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"Send in the Idiots" book by Kamran Nazeer

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From the Independent

 

Rising stars of 2006: Books

By Boyd Tonkin

Published: 31 December 2005

Kamran Nazeer

 

In the future, bemused historians will look back on the affluent parts of the early-21st-century world and wonder why autism - its definitions, its causes, its impact on children and families - became such a key worry of the time.

 

They may decide that all the clinical and policy debates masked a wider anxiety about what it meant to be a full individual, and part of a family and community, in a society of new opportunities and new dangers alike. And one book that will help them (and you) understand our age of autism is Kamran Nazeer's Send in the Idiots, due from Bloomsbury in March.

 

Diagnosed as autistic at four, the boy from an itinerant Pakistani family (who was born in 1978) entered a state-of-the art specialist school in New York. His book looks back on the childhood and later lives of his fellow-pupils, and teases out the larger questions that lie behind all the wrangles over diagnosis, treatment and education.

 

This remarkable piece of true-life storytelling takes as its theme not disability, but humanity. Nazeer himself now works as a policy adviser in Whitehall.

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Haven't finished but am enjoying 'Send in the Idiots by Kamran Nazeer.

 

He's a policy adviser in Whitehall with asd.

 

In 1982, when he was 4, he was at a small school for autism in NY. Twenty-three years later, he decides to find out what happened to the other children in his class and goes to stay with five of them - real mixed bag.

 

Very interesting. Sometimes sad, sometimes heart-warming.

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There was an excerpt in one of the weekend newspaper supplements a couple of weeks ago (I remember I was in bed with a cold, and its the first time I've read a paper in months). It was the story of one of the girls in the class, but it was a really sad story, have hummed and ha'd since whether to get the book.

 

Thanks for the review so far, will probably get it now. :D

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Well, I've just finished reading this book, and although I thought it was pretty good, I couldn't

help feeling uneasy about some of the things his previous teachers say toward the end of

the book. :unsure:

I wont say 'what' as I dont want to spoil it for anyone who is reading it, but it kinda ruined it for me. :blink:

Still a good read though. ;)

 

Brook

Edited by Brook

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This is definitely going on my reading list!

 

Autism Revisited

 

By Carolyn See for the Washington Post

 

"Send In The Idiots"

Stories From the Other Side of Autism

By Kamran Nazeer

Bloomsbury. 230 pp. $23.95

 

Kamran Nazeer sets the tone of this touching book in an ingenious,

seemingly offhand introduction. The place is a private nursery school on

Manhattan's Upper West Side; the time is the early 1980s. Nazeer is one of a

dozen kids there who have been diagnosed with the then-rare syndrome of

autism. But from the author's point of view, almost every human being has

one limitation or another: The teacher, Ms. Russell, has such troubles with

depth perception that she can scarcely get dressed in the morning. It's not

until the middle of the day that she feels up to reading a newspaper out

loud to the class.

But one little boy, Craig, has echolalia, "the constant, disconnected

use of a particular word or phrase," in this case, "Send in the idiots."

Thus, Ms. Russell would read, "Gridlock continues between the White House

and Congress," and Craig would chime in, "Send in the idiots." How far off,

the author hints, was Craig's repetitive chant? Idiots abound. Physical and

mental limitations are always with us. It's not just people with autism who

are off the mark. We're all off the mark, one way or another.

Flash-forward a little more than 20 years. Kamran Nazeer has become

what we call "high functioning." He's studied some law, completed his PhD

thesis, worked as a British civil servant and written for several

publications. Then he gets the idea of revisiting some of the classmates he

knew as a preschooler. A "typical" kid would have a difficult, if not

impossible, time finding them or even remembering their names, but parents

of kids with autism form close bonds. His mom and dad have kept in touch

with the other parents over the years. So Nazeer sets out to visit four of

his old classmates.

How did they turn out? The answer may offer some clues to a larger

question: What's going to happen to this massive generation of children who

have been part of the current, much-dreaded epidemic of this mental

disorder?

