Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay

Plankton Dreams: Introduction

Excerpted from Plankton Dreams: What I Learned in Special Ed (Open Humanities Press, 2015)*

Every educational approach has a life span. What was proper some years back may not be proper today, even though the approach appears to be stable. (Stagnation, after all, is an integral part of stability.) When the world outgrows an approach, however noble the sentiments from which it sprung, it should be changed. Think of it this way: every “right” has a left. Even “right” approaches can be viewed from the left. And autism, my friends, well, that most certainly offers a leftward perspective.

I am calling this book What I Learned in Special Ed because I did learn things in special education—not what I was supposed to learn but important things all the same. Although I had other ways of studying history, physics, and mathematics—Mother never waited for schools to educate me but instead assumed this role herself—I still wondered how a structured learning environment treated its charges. I got my taste in America.

At the age of twelve, I was invited to come to the United States to be tested by neuroscientists at Cure Autism Now, an organization that eventually became Autism Speaks. Afterward, Mother and I were supposed to return to India. Yet circumstances made us stay longer, as Mother was invited to teach children with disabilities how to communicate, using the method she had used to teach me. (It’s called the Rapid Prompting Method, or RPM.) In order for her to work, I needed to be somewhere else during the day and, despite my having mastered a tenth-grade curriculum in India, a special education classroom was the only option. Mother was new to the country and she found herself being ridiculed for proclaiming my abilities. She was playing the flute to people who either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand the music.

Thus, my education began in a new way, in a new school, in a new country. Mother had always taught me to learn from circumstance. Here, the circumstance was humiliation, a particularly instructive teacher. Humiliation, I have discovered, is far from an incidental chapter in life. If one can learn to endure it and, in the process, overcome one’s pride, one can achieve a level of wisdom far greater than that of any esteemed professor. I personally have a doctorate in humiliation.

But I’m not complaining. Humiliation, after all, made me a philosopher! I am the philosopher who has learned to find humor in being humiliated. For that I thank my special ed teachers. I am grateful for every moment my intelligence was doubted, because what is disbelief but a shut door to knowledge for the disbeliever? Was I not a Galileo whispering, “Eppur si muove” (“Albeit it does move”)?

Humiliation also made me a scientist! I am the scientist who knows why I have autism: to experience the captivity of intellect by one’s body and to endure it with absurd aplomb, while others struggle even to fathom such captivity. As a social scientist, I know, however, that nobody is free from captivity. One is captive to one’s ego, for example, social obligations, job requirements, et cetera. Which of you neurotypicals is free to sniff a book in public? I have freedom from customary comportment, and as a sniffing scientist, I remain outside the box we term social norms. The rest of you purportedly free people are trapped inside the social box.

If you asked me whether I expected to be taught mathematics or science as part of my Individualized Education Plan (IEP), I would say, “No.” I knew better than to hope for anything but a system of contrived learning and strict, behavioral rules. If I needed real knowledge, I had books at home, which my mother gathered from wherever she could. I was not a denizen of the Dark Ages, when books were scarce. Through my persistent homeschooling, I have received the kind of education that a writer requires.

What did I do in school while Mother worked? How did I pass the hours? I studied the system called “special needs education.” Who were its captains and who were its sailors? Why were the captains its captains? Was there a navigator? Did the captain possess a compass? Where was the ship of special education heading?

I created my own learning goals, which in turn created some very interesting situations. I analyzed the responses of people to these situations—what I call my social experiments. I became an empiricist. Why shouldn’t the autist study the neurotypical? Why shouldn’t he make productive use of his time? By becoming a scientist and philosopher, I was able to master my boredom.

Think of this book as a kind of syllabus—I had no such thing in special ed. What I learned in this course was simply invaluable. I want to thank the people who facilitated my growth. In accordance with the practice of preserving the anonymity of research subjects, I have changed their names. Everything else is true, if at times enhanced by comic hyperbole.

*Tito Mukhopadhyay offers his book Plankton Dreams for free online. It can be downloaded as a pdf file by clicking here. Look for a review of Plankton Dreams in the March 2016 iss of Wordgathering.