Autism in times gone by

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I just saw a Ted talk by John Elder Robison that really got me thinking

He was talking about how much of the "disability" of autism is a product of the modern education system rather than anything much to do with the autism itself. The general idea of his talk was that in times gone by most learning was conducted under apprentiship type models. So young people would learn by watching and doing rather than listening in a class room and book learning. Indeed book learning was impossible for most people a couple of hundred years ago because most people were illiterate!

Learning by doing and watching is not impeded by having an autistic brain so autistic people would learn a trade just as well as neurotypicals. Similarly dyslexics and many other neurodiverse people would have no significant impediments to learning in this way when compared to NT's. It is only the relatively modern invention of mass formal book learning that actually disables the neurodiverse amongst us.

In the past even severely autistic people would find their place in society. They might be the quite lad didn't speak much but who was great with the animals on the farm. Or the non verbal potter who could do wonderful things with clay. Or the master weaver who would create beautiful tapestries but who never said a word and would not look you in the eye.

This just struck me as an interesting idea and one which I had not considered before. This is perhaps one reason why more people are being diagnosed. In the past it didn't actually matter as much because it was less of a disability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFkQifd-D1U

Hm, I think there may be a kernel of truth in there - particularly for some dyslexics or less severely affected individuals with autism. However, I think this is likely an idealised view - some individuals with dyslexia also have difficulties with planning, something that might persist even without writing. Similarly, not all more severely affected people with autism would be able to, say, make pottery according to the demands of others.

Similarly, I think sensory issues are being overlooked - many of the work places would have been noisy or bright and these could have impeded autistics. There's also a portion of therapy that goes towards teaching autistics to mimic.

It doesnt help that most degrees are useless and put you in massive debt.

Its a crazy system,

I guess its really a question of degrees. Sure not all autistics may have found a trade in the past. But today's education system is so hostile to the neurodiverse that it increases the disability significantly. Today it seems that to get anywhere in life you need to pass school exams, go to university and generally get on in the education system. Even a generation or two ago this was quite different as there were plenty more apprentiship type vocational learning systems. Our modern obsession with testing kids and making them do exams is, I think, more debilitating for the neurodiverse. But at the same time it probably fails a significant proportion of NT kids as well.

You say it's a idealized view, but I don't agree. I don't deny the existence of real, major disability. A nonverbal person with cognitive challenges will be disabled today and they would have been disabled in the past. But that's not most autistic people. Most of us have some verbal ability, some skills, etc. Given that, I contend that most of us were better able to become contributing members of society in yesterday's world.

I think most people learn better under the master-apprentice hands on system. That is the method of teaching that humans inherited from their animal ancestors and it's honed over thousands of years. Book learning has no evolutionary foundation, only a commercial one.

You can find more articles about this on my Psychology Today blog

I'd say book learning exaggerates the disability, and individuals with autism would have been able to 'mask' their systems better with master-apprentice type structures.

I don't think people "masked symptoms" hundreds of years ago. Take reading - if you live in today's world, dyslexia is an obvious thing that sets a kid apart and it's found in school. But what about the world of 1715, when most people didn't read?

You would very likely live your whole life with no idea that you comprehended characters on a page differently than someone else. You would not mask it - it would be invisible to you and everyone else.

I think also in terms of what to do for work/making a living, possibly there were more family businesses in contrast to today's world, where most people are expected to choose and launch into a career of their own, or be thought to have failed to do so by people judging them.

Hundreds of years ago there were more family farms (indeed the quiet lad who was great tending the animals would have been probably the farmer's own son, for example), the family cobbler, village butcher etc, and any offspring would have had an automatic induction into the father's trade in more gradual or organic way for them to pick things up. For girls of a certain social group, work or even marriage may never be expected, and the girl on the spectrum might be living a quiet life in the bosom of their family home, unknowingly aspie.

In terms of sensory issues, while factories and such would have been horrendous places, rural work and living places may have been almost no challenge to sensory issues. Some lives lived under certain circumstances might even have caused there to be very few instances that showed up someone's worst spectrum-caused issues.

What I think is potentially quote exciting looking forwards is the way technology will help overcome many of these impediments.

