Monday 26 July 2010

The strange case of facilitated communication

During the late eighties I was working in a residential unit for autistic adults with severe learning difficulties. This was quite exciting because these people had absolutely no spoken language and some of them were prone to launching murderous assaults upon anybody who annoyed them in any way. They had all be recently released from long term institutions such as Harperbury Hospital in Hertfordshire, as part of the care in the community programme. While I was working there, we were approached by a group of people who offered to help us communicate more effectively with our residents. At that time most of them knew only a few Makaton signs; Makaton is a simplified version of British Sign Language. The method which was now suggested was facilitated communication.

Facilitated communication was very popular among some of those working with non-verbal autistic people at that time. It worked a bit like a Ouija Board. A large piece of cardboard with the alphabet printed on it was used and the autistic person's arm was held by the communicator and they were 'helped' to point to the letters. The person with severe learning difficulties who had never spoken a word in his life could then communicate by spelling out messages; the whole idea being that these people had actually learned to read and spell by themselves, quite unknown to anybody else. In fact they didn't have learning difficulties at all, they were really just normal people locked into bodies which would not obey them.

It sounded odd to me as I knew all these residents very well and simply could not believe that they could really read and write. The thesis was that their aggressive behaviour was caused by their inability to make themselves understood. Anyway, we went along with it and I watched with interest. it soon became clear to me that the whole thing was nonsense. rather than 'helping' the resident to spell out the words, the facilitator was, whether consciously or not, using the persons hand as a pointer and making up the messages herself. I began asking questions and making notes about what was happening, upon which a curious thing happened. The whole thing stopped working at once. It turned out that close observation had the effect of destroying the trust which existed in the room and damaging what was taking place. I agreed to stop taking notes and limited myself to asking questions of the facilitators when we were alone. It then appeared that even the presence of a sceptic was enough to disrupt what was happening. I was banned from even sitting in on the sessions.

I managed to get this stopped in the end, because the residents own money was being spent on this swindle and it was outrageous. Tests were carried out in the USA on this process and it was found that if the facilitator could not hear the questions being asked, then the autistic person could not answer. It was conclusively demonstrated that, as I suspected, the whole thing was ridiculous.

I mentioned Ouija Boards earlier and this was very similar to my experiences with contacting the dead. Because whenever I have taken part in seances or anything similar, exactly the same thing happens. It will not work while I am present. Very odd.

I have for years been suspicious of any unusual phenomenon which people grow angry about when questioned. I am also very suspicious of any sort of activity which is destroyed or disrupted by being watched or which stops taking place when a cynical observer is present. Transcendental Meditation, the transubstantiation of the Host, summoning up the dead, spoon bending, dowsing and so on are all like this in some way. So of course is autonomous education.

While I was allowed on lists such as HE-UK and EO, I asked many questions about autonomous education. The aim was not to make people angry but to try and make some sense of the thing. I soon discovered that people grew angry and defensive very quickly when questioned about this subject. The idea seemed to be that one should take the existence of this on faith and that it was bad form to be sceptical about it. This is how people react when questioned about their religious beliefs. I also noticed that when discussion turned to research, parents claimed that they would not want an unsympathetic observer to conduct research into autonomous education because their cynicism might harm the educational process. Hence the attempt to organise a boycott of the Ofsted survey last year and the determination of many not to take part in the Department for Education's longitudinal study of home education outcomes. This is similar to the way that dowsers will not allow objective observers to test their abilities. Those using telekinesis to bend spoons or clairvoyance to talk to predict the future also dislike being observed by non-believers. Their powers often fade under lack of sympathy!

There is another similarity between facilitated communication and autonomous education. Parents often follow these unconventional treatments when they feel that they have been failed by orthodox medicine and education. So it is in many cases with autonomous education. Conventional schooling has been a flop for their child and so they turn to alternative methods. An alternative method which cannot be measured, assessed or, most important of all, ever disproved. This has to be an attractive prospect. My child was written off as a failure/bullied/struggled/could not cope, but it was nothing to do with her at all; it was the system which failed. I have seen this many times in the field of autism with not only facilitated communication but also Holding Therapy, mega-vitamins and various other things.

Mind, I do not say that autonomous education actually does fall into the same category as some of the other belief systems which I discuss above; only that its adherents behave in the same way. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out, but I have to say that my own inclination is moving in a certain direction.

75 comments:

  1. You don't mention Emerson & Grayson's work on FC, Simon. As they point out in an early review paper http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a915897926

    'controlled test-based studies have characteristically not done justice to the complexity of the issues which surround FC.'

    One could say the same about some assessments of autonomous education.

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  2. "complexity of the issues which surround FC."

    This was coprehensively dealt with in the early nineteen nineties by an American team of researchers. they fitted headphones to the facilitator and then gave her different questions to the ones being asked of the autistic person. The questions answerd in this way were those asked of the facilitator. When white noise was fed into the headphones, no questions at all were answered. i don't say that this was always conscious fraud, but fraud it certainly was. I tried feeding questions to the facilitators to which they would not know the answer but which the resident did. They always failed.

