Archive for January, 2006
21 January 2006
When schools are ‘teaching disabled’…
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
“If it is our schools which are ‘teaching disabled,’ the symptoms of this lack would still be visible primarily in the students and not necessarily in the schools or teachers. When a doctor is incompetent, it is the patient who dies” (The Paideia of God, Douglas Wilson).
19 January 2006
Autistic Savant exhibits in NY
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
I had previously posted about 12-year-old Malaysian autistic savant Yeak Ping Lian so it was good to read that he’s in NY participating in an exhibition, Autistic Savant Artworks: Don’t ‘dis’ the Ability at the Henry Gregg Gallery in Brooklyn on Saturday. Ping Lian’s work is being shown together with 2 other well known autistic savant artists Richard Wawro of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Iranian-born Christophe Pillault of Olivet, France.
Autism educator and networker Dr Lawrence Becker of Creative Learning Environments, Austin, Texas, praised the trio saying they embodied the “quality and persistence of the human spirit.”
I was going to say that ‘persistence’ was also a quality that Ping Lian’s mom possessed in spades, because she believed in him enough to put her own interest second to her child’s. Ping Lian could never quite fit in conventional schools so his mother Sarah Lee had him homeschooled, supplemented by additional special needs tuition, and especially art.