It’s not all bad news… From the L.A. Times (registration required – bugmenot):
David Mason crossed his fingers and squeezed his eyes shut as he listened to the announcement that confirmed his dream: This Culver City High School senior, an autistic youth enrolled in the campus’ special education program, was named homecoming king after a landslide vote.
Fireworks exploded as last year’s king plopped a fake gold crown on David’s head. And the crowd in the bleachers cheered wildly.
For the 2,096 students and teachers of Culver City High, Mason’s reign as homecoming king tells of a remarkable bonding that has taken place at their school between a small group of special education students and the rest of the student body.
“Even though this school may seem like it’s, you know, all about football and all that, we have more respect than you think,” said 10th-grader Paul Corker. “The homecoming king contest here is not a popularity contest. We don’t just give it to football stars. We give it to people who deserve it.”
The story is dripping with syrupy sentimentality. Also, I was always under the impression that football stars earned their accolades.
Good on them… that sure doesn’t sound like anything my high school would have done.
I hadn’t noticed you have a category for autism. To avoid breeching anyone’s privacy I’ll simply note I have related experience. BTW, did you hear about the new book “Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior” by co-authors Catherine Johnson & Temple Grandin?
Here’s a blurb I read:
Grandin (Thinking in Pictures ) and Johnson (coauthor of Shadow Syndromes ) deploy a simple, lucid style to synthesize a vast amount of research in neurology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, supplementing it with Grandin’s firsthand observations of animal behavior and her own experiences with autism, engaging anecdotes about how animals interact with each other and their masters, and tips on how to pick and train house pets. The result is a lively and absorbing look at the world from animals’ point of view.
– This is whats known as a “slow day in the news room”….
You know, they could have voted for him because he’s different. Its a paternalistic attitude that people can take, which shows quite a bit of hypocrisy and bigotry. I thought the homecoming king/queen was supposed to be the popularity contest, now they probably made it into a “let’s make the retarded kid feel like he belongs because we’re so sorry for him”. Maybe I have that attitude because I was picked on a lot as a kid.
I don’t know.