    "One could say the same about some assessments of autonomous education."

    If autonomous education really does have any similarities to facilitated communication then it is damned!

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  3. So you're saying the Emerson & Grayson work on eye-tracking is invalidated by work that pre-dated it and didn't involve eye-tracking?

    This is exactly what they meant about the 'complexity of issues'. If many variables are involved in a process, each of the variables needs to be investigated separately. FC is a complex process. Just because some FC is fraudulent, doesn't mean it all is.

    Autonomous education is, likewise, a complex process involving many variables; to consider it 'damned' because, like FC, it is a complex process, is unjustified.

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  4. "Just because some FC is fraudulent, doesn't mean it all is."

    Substitute 'communication with the dead' for 'FC' and this is the same argument which was used in support of spiritualism a century or so ago. It is not a question of 'some' facilitiated communication being fraudulent. In every case where there has been systematic testing and questions asked to which the facilitator has no access, then the method fails. There have been one or two cases of individuals with cerebral palsy comminicating in this way; not one of non-verbal people with autism.

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  5. You are conflating analogous reasoning with weight of evidence.

    The possibility of communication with the dead has been largely discredited because the evidence for it is extremely flimsy. It does not follow that we *know* communication with the dead to be impossible and that every claim for such communication is invalid. We cannot ever know that for sure, because it is an untestable hypothesis.

    FC has received nothing like the same attention. Unlike 'communication with the dead', FC methodology can be decomposed (sorry!) into its component variables and tested.

    I don't dispute your claim about the facilitators' questions, but facilitators' questions are only one variable in a complex process. Emerson & Grayson tracked eye-movements and found higher than chance foveation on letters that spelled words as part of sentences that made sense.

    Saying that there is no case of 'non-verbal people with autism' communicating using FC, is firstly not true, according to Emerson & Grayson's studies, secondly begs the question of what you mean by 'non-verbal' and 'autism', and thirdly is an induction error. In effect you are saying that in the absence of any examples of white crows, it is safe to conclude that all crows are black. As when a previous government told us there was no evidence that mad-cow disease could be transmitted to humans through eating beef. Indeed there was no evidence at that time. It did not follow that such evidence could not exist.

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  6. "In effect you are saying that in the absence of any examples of white crows, it is safe to conclude that all crows are black."

    Not a bit of it! There is nothing inherently implausible in the idea that a white crow exists, even though I have never seen one. There is something very implausible in the idea that somebody who has never spoken a single word in his life or ever displayed any signs of any but the most rudimentary intellectual functioning could have become literate without anybody noticing. Still, just because it seems implausible, that does not mean that it cannot happen. What we must rely upon here is evidence. It is possible that somebody might, although not being able to read, reognise groups of letters forming words which are often seen and be able to distinguish these from random collections of letters. this is not literacy. I have owrked with autistic adults who although very low functioning were able to do jigsaw puzzles with the pieces face down, just by the shapes alone. i am guessing that this is probably what is being observed here. this is a simple explanation for the possibility that an illiterate and low functioning person could notice the difference between a word and a colection of letters made at random.

    this is not facilitated communication though. Facilitated communication entails opening upma line of communication so that a non-verbal indicidual can actually answer questions and give information. typical questions asked in controlled tests have been things like, 'What colour is your toothbrush?' Such a question has never been answered successfully under proper conditions. It is interesting, although disconcerting, that you accept the comparison between this and autonomous education.

    I gave facilitated communication as a more or less typical example of these rackets. Holding Therapy was another popular stunt twenty years ago. It has also fallen into disue for much the same reason. Once again, it would not work when I was around!

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  7. "There is something very implausible in the idea that somebody who has never spoken a single word in his life or ever displayed any signs of any but the most rudimentary intellectual functioning could have become literate without anybody noticing."

    The individuals in the Emerson & Grayson study had poor motor control. They had, however, had many, many hours of exposure to television, with accompanying subtitles. There is absolutely no reason why they could not have learned to read or spell through this medium, even if they were unable to speak or write.

    I'd be interested to know how you would measure 'intellectual functioning' in someone who couldn't speak and who had poor motor control.

    It seems to me that you are not relying on the evidence at all, but your own speculation about something you happen to believe is implausible.

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  8. "this is a simple explanation for the possibility that an illiterate and low functioning person could notice the difference between a word and a colection of letters made at random."

    But isn't this the difference between an illiterate person and on the path to literacy, all be it at the beginning?

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  9. I had no idea that anybody still believed in fcilitated communication. I have been looking up some of the research on the subject, but I'm not sure if it is available on the Internet. I have in front of me the March 1993 edition of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Vol. 23 No.1), which contains two devastating exposes of this method of communication.

    "but your own speculation about something you happen to believe is implausible."

    No, I am saying that is seems unlikely but that I am waiting for the evidence. I have been waiting for almost twenty five years so far!

    "I'd be interested to know how you would measure 'intellectual functioning' in someone who couldn't speak and who had poor motor control."

