Sunday's New York Times magazine has a fantastic article about a company in Denmark that employs autistic people for tech jobs. The company has been on my radar for a little while. I think I linked to it ages ago.
It was started by a parent of an autistic child who noted that his son has a surplus of talents in areas that were particularly valuable to the tech industry. His unusual focus on details and unusual ability to recognize patterns was a real skill. A skill that had a dollar value on the market.
For previously unemployable people — one recent study found that more than half of Americans with an autism diagnosis do not attend college or find jobs within two years of graduating from high school — Sonne’s idea holds out the possibility of self-sufficiency.
There are many kinds of autism. Some autistic people do not have those skills. My kid has them in spades. And those skills are not being exploited at school.
Ian's program is geared at moving high functioning kids with autism into the classroom, so they can blend in with the regular population. It tries to make them normal enough so they can function in an educational system that treats all kids the same. Because that is the cheapest way to educate kids.
But Ian is not average. We moved him into a mainstream math class, because he can multiply 2 digit numbers in his head. He does very well on his math tests, except for lessons that are geared at pulling the kids with excellent verbal skills and poor spacial skills. I wish he didn't have to waste time with that nonsense and they just let him concentrate on his strengths.
Even with his great math skills, he has hit some bumps in the road. Yesterday, he got tossed out of math class, because he got upset when his teacher clapped three times, instead of two times, to get the class's attention. He was so agitated by the incorrect method of clapping that he threw his pencil across the room.
Ian will overcome many of his OCD quirks and his communication deficits will improve, but he'll always be behind in those areas. At the same time, his computer skills are fairly awesome. He'll need a specialized work environment, like the one that this dad in Denmark has created. I hope in the next 12 years, we see more companies like this one pop up here in the US.
Apt. 11d 
That was an awesome article (and, note that the dad is planning on moving his business to the US).
I particularly loved this paragraph:
“Steen Iversen, a Specialsterne consultant in bluejeans and a bright red polo shirt, showed me how he tackles the task. Iversen, who is 52 and has worked at TDC for four years, laid out several phones on a desk that also held his computer, two bananas, an apple and lines of lime green Post-it notes. He picked up a phone in one hand and demonstrated his technique, his thumb landing on the buttons in quick succession. But his real advantage is mental: he is exhaustive and relentless. . . . he found a flaw that could have disabled a phone’s emergency dialing capability, a problem all previous testers had missed. I asked Iversen how he feels at moments like that, and he gently pumped both fists in the air with a shy smile. “I feel victorious,” he said.”
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I think this concept, of using people’s best strengths rather than expecting everyone to be the same needs to play a bigger role in education and in training people for jobs.
I’m toying with these ideas, but I think that a number of jobs in our society require very specialized cognitive/emotional/psychological skills and that we haven’t figured out great ways of making a match. As an example, weeding out people who might make great primary care physicians because they can’t get A+s in their calculus classes. This is the flip side of Sonne’s goal (who is trying to provide a means for people with systemizing skills from being weeded out), but its the same principal.
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