Discussion Synthesis

Our scintillating discussion began with a brief round of comments about what it might be like to live with autism. We all agreed that Curious Incident is a great window into the life of a mostly functional autistic child. Having read the book, we feel we will be better able to understand those nieces, nephews, or friends' children who are autistic. One of the questions that came up during this time was whether or not, when placed in completely comfortable and familiar situations, autistic children show any signs of their condition. We also talked about how people have different levels of autism; some are functional and able to overcome their difficulties through training and effort, while others cannot do anything about their behaviors.We also discussed two analogies that came up in the book that we found interesting. The first was Christopher's analogy about the mind being a computer. In his case, there would sometimes be a build-up of information that would slow the computer, cause a lock-up, or even necessitate a re-booting sequence. Also, we mentioned the analogy in the book of Christopher as Sherlock Holmes (whom Christopher discusses quite a bit), the detached and analytical detective mind. Interestingly, we noted that Christopher claims only to use similes, never metaphors, but his computer-brain analogy comes very very close (depending on interpretation) to being a metaphor rather than a simile. This comment led to another about one of Christopher's possibly inconsistent statements about the fact that he never has fantasies, but later in the narrative he describes a dream which is sometimes a "day-dream" about a virus killing all non-autistic people and leaving the world nearly empty for him.The next section of our conversation dealt with who we felt had the greatest influence on Christopher. His father is certainly very supportive and always goes out of his way to help Christopher, but in the end his lie about Christopher's mother breaks most of the trust that they had built up together. Siobhan helps Christopher with his socialization, cultural awareness, and encourages him to write the book that brings about his great adventure. She is mentioned throughout the book, and always in a seemingly positive manner. We also mentioned at this point that Christopher is a very driven person, motivated by himself to become the detective and committed despite everyone's objections to take his maths A-level.We then moved into discussion of the book as a tool in our own classrooms. We all felt that this book was not age appropriate (despite the 4th grade reading level) for middle school children, though it could be used in the high school classroom. We wondered whether younger students would understand the math/science sections of the book, but more importantly whether they could grasp the major thrust of the book in Christopher's autism.Some connections we discussed from this novel were: the TV show NUMBERS, which some teachers use in their classrooms; other mystery novels, which share the characteristic of the reader knowing or perceiving more than the detective, though in this case for an entirely different reason than the average detective novel.One of the major questions we were left with after our discussion had to with autism. How does a child get autism? Does a parent have to a carrier of a certain gene? Is it a developmental condition, and if so, when does it set in (before birth, soon after, at age 2, etc.)? Why is it that more boys are autistic than girls (we didn't have a statistic on this but several people remembered reading it somewhere)?

(Steve authored this blog for the entire Science group. Thanks Steve!)