    Good point. Sometimes intellectual functioning is so low as to be impossible to measure. However, you can do things even with somebody with very little motor control. You might show the person a photograph of the mother, for instance. Sometimes this might be greeted with a smile or voaclisations. Showing a control picture will elicit no response. This is quite an interesting although perhaps not entirely relevant topic.

    "
    But isn't this the difference between an illiterate person and on the path to literacy, all be it at the beginning?"

    Also a good point. However unless we can be sure that the person is actually reacognising words and also decoding the meaning, it is impossible to speak of literacy. I can recognise some Chinese ideograms simply from having seen them a lot. I do not know what they mean though. If my eye tracking were to be examined while I was presented with a list of ideograms, it would show that I lingered on certain signs that I recognise. This does not mean at all that I can read Chinese!

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  10. http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/video-jenna-lumbard-non-verbal-autistic-author-98273633

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  11. http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/video-carly-fleischmann-non-verbal-autism-2328112

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  12. Simon wrote,
    "While I was allowed on lists such as HE-UK and EO, I asked many questions about autonomous education. The aim was not to make people angry but to try and make some sense of the thing. I soon discovered that people grew angry and defensive very quickly when questioned about this subject. The idea seemed to be that one should take the existence of this on faith and that it was bad form to be sceptical about it."

    My impression is that people answered your initial questions fully and openly and only became defensive when you seemed unable to understand repeated explanations and appeared to go out of your way to upset people, (appearing to) purposely misunderstand or ignore any points you could not dismiss. Either you disagreed with their arguments, which if fine of course, but why continue to argue the same points over and over if you understood but disagreed, or you did not understand and so kept asking, but then, why so aggressive if you just lacked understanding?

    There is research to show that AE works, Alan Thomas, for instance (he is more interested in informal learning it has similarities) and US research has shown that structured or unschooling methods make no significant difference to outcomes (even though autonomous educators may not even have the same target outcomes as those tested in the studies). Autonomous educators are not against research per se, they just doubt the ability of some researchers to see through their bias' or the bias' of those providing the funding. Would you be happy for structured home education research to be carried out be a group of autonomous home educators? Would you have allowed your daughter to take part in such a study?

    Simon wrote,
    "Conventional schooling has been a flop for their child and so they turn to alternative methods. An alternative method which cannot be measured, assessed or, most important of all, ever disproved."

    But it has been measured, at least as well as structured UK home education and possibly better (because of Alan Thomas), why do you keep insisting that it has not?

    "Mind, I do not say that autonomous education actually does fall into the same category as some of the other belief systems which I discuss above; only that its adherents behave in the same way. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out, but I have to say that my own inclination is moving in a certain direction."

    So are you suggesting that your daughter has never learnt anything autonomously? Everything she learnt was chosen and taught by you, or if she learnt anything autonomously it was a failure? Is Simone incapable of autonomous learning?

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  13. You could try googling the names of the authors I mentioned.

    "But isn't this the difference between an illiterate person and on the path to literacy, all be it at the beginning?"

    Quite. Whether someone is 'literate' or not would depend on one's definition of literacy. How many chinese characters would one need to learn to be literate in chinese? The phrase 'piece of string' springs to mind.

    One would hardly expect someone who had learned to read and spell but whose ability was undiscovered until they were adult, to be fully literate. That's not the point. The point is that they appear to be able to communicate by spelling out words.

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  14. I found the abstracts for the devastating exposes you refer to. A total of nine participants - and presumably not the same participants who had featured in previous studies claiming FC worked. Hmm.

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  15. "But it has been measured, at least as well as structured UK home education and possibly better (because of Alan Thomas), why do you keep insisting that it has not?"

    Because the research on conventional teaching involves hundreds of thousands of children. Most of Alan Thomas' work on informal learning centred around tenty six children. It is a grotesquely small and self-selected sample.


    "but then, why so aggressive if you just lacked understanding?"

    Completely untrue, I was never aggressive.

    "Would you be happy for structured home education research to be carried out be a group of autonomous home educators? Would you have allowed your daughter to take part in such a study?"

    Of course. Why ever wouldn't I?

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  16. "I found the abstracts for the devastating exposes you refer to. A total of nine participants - and presumably not the same participants who had featured in previous studies claiming FC worked. Hmm."

    Very similar problem to autonomous education. those involved will not cooperate with anybody whom they see as being part of the autism 'establishment'. The idea being that having an objective observer present destroys the trust upon which the whole thing depends. I don't know whether you have ever been involved with this business suzyg, but you might be astounded at how the stunt is pulled. To begin with, the 'facilitator' must always guide the hand of the subject; none of this works if the subject is not being touched or guided in this way. Every single time that headphones are used which block out the facilitator's hearing, the whole thing breaks down. Most of these people have enough motor control to bring a spoon to their mouths accurately or do jigsaw puzzles; it is hard to see why they would be unable to tap in messages on a specially adapted keyboard. This never happens though.

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  17. "Because the research on conventional teaching involves hundreds of thousands of children. Most of Alan Thomas' work on informal learning centred around tenty six children. It is a grotesquely small and self-selected sample."

