Including Students with Asperger syndrome

"Temple Grandin, cited Sacks 1995, has said autism is another way of being a person. It is not so much that people with autism are abnormal as that our concept of what is normal may need to be enlarged to encompass these fascinating and different ways of being. The author recently came across a hair dryer with 2 possible settings: ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’. This gave much pause for thought but it is a distinction that may be of value when we consider autism and the question of what is normal. Too often ‘normal’ is equated with ‘healthy’ so that those who do not fit the norm become automatically ‘abnormal’, even ‘pathological’ or ‘diseased’. But what if ‘normal’ is equated instead with ‘ordinary’, ‘average’ or even (as many of those with autism choose to call those without) ‘neurotypical’? Suddenly it does not seem so wonderful to be normal or so terrible to differ from the norm; one can be different without necessarily being unhealthy." Page 6, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Rita Jordan