Higher Education for Mentally Handicapped?

Anonymous Coward asks: "I am an autistic high-schooler, who is currently in special education. I am very bright, but I lack the ability to do even very basic math. I am interested in Technology and Computers very much, but after looking at the requirements for a computer science major, there is no way I can do all that. What options, other than college, are available for a good education?"

Comments

Get a book.

[shfted!]

No one says you need higher education to learn what you wish. The best education you will get is an education you are interested. Stay focused on what you wish to learn, find away that you can learn it, and you'll get there. Remember that some of the greatest minds had trouble with simple math. If you're looking for employment in a field, start or get involved in an open source projet, and let your results speak for themselves. Don't be fooled by the elitist attitude that post secondary education is your only option.

Re:Get a book.

[KDan]

And that's exactly why a (real) degree in any subject is worth something on your CV. Because some people just can't stick with one thing for even 4 years - so how can you expect them to stick with one career for 10+ years?

Daniel

Tech schools

[john_is_war]

There's the option of possibly using a technical school. They tend to be a little bit more hands on so you could probably find a certain path you could take which accomodates your needs.

Another option would be finding a college that has a "Built your own majors" or whatever they're called. Plenty of schools have them, just check around. That way you could just work with your guidance counselor to create a course structure that shys away from what you have difficulty doing.

Re:Tech schools

[Glonoinha]

I think you are going the right direction here. Software engineering as taught under the department of engineering in a university is heavily math based, and thus not aligined with the OP's skillset.

OP: you already 'do computers' to some extent - have someone work with you to understand exactly where your interests are and then decide how to better develop them. Writing web page / scripting languages like HTML with ASP or JSP, talking to a database back end is something that can be done with little or no math - it is more along the lines of text and image processing, with simple addition being the most intense math. Network administration and doing in-house hardware / software maintenance is something that can be done with very little math. Installing wifi networks (including setting up the encryption) or regular router / firewalls, plus removing virus / worms at the small business / home consumer level can be done with very little math and given the rampage Sasser went on, both are in high need.

Your strength, as someone that has acknowledged his Autism, is your ability to reliably repeat a known working ritual or set of steps to a given goal. With a proper and complete set of instructions, you can recreate the procedure with good results. This is pretty much what 'computer stuff' is all about at certain levels.

That said, I have two comments.
First, determine honestly how interested you are in Technology and Computers. At the high school level if you understand and can program in several languages (not the math, but a fairly good grasp of the syntax of more than one language) and have written programs longer than 120 lines to do some things you want to do, if you are completely comfortable with more than one operating system (Windows / Linux / MacOS are readily available to anybody that is 'interested') to the point that you can fix things when they go wrong, or reinstall it without issue, these indicate a strong aptitude and genuine 'interest in Technology and Computers.' If 'doing computers' is chatting in IRC or AIM, playing java based games you find on the web, and surfing the Internet - these are not indicative of genuine 'interest in Technology and Computers.' If you have ever played Solitare on the computer to completion (regardless of whether you beat the computer or not) ... that is a bad sign.

If you are using the computer as an environment, as opposed to using the computer as an appliance - then you are well on your way to being a 'computer guy' and only need to consider one last aspect :

Are you willing to learn all that you can learn, become as good as you can become in computers and technology whatever direction you find best fits your abilities - and then continue to do it for free? If you would still be a 'computer guy' if it meant you would be the poorest person you know, unable to provide for yourself except in the most minimal manner - then I encourage you to pursue it because you would be doing it because you wanted to do it, not for any other reason. I ask this not because of the current economic conditions in the tech field, nor for where I think they are going ... but because even in the best of times tech is a highly competitive field where hiring managers would rather leave a position unfilled for two years than hire someone with zero experience in their very specific niche and let them get the experience over those two years. There are a LOT of very good techs out there making zero dollars an hour so the competition for paying jobs is going to be intense - and as you already know 'entry level' positions don't even exist in this country anymore (in the tech sector.) If your motivation is wealth or even self sufficiency then reconsider your motivations. If you are willing to 'code for food' and love computers enough to do that for the rest of your life - then I encourage you to go for it and recognise that getting paid to do what you love to do is simply a pleasant side effect.

PS - in the context of this discussion 'very little math' means very simple math. Doesn't take differential equations or calculus or even trig to do web pages or networking. Addition, multiplication, and binary/hex math can all be done with the help of a $40 calculator.

Computers and Math

[flonker]

Computer programming requires a very intuitive grasp of boolean logic (Discrete math), symbolic logic (Algebra) and set theory (Discrete math again). Also, a good short to mid term memory is more important than intelligence. For many people, programming is a state of mind.

