Todays reading introduced the medical condition of Autism. One point that I found interesting was the idea that Autism is never the same from patient to patient. Rather, the text explained that some struggled with numbers and memorization while others were extremely gifted in their quantitative abilities. I thoroughly enjoyed Howe’s point that those with Autism should not be claimed as “idiots” because some were extremely proficient in areas such as reading and musical abilities.

In the old day’s a lot of people were considered “idiots” because they were thought to be intellectually inferior to a lot of other people. although it turned out that a lot of those so called “idiots” possessed almost arcane abilities such as perfect pitch, the ability to multiply two and three digit numbers easily, and conversion skills from years to seconds. A lot of these people in modern day would be considered autistic.

I forgot to read the article and only found sources for the first assignment D:

In this reading, the author talks about the early history of autism, in which he emphasizes how autism was treated with disdain. Autism is a disease that has a wide variety of symptoms. Due to this, people in earlier times were often confused at whether to label them as “idiots,” which was the term used for people with mental illnesses or disabilities at the time. In one case, a young autistic boy had a great musical ability, but was greatly lacking skills in things such as mathematics. Although, there is still some inequality between “normal” people and those with disabilities, their treatment has greatly improved since then.A s time progressed and we learned more about the disabilities, those with them were given accomondations such as education that was made to help people with such disabilities.

I will be completely honest with you–I did not even read the article. I have no excuse except I didn’t check the syllabus.