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Excerpt: "Born in 1992 and diagnosed with autism of a 'severe' and 'nonverbal' type, #NaokiHigashida attended a number of educational institutions in the course of his youth, including a neurotypically centered primary school, a special needs junior high, and a distance learning high school. Observing the many ways in which people with disabilities are fast-tracked out of normal life and shuttled into special needs circles (and low-wage jobs, if they are lucky), Higashida, the author of dozens of poems, short stories, and nonfiction books, wanted to make his own choice. After 'questioning things' for himself, and identifying his gifts and hopes, he decided to become a writer.

"While in school, he had become increasingly frustrated with the steady infantilization and 'schoolmaster-type instruction' that denied his creativity and squashed his curiosity. Indeed, scientists and educators alike repeatedly characterize people with autism as lacking any measurable — and therefore meaningful — curiosity. Resisting this narrative in his writing and activism, Higashida repeatedly asserts his own curiosity: 'I’m always hungry to learn,' 'hungry for knowledge,' he writes in his bestselling memoir 'The Reason I Jump'; 'I want to grow up learning a million things!' Other autistic people, he says, are much like him in this respect, 'constantly challenging and asking questions of themselves.' This should be no real surprise, he writes in a poem called 'Curiosity,' given that curiosity is fundamentally human; it 'is why we carry on.' "

#Poets #LifeWithAutism #Autistic #Autists #ND #Curiosity #ABeautifulMind

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