    What about structured home education? Pointing towards research into education at schools with trained teachers in class situations will not do. Where is the research that supports your method of home educating? At least there is some that supports informal home education in the UK!

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  18. So are you suggesting that your daughter has never learnt anything autonomously? Everything she learnt was chosen and taught by you, or if she learnt anything autonomously it was a failure? Is Simone incapable of autonomous learning?

    If none of these suggestions are accurate you must know that autonomous education works.

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  19. "What about structured home education? Pointing towards research into education at schools with trained teachers in class situations will not do. Where is the research that supports your method of home educating? At least there is some that supports informal home education in the UK!"

    Touche indeed! I shall have to make a post about this later, when I have time to do it.

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  20. So are you suggesting that your daughter has never learnt anything autonomously? Everything she learnt was chosen and taught by you, or if she learnt anything autonomously it was a failure? Is Simone incapable of autonomous learning?

    If none of these suggestions are accurate you must know that autonomous education works.

    Either Simone is incapable of autonomous learning or does it very, very poorly (which would mean that she would be classed as a failure in the fictional study of structured home education carried out by autonomous educators) or you know that autonomous education works. Which is it Simon?

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  21. "I don't know whether you have ever been involved with this business suzyg, but you might be astounded at how the stunt is pulled."

    I have no doubt at all that such 'stunts' have been 'pulled'. But the fact that some people might have 'pulled a stunt' does not mean that people who are assumed to be non-verbal, and assumed not to be able to read, can't understand speech, order their thoughts into speech patterns which they can communicate to other people using the appropriate medium.

    Since I can access only the abstracts of the papers you mentioned, I have no idea what motor skills the participants had. If they were capable of using a keyboard, albeit an adapted one, why was FC used at all? I thought it was devised for people who *couldn't* use a keyboard.

    I notice you still haven't made any comments on the studies I referred to.

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  22. "Either Simone is incapable of autonomous learning or does it very, very poorly (which would mean that she would be classed as a failure in the fictional study of structured home education carried out by autonomous educators) or you know that autonomous education works. Which is it Simon?"

    That autonomous education, that is to say children learning things simply for their own satisfaction, takes place with most children, including my own, has never been in doubt. What is les certain is whether or not it is wise or desirable for this to be the only, or even the main, form of education.

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  23. Suzyg,

    Could it be that FC was used because keyboards were much harder to use when the method was developed? It would have been typewriters then and these were much harder to use than modern keyboards.

    From reading Wikipedia (which apparently is as accurate as Britannica according to the journal, Nature) it sounds as though many FC supporters accept that in many cases the communication is influenced by the facilitator but there do appear to be genuine cases where FC has worked as advertised.

    The phrase "independent typing" is defined by supporters of FC as "typing without physical support", i.e., without being touched by another person.[41] Skeptics of FC do not agree that this definition of independence suffices because of the possibility of influence by the facilitator. For example, Sue Rubin, an FC user featured in the autobiographical documentary Autism Is A World,[42] reportedly types without anyone touching her; however, she reports that she requires a facilitator to hold the keyboard and offer other assistance.[43]

    A number of other people who began communicating with FC have reportedly gone on to be independent typists (i.e., without physical support), and in some cases read aloud the words typed (Biklen et al., 2005). An example of near-independent typing is shown in Douglas Biklen's documentary of artist Larry Bissonnette, My Classic Life as an Artist: A Portrait of Larry Bissonnette,[44] produced at Syracuse University. Critics complain that these cases have not been objectively and independently verified;[38] such verification is absent in peer-reviewed studies. However, a few individuals have in fact been cited as independent typists in independently reviewed publications. Examples include Jamie Burke (Broderick and Kasa-Hendrickson, 2001),[45] and Lucy Blackman, author of the autobiography Lucy's Story (Blackman, 2001).[2][46]

    Douglas Biklen has compiled the reports from three FC users about their progress toward independent typing.[41]

    Beukelman and Mirenda, authors of a leading textbook on Augmentative and Alternative Communication, express strong reservations about the use of FC but nonetheless note the existence of "a small group of people around the world who began communicating through FC and are now able to type either independently or with minimal, hand-on-shoulder support. There can be no doubt that, for them, FC 'worked,' in that it opened the door to communication for the first time. ... We include FC here because of Sharisa Kochmeister, Lucy Blackman, Larry Bissonnette, and others who now communicate fluently and independently, thanks to FC. For them, the controversy has ended."[2]

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  24. "What is les certain is whether or not it is wise or desirable for this to be the only, or even the main, form of education."

    So basically, you agree that autonomous education works, you just dispute who decides what is learnt? Is this belief in AE of yours based on experience or faith? Why is AE comparable to FC when you believe one works but not the other?


    What exactly would you like a study into autonomous education to determine? What would your criteria be when judging success and failure and why should your definition of success or failure be considered more appropriate than that of autonomously educating families? You said you wouldn't mind taking part in a study into structured home education carried out by autonomous educators. Would this still apply if the autonomous educators defined success and failure in their terms rather than yours?

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  25. "Would this still apply if the autonomous educators defined success and failure in their terms rather than yours?"

