AUTISM FOR ALL THE "RAIN MEN" IN THE WORLD

Daniel Tammet is a fascinating author who is an Asperger's patient. He was educated under Margaret Thatcher and had the tremendous chance of being schooled after the reform she imposed: no more ghetto classes for special cases like autistic kids. Their position was in normal classes, with eventually some support and help due to their handicap. That enabled Tammet to thrive in languages. He was able to become conversant in any language within fifteen days. He learned Russian among other languages, and he had a career as an English teacher in the USSR, still there at the time. And he started writing books on his own experience. This evolution in the 1980s made it possible to integrate handicapped people into society. They had a proper education. They could get proper jobs, even if the jobs may have had to be slightly adapted. They were productive and creative. In some countries, France, for example, there was and still is some resistance and a great lack of care. All schools are not entirely accessible to people in wheelchairs. All schools do not have the properly trained personnel to take care of these students, and first of all, the teachers are often deficient in training in these fields of expertise. Yet awareness of the problem is becoming important internationally, and some serious progress has been made over the last fifty years. Associations, foundations, other institutions, or NGOs are working, though it often looks like a battle, in this field, which is a real ethical battlefield. I was classified in this category when I was 18. The administrative stigmatization has been running after me, at times even trying to block me, all my life, including right now in my old age. But that's life. It is people like Daniel Tammet who give us the courage to look down upon those bureaucrats and let them bark in a corner.