Reminder that today is the twitter-bomb, go tweet and retweet about boycotting Autism Speaks stuff! If you're not sure why we're boycotting Autism Speaks, well, I've got a tag called Problem With Autism Speaks and the boycott has a website. Feel free to read up. Why now is that Autism Speaks recently made an editorial that led to a bunch of parents who used to defend them and a bunch of organizations deciding enough was enough and realizing just how awful Autism Speaks really is.
An anonymous commenter asked me a question over on my This is Autism post.. It's a good question. My reply was long for a comment (I still answered in the comments) and I've been in a total writing-slump (note the lack of updates) so now it's a post too.
Here's the question.
Hi Anon!
I don't know as much as I'd like to about autism-specific stuff. I know that for disability in general, there's the 中国残疾人联合会 (Chinese Disabled Persons Federation is the English translation) and that disability doesn't exclude you from being required to go to school for the same years as everyone else.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean people actually go to school. There've been reports of autistic kids getting kicked out of mainstream classes and such, and there's definitely a sense that having an autistic student in the class will hurt the education of the other kids, meaning there have also been parents trying to get their kids autistic classmates kicked out.
There are also special private schools for autistic kids, which are super-expensive (and seem to be taking their advice from Autism Speaks, so that's a bad sign). The government has special schools for disabled students as well (not sure what the stats are for how many disabled kids are in regular classes and how many are at these schools or how it varies by disability type,) but these are apparently not that well suited for autistic needs.
Since autism is recognized as a disability, anything that applies to disability in general will apply to autism. As far as I know, there aren't any laws specifically about autism, but the disability laws are actually pretty good. [China was one of the first countries to ratify the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, and 残疾人权 (disabled person rights) is a specialization you can apparently go into here as a lawyer.] It's enforcement that has issues. [You know, like folks in the USA violate the ADA left right and center?]
An anonymous commenter asked me a question over on my This is Autism post.. It's a good question. My reply was long for a comment (I still answered in the comments) and I've been in a total writing-slump (note the lack of updates) so now it's a post too.
Here's the question.
Alyssa, I'm just wondering if there are any non-profit or government based agencies in China that resembles agencies such as the "Regional Center" in the U.S. I understand the social welfare in China is still developing. I also want to find out if China has laws and regulations enforcing equal treatment of autistic students in classrooms. Are there laws that mandates the enrollment of autistic students?
Hi Anon!
I don't know as much as I'd like to about autism-specific stuff. I know that for disability in general, there's the 中国残疾人联合会 (Chinese Disabled Persons Federation is the English translation) and that disability doesn't exclude you from being required to go to school for the same years as everyone else.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean people actually go to school. There've been reports of autistic kids getting kicked out of mainstream classes and such, and there's definitely a sense that having an autistic student in the class will hurt the education of the other kids, meaning there have also been parents trying to get their kids autistic classmates kicked out.
There are also special private schools for autistic kids, which are super-expensive (and seem to be taking their advice from Autism Speaks, so that's a bad sign). The government has special schools for disabled students as well (not sure what the stats are for how many disabled kids are in regular classes and how many are at these schools or how it varies by disability type,) but these are apparently not that well suited for autistic needs.
Since autism is recognized as a disability, anything that applies to disability in general will apply to autism. As far as I know, there aren't any laws specifically about autism, but the disability laws are actually pretty good. [China was one of the first countries to ratify the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, and 残疾人权 (disabled person rights) is a specialization you can apparently go into here as a lawyer.] It's enforcement that has issues. [You know, like folks in the USA violate the ADA left right and center?]
Related note: The US have NOT ratified the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The argument given have been that mandating that disabled people are people and therefore have the same human rights as all other humans is infringing on parents' "rights" to treat their children however they damn well please. Which is the same argument as the one as to why the US haven't ratified the convention on the rights of the child either.
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