    It honestly would not bother me. I am used to having conventional educators condemn my methods as being practically child abuse. This does not worry me and neither would the critical opinion of either autonomous educators or anybody else.

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  26. "I notice you still haven't made any comments on the studies I referred to."

    I don't want to appear snobbish about Nottingham Trent, which was until the early nineteen nineties a secondary modern or something. This is one study which claims to have been able to tell which letters a subject was looking at before the keys were pressed. This is more of an art than a science. The crucial test would be for it to be done with headphones on the facilitator generating white nois. if the subject could then answer questions, then it would be interesting.

    "Could it be that FC was used because keyboards were much harder to use when the method was developed?"

    Cardboard boards have been used which require no pressure at all. Canon Communicators which were a bit like dymo-tape markers were also used. The difficulty is always that a facilitator is touching the hand of the person doing the typing. I note the cases you cite above, but I am afraid that if Biklen told me the sun was shining I would have to look out of the window to check. By the mid nineties, this whole thing had really been exposed. Some parents are desperate to believe and there are people who are prepared to prey upon them.

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  27. When Bikle was appointed Dean of education at Syracuse, there was an absolute outcry from professionals involved in autism and special education. the following statement was issued;


    STATEMENT OF DISAPPROVAL
    OF THE RESEARCH AND TEACHER EDUCATION COMMUNITIES
    IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
    OF THE APPOINTMENT OF DOUGLAS BIKLEN AS
    DEAN OF EDUCATION AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

    29 October 2005

    We, the undersigned, are fully aware that Syracuse University and its School of Education do not depend on our approval for making administrative decisions. However, we also recognize the responsibilities of academic institutions in making leadership appointments in their departments, colleges, and schools of education. Now, as never before, research and training in education are being scrutinized and typically found culpable for the poor learning outcomes of many students. Selection of a dean, therefore, constitutes an important and very public signal of how seriously a university views its responsibilities towards public education. By selecting someone whose record constitutes an argument against rigorous science in research involving individuals with disabilities, Syracuse University has sent a public message of disregard for education that undermines not only its own standing among academic institutions but also, by negative example, threatens the credibility of all educators engaged in rigorous research addressing critical problems in teaching and learning.

    In our opinion, it is essential that both individuals and institutions adhere to the highest standards of scientific rigor in their professional conduct. We therefore express our strong disapproval of the appointment of Douglas Biklen as Dean of Education at Syracuse University for reasons that we explain.

    Since the early 1990s, Professor Biklen has persistently and, in our view inadvisably, promoted training in and the use of facilitated communication (FC), an ostensible means of communication that has been resoundingly and thoroughly discredited by many scientific studies. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Association on Mental Retardation, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Association for Behavior Analysis, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the New York State Department of Health have all gone on record advising against the use of FC. Furthermore, the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health has expressed its criticism of Professor Biklen’s appointment, with which we concur.

    As researchers and members of the teacher education communities in special education, we are deeply concerned by the harm to individuals with disabilities, their families, therapists, and teachers resulting from the use of FC. The harm to which we refer includes the false hopes, false accusations of abuse, wasted learning opportunities, and miseducation of teachers fostered by FC and training in its use.

    Many controlled investigations by scientists who study communication, education, and mental health have led to a consensus that FC is, if not a hoax, an unreliable and discredited means of communication. We find it disturbing that Professor Biklen has ignored this evidence and continued to insist that the scientific studies revealing the illegitimacy of FC are themselves unreliable. Professor Biklen may have good intentions, but his unrelenting advocacy of FC in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that it typically results in counterfeit messages (produced unwittingly by the “facilitator”) does not serve the cause of science or of social justice or of individuals with disabilities. We wish to disassociate ourselves from the fraudulent claims of FC and the non-scientific methods used by Professor Biklen and his colleagues in their attempts to validate the technique.

    .

    It was signed by the sixty most important names in the field in the US academic world.

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  28. "So basically, you agree that autonomous education works, you just dispute who decides what is learnt? "

    No, I wouldn't put it like that. All children have interests that they pursue because they are interested in them. In my daughter's case there was birdwatching, for example. Other children become absorbed by dinosaurs, knights, prime numbers; all kinds of things in fact. I don't think that anybody should or even could decide what subjects take a child's fancy in this way. What I am disputing is whether or not these casual interests or crazes by a child should constitute the whole of her educational attainment. I don't think that this is wise, you apparently think that it is.

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  29. "What I am disputing is whether or not these casual interests or crazes by a child should constitute the whole of her educational attainment."

    But you are not disputing that autonomous learning is efficient in that they learn what they set out to learn, you just dispute that they will learn what you think they should learn?

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  30. "I don't want to appear snobbish about Nottingham Trent, which was until the early nineteen nineties a secondary modern or something. This is one study which claims to have been able to tell which letters a subject was looking at before the keys were pressed. This is more of an art than a science. The crucial test would be for it to be done with headphones on the facilitator generating white nois. if the subject could then answer questions, then it would be interesting."

