alternatives to behavior control.
• In anti-ableist space, there is no behaviorism.
• ABA is loathed by autistic adults who are able to describe their experience with it.
• Autistics have been excluded from all committees, panels, boards, etc., charged with developing, directing, and assessing ABA research and treatment programs.
• The most restrictive virtual straitjacket that educators face is behaviorism.
• The value of any book, article, or presentation intended for teachers (or parents) is inversely related to the number of times the word “behavior” appears in it.
• The more our attention is fixed on the surface, the more we slight students’ underlying motives, values, and needs.
• Trainers are rejecting behaviorism because it harms animals emotionally and psychologically. What does that say about classrooms that embrace it?
• We cannot replace agency with response to stimuli.
• I make the right mistakes, and I say what I mean. Spare Me From The Mold!
• Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up.
• In anti-ableist space, there is no “earning your token”
• “When I was a little girl, I was autistic. And when you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy.”
• Too much autism research has been done without autistic input.
• The failures of autism science are not random: they reflect systematic power imbalances.
• The problems associated with ABA run very deep. It is a human rights violation to continue to ignore and discount the voices of Autistic people about deeply traumatising and harmful “therapies” such as ABA.
• Behaviorism is a repudiation, an almost willful dismissal, of subjective experience.
• Current research has suggested ABA as causing a severe level of trauma from childhood participation.
• Bring voice into empirical constructs. Translate voice into academic comprehension.
• ABA has never been shown to be even slightly efficacious for the nonverbal Autism population.
• Research in ABA continues to neglect the structure of the autistic brain, the overstimulation of the autistic brain, the trajectory of child development, or the complex nature of human psychology.
• The conditions created by ABA foster psychological ill-being.
• ABA is negatively affecting the autistic population.
• Adult autistics who have undergone ABA have described as violating the fundamental tenets of bioethics, as well as the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
• Until ABA updates its scientific methods, its functions of behavior, and incorporates modern day psychology – including neurology, child development, educational psychology, and other vital research – it cannot be considered to be a safe, effective, or ethical field.
• I don’t need a cure for me.
• In anti-ableist space, we are active agents in our own embodied experience.
• I am not a manifestation of stimuli and response. I am agential. I am Autonomously Autistic.
• Despite progress toward new models of disability, Autistic subjectivity is still locked within medical pathologies and assumptions of deficit.
• Self-Determination Theory positions itself as directly and unapologetically antithetical to behaviorism.

❤️ The Answer: Reframing, Respectful Connection, and the Presumption of Competence

When your kid is DXed as autistic, almost all of the professional advice you get from education and healthcare is steeped in deficit ideology.

The message to parents of the neurodiverse kid is that their child is deficient, and that their job is to fix their child. We are in a sort of remediation industrial complex, where there’s all sorts of services and treatments and interventions to make the square peg fit the round hole. Parents are relentlessly told that that’s their job.

Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences

Instead of behaviorism, segregation, and therapies ingrained with ableism, we practice respectful connection.