For kids with autism, especially high spectrum, she helps them see themselves in her experiences and understand that they may be different but they can be successful. That is why students should be introduced to a wide variety of reading material in literature and other classes. It’s sad that Republicans want children to read only mainstream works—the dead white guys in literature form the 1800s and 1900s—and nothing by minority writers with whom they might identify. The demand that students never be made to feel uncomfortable about something they read means that they never get challenged to think, to question why they are uncomfortable and to form their own opinions. Conservative parents seem not to want their children to think, but only to parrot exactly what they have taught the children to think.
Education does children a disservice when it never challenges them and never shows them examples of people who grew up without privileges yet still followed their dreams and achieved a measure of success. Diversity of reading material and civil class discussion are enormously valuable in educating a young person to think, to assess, to use new facts to compare to the old—to become a functioning adult. Republicans are trying to kill such education in our public schools, all to serve their master of white privilege.
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