    I wondered when you'd notice the Nottingham Trent connection. Andy Grayson also works at the OU – presumably that institution is the educational equivalent, in your eyes, of chatting to your mates down the pub. You're remarkably coy about your alma mater, Simon.

    Not sure why you think eye-tracking is an art; foveation can be digitially recorded and the focus of gaze determined by statistical analysis of saccade clusters. We are not talking about a researcher peering into the participant’s face and having a hunch that they are looking at the letter ‘b’ or whatever.

    You could use eye movements alone to assess communication in this manner, and have the results verified by independent judges analysing the eye-tracking footage.

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  31. "It honestly would not bother me. I am used to having conventional educators condemn my methods as being practically child abuse. This does not worry me and neither would the critical opinion of either autonomous educators or anybody else."

    Even if you knew the research could lead to the banning of structured home education?

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  32. "You could use eye movements alone to assess communication in this manner, and have the results verified by independent judges analysing the eye-tracking footage."

    You could and it would be very interesting to know if those looking at these tapes could read the messages entirely by tracking the eye movements of the subject. that might be good evidence if somebody who could not see where the finger went could decode the text in this way.

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  33. "But you are not disputing that autonomous learning is efficient in that they learn what they set out to learn, you just dispute that they will learn what you think they should learn?"

    Not even that. I did not say that I thought that autonomous education was efficient; I said that it happened. I don't think that a child learning about knights or birdwatching in this way is likely to be as efficient as a structured course of teaching. It happens and does no harm as part of a child's life. I wouldn't like to see it replace proper teaching though.

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  34. How do you explain the people who began communicating with FC and then moved on to keyboards (see quote from Wikipeadia above)? If their FC communications were faked, why did they not reveal all when the began typing?

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  35. "Not even that. I did not say that I thought that autonomous education was efficient; I said that it happened. I don't think that a child learning about knights or birdwatching in this way is likely to be as efficient as a structured course of teaching."

    But autonomous learning includes structured courses of teaching.

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  36. "I said that it happened. I don't think that a child learning about knights or birdwatching in this way is likely to be as efficient as a structured course of teaching. "

    So does this mean that Simone did not learn very much about birdwatching? Is this why you doubt the efficiency of autonomous education, because Simone failed at it?

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  37. So, assuming Simone if very poor at autonomous learning, a study is about to be carried out into structured home education by autonomous educators, the results of which will decide if structured home education will be allowed to continue and you know that Simone will fail because the study will use autonomous learning as it's measure of success or failure and will ignore everything you consider as a measure of success, would you allow her to take part?

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  38. "I said that it happened. I don't think that a child learning about knights or birdwatching in this way is likely to be as efficient as a structured course of teaching."

    Why do you think the US research found no significant difference in outcomes when comparing structured with unschooling education approaches?

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  39. "How do you explain the people who began communicating with FC and then moved on to keyboards (see quote from Wikipeadia above)? If their FC communications were faked, why did they not reveal all when the began typing?"

    I explain it by the fact that these involve Douglas Biklen. Nobody else has managed to find any such cases.

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  40. "So does this mean that Simone did not learn very much about birdwatching? Is this why you doubt the efficiency of autonomous education, because Simone failed at it?"

    "So, assuming Simone is very poor at autonomous learning.....Simone will fail....Simone is incapable of autonomous learning or does it very, very poorly (which would mean that she would be classed as a failure"

    I like this! You keep linking my daughter's name with the word fail and failure, presumably in the hope that I shall grow angry and start sputtering with rage. Children can learn quite a bit in this way, but it often tends to be patchy and not very systematic. We all acquire various scrappy knowledge like this, both when we are children and also as adults. I don't regard this as sufficient for an effective education. You do and so are evidently content with this system.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Simon wrote,
    "I like this! You keep linking my daughter's name with the word fail and failure, presumably in the hope that I shall grow angry and start sputtering with rage."

    Not at all, I'm trying to help you understand why autonomous educators may not be happy to take part in research where the researchers are hostile or biased against autonomous methods or aims, especially when the results could affect the future of autonomous education. The question I asked above is the equivalent of the question you ask of autonomous educators.

    "Children can learn quite a bit in this way, but it often tends to be patchy and not very systematic."

    How do you explain the US research that found no significant difference in outcomes when comparing structured with unschooling education approaches?

    "We all acquire various scrappy knowledge like this, both when we are children and also as adults."

    Yes, and some of us choose, autonomously, to make use of structured courses of instruction to further those interests. How can you claim that the resulting knowledge is scrappy?

    "I don't regard this as sufficient for an effective education. You do and so are evidently content with this system."

    You do not think it provides a sufficient education because your daughter did not do it very well, or possibly did not have access to a structured course when she wanted it. This is not the case with my children who have all followed up subjects they have a particular interest in with text book or taught courses. They are literate, numerate, have a good general knowledge and have gained places on the FE courses they wanted places on. They enjoy learning and are able to learn whatever they choose to learn when they want to learn it. These were our objectives so in our judgement, autonomous education has been a success. They do not, however have handfuls of GCSEs so you may well consider them failures. Each to their own... (except that you seem to want to prevent people following our methods).

