Sunday, December 16, 2012

 

Twenty Seven Killed in Newtown, Connecticut School Shooting...

This week's most recent mass shooting highlights to me a problem that you will not hear discussed on the nightly news. The opinion I am about to express is one that many would be considered to be extreme, cruel, unenlightened, even crazy in a "modern society".Yet, when I first saw the photo of the the murderer, Adam Lanza, as a child I knew exactly what had happened. The shooter's neighbors described the Lanza as "troubled", as "odd", as "frightening", as "deeply disturbed" and "a ticking time bomb". One friend of the family, upon hearing of the shooting said, "I knew immediately that it had to be Adam".

Most telling, the family of the shooter described him as autistic...

Our Psycho-Medical-Pharmaceutical community, and most especially the public education system, have elivated autism and Asperger's to the level of a virtue. "Aspies" are praised for their intelligence and are forgiven, even defended, for their anti-social tendancies. The system enables (and therefore promotes) the permanence of the socially maladept autistic/Asperger's behaviors that are nearly identical in definition to the sociopathic personality disorder which is the hallmark of a serial killer.

I am so sick and tired of parents and teachers saying, "he's really intelligent, he just can't do well in school"...

If, as the "education professionals" (a pair of words which, after experiencing all I have experienced in this career, I will always cast in quotes) contend, Aspies and autistics are so capable and intelligent, why doesn't the system start teaching them social appropriateness and normal human connectedness.

I'm not saying that the educational system is entirely at fault for Friday's killings, any more than guns are. But we must certainly start looking to the "mollycoddling" of antisocial kids as a contributing factor.

It makes at least as much sense as blaming guns...

posted by huggy 9:32 PM