By Kamran Nazeer; 230 pages. From the book jacket: "Using his own experiences to examine such topics as the difficulties of language, conversation as performance, and the politics of civility, Nazeer also gives us a rare and provocative exploration of the way that people -- all people -- learn to think and feel."
None of these stories are specifically success stories, and some of them aren't exactly hopeful, but all show the sometimes elaborate ways that adults with autism find to cope with the world.
- Story-telling style makes for enjoyable reading.
- Most of the stories are neither wildly hopeful nor completely hopeless.
- Interesting to see adjustments and how they work in the "real world."
- Nazeer is an engaging narrator.
- Gives you an opportunity to read popular nonfiction instead of just parenting books.
- Title may be misinterpreted as comparing autistic people to idiots.
- Only get parents' perspective in the case of the dead classmate.
- Despite occasional looks at the bigger picture, works best as a snapshot of individual lives.
- Introduction recalls that early classroom and the origin of the phrase "Send in the idiots!"
- Chapter 1 visits Andre, who uses puppets to communicate.
- Chapter 2 visits Randall, who works as a bicycle messenger.
- Chapter 3 visits Craig, who has found success as a speechwriter.
- Chapter 4 visits the parents of Elizabeth, who committed suicide in her 20s.
- Chapter 5 visits the teacher of that early class and the director of the school.
Have you ever looked around your child's special education classroom and wondered how these kids will survive as adults? Maybe some look like they'll find their own way to fit in, while others seem too far off on their own track to ever join the mainstream. Chances are you'll have lost track of most of them before your child reaches adulthood, but Kamran Nazeer, once a kid in one of those classrooms, resolved to track down classmates from an autistic school he attended as a four-year-old and examine their lives -- how they're doing, how they've done it, what allowances they still must make for their autism and how that fits into their grown-up lives,
Of the four profiled here, one has become successful as a speechwriter; one is a bicycle messenger; one works with computers and communicates through puppets; and one struggled mightily to find a place in the world before killing herself as a young adult, felled by the unmanageable combination of autism and depression. Counting the author, a civil servant, it's a collection of futures that, while not filling a parent with boundless hope, offer the possibility that accommodations and modifications may actually work in the "real world," despite what they'll tell you around an IEP table. And who are those idiots in the title, you may wonder -- the autistic kids, their caregivers, so-called experts? Turns out it's just a phrase one of the kids, the future speechwriter, liked to endlessly repeat.