    ReplyDelete
  42. "My impression is that people answered your initial questions fully and openly and only became defensive when you seemed unable to understand repeated explanations and appeared to go out of your way to upset people, (appearing to) purposely misunderstand or ignore any points you could not dismiss."

    That is my impression too. To begin with, I defended you when friends with less patience, or more insight, than I were getting angry with you. I thought you must be very socially inept, possibly with asperger's, and didn't realise the effect that your comments had on other people. I couldn't believe that anyone would come on to an HE forum just to be vindictive. Live and learn, as they say.

    I'm thinking of starting a blog myself. It will be called Structured Home Education Cynic, and my profile will go like this:

    I am an fluffy, middle aged woman who grew up in England during the fifties and sixties. I educated my daughter myself because I could not be bothered to get her up for school. I cannot abide intellectual snobs, know-it-alls and control freaks, which is perhaps why I do not get on particularly well with structured educators.

    Offensive, isn't it?
    (I hope the structured HErs here realise that I don't mean this...)

    ReplyDelete
  43. Simon, did you follow up my links? They link to articles about two non-verbal autistic young people who communicate by typing. The videos that accompany the first piece are particularly interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  44. "Offensive, isn't it?"

    Offensive to whom?

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  45. "I thought you must be very socially inept, possibly with asperger's"

    I don't object to this personally, because I have an appalling sense of humour. Others though may see it as the equivalent of calling somebody who drops things a spastic. I am rather surprised that in this day and age, this sort of casual name calling based upon disablity should still be regarded as OK. There are actually people on here who have children on the autistic spectrum and I really think that it would be tactful and courteous to avoid this in the future. If you had ever had experience of Asperger's, I doubt that you would bandy the term about so lightlu kust in order to score a debating point.

    ReplyDelete
  46. "If you had ever had experience of Asperger's, I doubt that you would bandy the term about so lightlu kust in order to score a debating point."

    Err, I don't think it was a debating point, it sounded like a genuine concern on their part.

    From someone with family experience of Asperger's who is was not offended at all! It's nice to see that some people out their are aware of the condition and prepared to make allowances.

    ReplyDelete
  47. ""Offensive, isn't it?"

    Offensive to whom?"

    Really? Are you sure you are not on the autistic spectrum?

    ReplyDelete
  48. "Err, I don't think it was a debating point, it sounded like a genuine concern on their part."

    If only making such a diagnosis was as easy as reading a few comments on an Internet list. Would you really say of somebody who trips up a few times, 'Oh, I thought you had cerebral palsy'? I'm guessing probably not. Still, if other people don't mind, then that's fine by me. It is just that working with people on the autistic spectrum has probably made me a little sensitive about this. I'm not in general much of a one for political correctness, so if nobody else minds, then that is fine.

    ReplyDelete
  49. "Really? Are you sure you are not on the autistic spectrum?"

    Actually, I really don't feel comfortable about the use of "autistic spectrum" and "Asperger's" in this way. Could I ask people again to stop doing this?

    ReplyDelete
  50. ""Offensive, isn't it?"

    Offensive to whom?"

    Really? Are you sure you are not on the autistic spectrum? "

    I assumed that you were trying to be funny and I can take a joke against myself as well as anybody. I don't think that it is a sign of autism to see the funny side when somebody is taking the piss out of you. Or are you suggesting that only an autistic person would fail to be offended by your jokes? Very puzzling.

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  51. "If only making such a diagnosis was as easy as reading a few comments on an Internet list."

    I don't think they attempted to make a diagnosis. It sounds as though they were just concerned that this might be an issue - they were concerned for you. Why do you find it so difficult to identify with people who have different views to yourself? You assumed earlier that I was attempting to make you angry (it's all about me and my feelings) but I'm sure it was obvious to others that I was attempting to help you identify with the feelings of autonomous educators by turning your question around, just as the other anonymous did with the Structured Home Education Cynic blog idea.

    ReplyDelete
  52. "I assumed that you were trying to be funny and I can take a joke against myself as well as anybody. I don't think that it is a sign of autism to see the funny side when somebody is taking the piss out of you."

    It didn't sound as though your thought it was funny, it sounded as though you didn't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  53. I don't think it was meant as a joke, Simon. They were trying to make a point. The fact that you missed the point is why people wonder about your ability to relate to others.

    ReplyDelete
  54. "just as the other anonymous did with the Structured Home Education Cynic blog idea."

    Yes, I found this amusing. Apparently though, that indicates that I am on the autistic spectrum!

    "they were concerned for you."

    The least vulgar expression which I can use about that is, 'come off it'.

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  55. "I don't think it was meant as a joke, Simon."

    I did not for a moment think that this was meant to be a joke.

    ReplyDelete
  56. "It didn't sound as though your thought it was funny, it sounded as though you didn't get it."

    I think that at least one person here has a defective sense of humour and I hope that it is not me! Saying 'offensive to whom?' in a deadpan way was a joking response to your own attempt to deflate me. Not all humour is slapstick comedy, some of us prefer something a little more subtle. I'm sorry that you failed to catch the joke.