Currently, as many as one in every 166 children born in the United

States will develop autism. "Whirling . . . running to and fro; bouncing;

walking on toes and in other peculiar ways; banging or rolling heads;

mouthing and licking things; grinding teeth; blinking; moving fingers as if

double-jointed" and being unwilling or unable to talk -- these are some of

the symptoms that affect these children. And at this point, we have little

information in print about what it all means, only anguished accounts by

mothers about what may or may not work in terms of child care, or academic

speculation by "experts" who -- no matter how distinguished they may be --

still haven't found a cause, a cure or a guaranteed successful treatment.

Books by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who grew up to fashion a new

kind of chute for cattle, offer little real insight into the condition. And

the mercury-in-our-vaccines argument offers more heat than light on the

subject.

Forget all that for now. The question for Nazeer and for his

schoolmates is whether they can live in the world without catastrophe.

Certainly Nazeer is well and competent enough to go researching. He looks up

four autistic kids he went to school with: Craig, the little boy who first

asked Ms. Russell to send in those idiots; Andre, who is beset by bouts of

violence; Randall, who is being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous lover;

and Elizabeth, who has killed herself by the time Nazeer catches up with her

family.

Andre, the one with the temper, lives with his sister now, but he's

done time in a juvenile facility for inadvertently almost killing somebody.

He's constructed a set of puppets and speaks mostly through them. When

Nazeer interrupts a puppet, he finds himself locked in the bathroom. Andre

works in computers, his sister loves him, and they have friends to hang out

with. If he learns to control his temper, he'll survive.

Randall is a different story. He works as a courier in downtown

Chicago and is in a relationship with someone who appears to be a loving,

faithful gay man. This man, Mike, is Randall's buffer against the outside

world: He makes the phone calls and explains to Randall when he is being

taken advantage of. But it turns out that he's doing a little taking

advantage himself -- fooling around, and assuming that because Randall is

autistic, he won't notice. To read this chapter is to burn with rage.

Elizabeth, despite her parents' very best efforts, couldn't stand

either the complexities of the larger world or the constant, always

unexpected taunts of strangers. Her "vocalizing" in public, for instance,

made her prey to people who couldn't resist making fun of her. When clinical

depression was added to her autism, she ended her own suffering.

With Craig, Nazeer finds the closest thing he can expect to a real

friend. Although both are moderately autistic, they have plenty to talk

about, and so they devise rules for conversation: taking turns, rolling

paper clips in their pockets or holding on to other talismans for

self-confidence. Together, they seem happy -- even proud -- to be alive.

They have gotten better, whatever that means. "Our autism eased," he writes,

"in each case, because of other people, our parents, friends, and our

teachers, of course."

Of course, there are those whose autism doesn't ease. What will become

of them (or their caretakers), we can't know. But these words, written by a

precocious, even slightly know-it-all author, may in themselves ease the

agony of parents and grandparents who have seen their children inexplicably

skid away into a place where they seem untouchable, locked into an

inscrutable world of their own.

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:) This book was my holiday read and I can thoroughly recommend it - couldn't put it down.

 

The author does several things very well - it's a objective account of how a group of autistic children have matured into adulthood, and a highly personal account of his own experiences and reactions as one by one he traces them and their families, and lives alongside them for a while. He also meets up wth two of his former teachers.

 

Along the way he describes and analyses the characteristics of autism in general, but also demonstrates that autistic individuals are very different from each other. It doesn't assume any prior knowledge of autism - so I think it's a good one to recommend to family and friends who want to understand some of the issues better.

 

I think it's very intelligently and eloquently written, thought provoking, at times funny, but also very disturbing (one of the four committed suicide :( ). I think he illustrates so clearly the positives and negatives of being an autistic adult in an NT world. The author himself is autistic - some reviews suggest that the author "got better", but he himself doesn't say this.

 

Do give this book a go, if you have the time to put your feet up and read when everyone is back at school. :)

 

K x

 

By the way, I've merged the two separate topics discussing this book.

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