I have always been a huge fan of home working. My business today not only allows home working for almost all my employees it actually mandates it because errr we don't actually own any offices. So all 10 of my employees work from home (except the two that run the warehouse who cant home work for obvious reasons). This trend of virtualising offices will continue to increase because its just more efficient from a cash perspective (rent is typically the second biggest overhead after salaries)

So looking to the future I can see a merging of the home and work place. In fact this was how most people used to work in the past, their place of business would also be their home be it a farm, tailors, blacksmith or whatever. "The office" where people go to work on mass is a relatively modern invention. A return to home working will, I think, benefit the autistic people of the world because they are disabled by the modern work place with its hustle and bustle and enforced social interaction. Of course the benefits of home working are not just for autistic people! Not having to cram onto a commuter train or get pissed wasting your life in traffic jam each morning is a universal benefit for any neurotype!

I'm not so sure about how we are going to fix the education system though. If anything the trend has been in the wrong direction in recent years with more and more testing and an emphasis on formal book learning. We also, as a society, have more and more of an obsession with everyone getting university degrees. So much so that a degree has become almost a basic requirement for any job. This is not what degrees were designed for. They are academic qualifications and demonstrate an ability to do well academically. They were never supposed to be a requirement for most jobs and now qualifications that were supposed to be for budding academics are now seen as a must for all. This is silly because kids are learning in the wrong way and the wrong stuff for most jobs.

For example my own degree was in physics and philosophy, all jolly interesting stuff but other than some of the analytical skills I learned in physics and some skills in presenting formal arguments in philosophy none of what I spend three years learning at university has been applicable to my working life thus far. This is true I think for most people coming through the university system these days. Now for me as a fairly bright NT kid university was no problem as it suited my style of learning and neurotype just fine. So I got my degree and that meant I had the bit of paper that meant I could apply for good jobs. But it didn't mean I actually had learned anything useful for those jobs but I had the bit of paper and that was what was required.

Now for someone who was not like me, not neurotypical or "academic" then this system would unfairly disqualify them from the work place. They may well have been better suited to the job in question but the lack of the bit of paper would mean they would not even get to apply. This is of course madness and a waste of talent.

I would suggest scrapping many degrees and replacing them with good tertiary education in vocational skills or apprentiship type systems linked to modern businesses. For example in my business it would be good to have engineering apprentices who could actually learn about the specifics of my specialised engineering business whilst doing some kind of book learning a few days a week. This I think would not only benefit the neurodivrese but also many NT's AND at the same time would be more useful for businesses.

Working from home would be my dream job in every way imaginable.

Yes I think autistic folks could have had it easier before the industrial revolution. Compulsory primary education had opposition from parents who needed the kids to work on the farm, so I guess that's what kids used to do before they invented school.

But even the compulsory schools might have been more Aspie-friendly at one time. I guess they used to be quiet, well-ordered places, and the teachers used to speak clearly. Very strict, but it was probably less doubtful what the rules were.

I feel that the world gets less suitable for me over time, though maybe it's just getting worse for everybody, and not an autism thing.

The whole argument is moot, the world is what it is. Is you want to live in a pre-technological society, go live in a rain forest.

But the idea that autism wasn't a disability before there was a public school system is just a pantload. Being fired because you can't socialize competently has nothing to do with "book learnin'."

I was literally just beginning an apprenticeship when I was diagnosed, and after completing the entire program, was screwed out of the opportunity to work by someone who discriminated against me because he didn't feel I was a hardsell enough salesman for his taste - in a profession based on ARTISTRY, not SALESMANSHIP - but his discrimination was based entirely on my autistic disabilities - not being socially aggressive and gregarious. That had not a thing to do with learning in a classroom, and what learning I did there, I did on my own, because nobody ever bothered to teach me anything, they just used me as slave labor.

So this notion that "once upon a time" autism wasn't such a disability, and it's only being diagnosed now because classrooms make it more obvious, is utter foolishness. It's being diagnosed more because it was added to the DSM and more Mental Health Professionals started looking for it. It was always there, and it was always a disability, it just wasn't being recognized as such because it didn't have a name.

Once upon a time, people with High Functioning Autism went from job to job their entire lives, unless they were lucky to have an obsessive interest they could get paid for, or find a job that allowed them to work alone - or became hobos and resorted to alcoholism and drug abuse to numb the pain of constant failure. They were known as "odd" and "peculiar" and "addled" because there was no official medical term for their strange and annoying personalities. You want to know where the autistics of the last several generations are? Check the homeless shelters.

Watch the movie Saving Mr. Banks - my guess is P L Travers' father was a perfect example of a Victorian Era High Functioning Autistic, who had enough special interest skill to find employment, but not enough social skill to maintain it. The stress and depression of repeated failure and despair at not being able to function socially and support his family drove him to the alcoholism that killed him.