For example, the speed of a bubble sort is O(n^2). A trivial bubble sort has to iterate over a list for every element in that list. So, assuming n items in the list, the bubble sort needs to go through the list n times, each time going through the list (in a nested loop) n times. Giving you a speed of n*n, or n^2. Anyway, a merge sort is O(n*log(n)), but it requires 2n memory, whereas a bubble sort is done in n memory. So, which would be better for your application?

Network administration usually also requires a bit of math.

For example, the IP addresses 10.1.1.1 and 10.1.5.8 are in the subnet 255.255.248.0. To do this, I converted both IPs to binary, and found the most significant 0, and then 0'ed out all of the bits below that. Then I converted back to decimal.

(I simplified the examples, because explaining subnets or sorting is beyond the scope of this post.)

In short, I rarely do basic math, but some of the more advanced stuff is critical. I would suggest grabbing a copy of a programming language, and attempting to modify a simple program to do something else, to see if you have what it takes to be a programmer.

I'd suggest Perl, but that's my opinion, and opinions about languages vary greatly. Perl is one of the more natural languages, and may be more forgiving for you. Then again, it may cause more problems because you're not explicit enough in telling it what you want, in which case try Python.

Good luck.

You have to be more specific

[hey!]

When you say you lack the ability to do even basic math, what does this mean? That you are slow or bad at arithmetic?

This doesn't even really mean you are bad at math. There are a huge variety of math related skills that are useful in computers. Geometric intuition is often useful. The abiliyt to make logical inferences is critical. Accurate arithmetic is not all that important -- we use spreadsheets and calculators like most people do.

Generally speaking, if classic autism or something in that spectrum of problems is your issue, there should not be any problem with doing computer science. Working with other team members is going to be your biggest problem. Most work in computers involves interacting with customers and team members, and this can be socially challenging. It doesn't mean you won't be able to carve out a niche in the world of computing, but it will probably be your biggest challenge.

What kind of autism?

[orthogonal]

It's become almost trite to assume that many people in computing -- especially programmers -- are on the autistic spectrum. Usually this means Asperger's rather than "classic" Kanner autism, but in truth, it's not yet clear what bright-line (if any) separates the two conditions, and many studies have lumped Asperger and Kanner autistics together.

The lay distinction is that Asperger's is high-functioning autism, or autism without mental retardation, and in some cases of Asperger's even higher than average intelligence; but while there are more high-functioning individuals with Asperger's than Kanner's, high-functioning and low-functioning individuals with both syndromes exist. A diagnosis of Asperger's, unlike Kanner's does not include late speech or speech followed by a loss of speech, but both forms involve speech abnormalities of one sort or another, and both involve significant social impairment, related to an inability to "read" others' body language or (more so in Kanner's) an inability to conceive that others' perceptions differ from the autistic person's.

In nuerotypical (i.e., normal) brains, the part of the brain called the fusiform gyrus is activated to "read" another person's emotional state from the other's facial expression. In autistic persons (either Kanner or Asperger), the fusiform gyrus is not activated, with some studies showing autistic used parts of the brain used for object processing and others that each autistic individual uses a different brain areas to process facial emotional cues. High-functioning autistics generally explain that they process faces consciously, apparently as part of general problem solving.

Autistics are often seem as having less empathy or "flatter" emotions, although Temple Grandin, a high-functioning Kanner type autistic, reports that autistic have different emotions with the predominant emotion being a pervasive sense of fear. It is unclear whether this fear is the cause, effect, or just a
correlate of, the social impairments of autistic.

Autistics genenerally have special areas of interest which they obsess over, and this is in fact one required criteria for diagnosis.

Autism has only been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , the handbook of (American) psychiatry, since 1994, and so was apparently often mis-diagnosed (as depression, schizophrenia, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder) until recently; in many cases, the diagnosis of a child has led to a retroactive diagnoses (usual of Asperger's, as it's more "subtle") of one or both parents. Autism is one of the most strongly inherited neurological syndromes.

For more and more balanced information (I happened tonight to be browsing the journal articles that I cited, thus my emphasis on them) see (as usual) Wikipedia's article on autism.

To the submitter: do you know what form of autism you have?

From a fellow AC

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Well, at the very least, AC means Autistics & Cousins in this case, I've got Asperger's. Here's how I did it, and I fully recommend my method to anybody in computer science: I learned to break problems down into iterative methods, and programmed them into (at that time) a RPN calculator. I still don't have any real understanding of trigonometry besides memorizing which functions are complementary- but the additional algorithim practice this gave me has become utterly invaluable in real-world programming, where I haven't had a single project in 8 years that has used any math more complex than the quadratic equation I used in high school.