I am not sure how I feel about this article I read.
Although the author writes on behalf of promoting positive employment opportunities for his grandson and others on the autism spectrum, the organization which he is affiliated with, Autism Speaks, is
controversial as discussed on old threads.
Building bridges of understanding (rather than fueling controversy) may depend upon carefully considering what has been said rather than taking a point out of context and exaggerating or creating hyperbole. Anything taken to extreme... is extreme.
For example,
this post states "
expected to be a little robot". The article did not state this, this was generated by the poster reading between the lines.
This post also states "
never asks for a day off or a raise" whereas the article stated "rarely" rather than "never". In my experience, raises are usually discussed annually in conjunction with a review which takes into account job level, length of service, performance, and attendance. Therefore asking for a raise seems to rarely occur, and may not be unique to this population. Similarly, days off are usually allocated by length of service and may be divided into several categories: vacation, personal days, sick time and/or medical leave, bereavement, maternity and/or family leave. Vacation days may typically need to be scheduled well in advance, whereas personal days are generally "paid out" if not taken. The other categories of time off may be protected by law, providing equal/equitable access for all. If the author is indicating good attendance, possibly he could have done that more directly and cited statistics. His wording has me wondering what meaning he is intending to convey... For example, I wonder whether persons on the ASD spectrum tend to have fewer children and therefore take less maternity/family leave???
This post refutes "
super high autistic GPA" as being a stereotype. The article actually said "40 percent have average to above-average intellectual capabilities" and "my grandson has autism and currently holds a 3.6 grade-point average".
This post also argues that "
the part about being very productive" is a stereotype. The article only mentioned "employees who pay attention to detail and/or follow procedures".
When a person argues against something which has not been said, this is called a "
strawman" argument and is considered a flawed logic, or a logical fallacy.
Interested readers may wish to look to the referenced source documents, the "positive professional research" and published articles which the author mentioned as having been created by the Society of Human Resource Management (
SHRM).