Personally, this is exactly what I didn't like about Robison's book Look Me In The Eye - that it gives the impression that "autism is not really a disability" - maybe it hasn't been for Mister Lucky James Robison, but in my experience, it has been nothing but a disability and I'd thank him very much to stop speaking for people who haven't had his run of good fortune.

I feel better working from home too. More control of my environment.

I don't know about 1715 but in 1985 your social skills might have made you get fired from many jobs due to personality clashes but in 2015 with batteries of tests to weed out traits autistics have you are not likely to get a job to be fired from. And employers did not look for great social skills in accountants or computer programmers. I was told by many people from all walks of life when I started working that while getting along with fellow employees is a good thing that is not the primary reason you and them are there. There are going to be people you don't like and won't like you just be professional with them. Now the message from everybody is you MUST MUST MUST MUST Network to get a job and to keep it.

In your old line of work it was and is assumed people with poor social skills can not be a radio PERSONALITY. In fact a lot of that job is scripting. That is what I think happened to you. But you know better then me.

While there are true and significant disabilities with Autism there are a lot of disadvantages caused by American/Western value judgements and just the pace of life in 2015 that present as disabilities.

If you presented as weird or creepy people they thought of you as weird and creepy very bad for you but not as bad for you as I wonder if he is a terrorist/mass shooter

No one is suggesting going back to a pre-technological age. The world is indeed what it is but it can also change. If we understand why modern education disadvantages some types of mind we can work to mitigate those problems.


Well I am not suggesting it wasn't a disabity I am suggesting it was less of a disability


I agree but this is everything to do with the relatively new concept of a company. A few hundred years ago most people worked either in the family trade or some other small business (and by small I mean perhaps two or three people a craftsman and a couple of apprentices). Going to work in a company with lots of other people is only a thing we have done on a large scale in the last few generations of human history. As such the need to socialise with ones collegues is an almost entirely post industrial revolution skill.



Again all problems of the modern work place that mostly didn't exist a couple of hundred years ago.


This is certainly a reason why it is diagnosed more. But I would also posit that it is more of a disability today than in the past. Similarly dyslexia was not so much of a disability in a pre-literate society for obvious reasons.



It was certainly always there and probably was always somewhat of a disability but I simply suggest it was less so.


Again you are describing problems all caused by the modern post industrial revolution work place.
In the past people didn't go from job to job in fact the very notion of a job and an employer was quite rare. People would work on the family farm, small holding, or train in a trade and then take over that business in due course. There was very little team working involved in most jobs people did. There was no need to "get on" with anyone other than the person who was teaching you the craft you were learning who more than likely was a family member anyway. The need to mix with non family members and team work in business is a relatively new component of working life.




I remember him talking quite extensively about how it disabled him and how it disables many people.
But I think his argument is that it is society that does the disabling rather than anything intrinsic to the autism. So as society changes it can become more or less disabling of the neurodiverse depending on what those changes are. The post industrial revolution society that has emerged with all its new social structures like companies and work places where hundreds or people go to has certainly generated much wealth and prosperity. There are many advantages to our modern society and on the whole people live better healthier and longer lives BUT that there are some losers in this progress. I would suggest that the neurodiverse have got a raw deal here and we need to adjust society somewhat to redress that injustice.

I really don't want tell you how to feel about your autism. As an NT that would be foolish and well just wrong of me. But I don't think anything you have described thus far about your own experiences goes against what Mr Robison or myself have said.

As for the education system one neednt go back to pre-industrial times: Montessori, waldorf education, more teacher-centered teaching, smaller classes are especially good for primary and secondary schoolchildren on the spectrum. The German higher education system 30 years ago was very Asperger-friendly: thorough vocational training schools which diplomas allowed people to aspire for high positions in their companies without a university degree, a lot of possibilities to catch up on grades later; a university system with extremely few compulsory classes and a lot of self-study, the possibility to take - and switch ! - 3, 4 or more subjects, at least in humanities and social sciences, and to study them for 4 to 10 years (or longer) before graduating with (nearly) no real exams to take before graduation, and the Humboldtian model of higher education ("freedom to teach and to study" whatever the teachers and students want).

I think it is the lack of awareness that hinders us from making the necessary changes in the education system, at the workplace and elsewhere. There was more awareness of anthropological differences in the pre-enlightenment period, it got lost in the late 18th and in the 19th century (partly for the sake of egalitarian movements, partly because industrialization led to polarisation). The concept of diversity was somehow rediscovered in a more scientific way through neuro-science, developmental psychology and cognitive science, so what we still need is just a better understanding for how social stress, upbringing and biologic differences intertwine.