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  57. ""It didn't sound as though your thought it was funny, it sounded as though you didn't get it."

    I think that at least one person here has a defective sense of humour and I hope that it is not me! Saying 'offensive to whom?' in a deadpan way was a joking response to your own attempt to deflate me. "

    It wasn't my attempt to deflate you (I didn't write the blog bit), and I suspect it wasn't an attempt to deflate anyway but an(other) attempt to help you relate to people with alternative views to yours.

    "The least vulgar expression which I can use about that is, 'come off it'."

    You really should try not to judge others by your own standards.

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  58. "It wasn't my attempt to deflate you (I didn't write the blog bit), and I suspect it wasn't an attempt to deflate anyway but an(other) attempt to help you relate to people with alternative views to yours."

    Maybe seeing things from other peoples point of view is deflating for Simon.

    ReplyDelete
  59. "If you had ever had experience of Asperger's, I doubt that you would bandy the term about so lightlu kust in order to score a debating point."

    I have. One of my children has it. This is why I was concerned, and defending you, you remind me of my child.

    I am the Anonymous who made the original comment, by the way.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Could the Anonymouses identify themselves in some way (Anonymous A, B or C for example) for the benefit of spectators? It's a bit like watching a match at Wimbledon without being able to see the players.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Yes, I was feeling the same way suzyg!

    ReplyDelete
  62. ".. watching a match at Wimbledon without being able to see the players."

    Yes, I've almost forgotten who I am!
    I'm responsible for the HE Cynic post, the links to the Autism Support Network and the post above suzyg's at 11.53.

    ReplyDelete
  63. I'll hold my hands up to the posts about people answering your list questions openly initially, the questions about the US research that found no difference in outcomes between structured and unschooling home-ed, the questions about Simone's experiences of autonomous education and her apparent inability to choose a structured approach when it's necessary to gain a good understanding of subjects she is intrinsically interested in and the question about the fictional research into structured home-ed by autonomous educators who would like to see it banned.

    BTW Simon, have you leant nothing thoroughly and carefully since your parents or teachers stopped directing your education, or has it all been scrappy and second rate since school/college/university leaving age?

    ReplyDelete
  64. Whoops, the post timed at 15:11 (but really sent at 23:11) was by me!

    ReplyDelete
  65. "Children can learn quite a bit in this way, but it often tends to be patchy and not very systematic. We all acquire various scrappy knowledge like this, both when we are children and also as adults. I don't regard this as sufficient for an effective education."

    My AS child took science GCSE's as a way of consolidating her knowledge, and was very disappointed when she realised that her knowledge already far exceeded that which was necessary for the GCSE course. She got A*s without doing a stroke of work. She is completely self-taught, and was teaching me by the age of 11.

    ReplyDelete
  66. LOL anonymous X, well done to your daughter for learning so much without a course, Simon really has no idea, does he?

    ReplyDelete
  67. "My AS child took science GCSE's as a way of consolidating her knowledge, and was very disappointed when she realised that her knowledge already far exceeded that which was necessary for the GCSE course. She got A*s without doing a stroke of work"

    Since you use the plural here, I am assuming that your daughter sat separate sciences rather than the double award. Tell me, how did you get round the problems of authenticating coursework? We did IGCSEs to avoid this, but I would be interested to know how the GCSEs worked. Were they taken at a maintained school or what?

    ReplyDelete
  68. Distance learning tutors can authenticate coursework.

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  69. "Distance learning tutors can authenticate coursework"

    Yes, I know this. I was just wondering how you managed for the practicals in biology and chemistry. What board did you use? I am interested in this because I know a couple of parents locally who are asking about this very subject.

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  70. I'm not anonymous X so I wouldn't know, my child took his science GCSE at college. Why not ask the distance learning schools?

    BTW, why does it matter if colleges only offer re-take courses for GCSEs? Couldn't the HE child study the syllabus the year before and then take the re-take course at 16?

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  71. "BTW, why does it matter if colleges only offer re-take courses for GCSEs? Couldn't the HE child study the syllabus the year before and then take the re-take course at 16?"

    Most colleges offer only resits in maths, science and english. Many will only allow students to take them if they have already been to school and taken them there.

    ReplyDelete
  72. "Most colleges offer only resits in maths, science and english. Many will only allow students to take them if they have already been to school and taken them there."

    I wondered if the GCSE from scratch course my child took at our local college was an exception but the following sounds very similar and I've found the equivalent in several different areas around the country. Although they usually say you need some GCSEs at low grades, this was not the case for my child.

    Who is this course for?

    If you have not yet gained any GCSEs because, for example, you are a recent arrival to the UK or you attended school in the UK but missed the opportunity to achieve your GCSE qualifications, this course may be for you. It will give you the chance to gain at least five GCSEs at Grade C in a number of key subjects.


    http://www.covcollege.ac.uk/courses/Pages/Types/Course.aspx?@ID=882

    ReplyDelete
  73. Now I am going away to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast coming yet again to read other news.


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