Autism,the Social Thinking Curriculum,and moral courage

Abstract

Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum is widely used by schools across the USA and has garnered attention internationally. The curriculum addresses social language and behavior deficits among those on the autism spectrum. Although many embrace this curriculum without reservation, the emphasis on social conformity, including avoiding behaviors that make others uncomfortable, merits scrutiny. Individuals who have difficulty understanding social cues and conventions can derive tremendous benefit from learning to fit in, for example, or learning what is likely to make others uncomfortable and why. However, too much emphasis on pleasing others can reinforce undesirable tendencies. For example, autism is already linked to avoidant personality disorder. An emphasis on avoiding making others uncomfortable may also inhibit the development of principled ethical thinking and action. Reframing social thinking to treat it not (or not only) as an end in itself, but as a way to achieve a variety of social and personal goals would go a long way toward addressing the weaknesses of the Social Thinking Curriculum.

Introduction

Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum (STC) is widely used by schools across the USA (Social Thinking Boston, 2013) and has garnered attention internationally (Carey, 2011). The curriculum addresses social language and behavior deficits among those on the autism spectrum (Winner, 2002). ¹ Although many embrace this curriculum without reservation, the emphasis on social conformity, including avoiding behaviors that make others uncomfortable, merits scrutiny. Individuals who have difficulty understanding social cues and conventions can derive tremendous benefit from learning to fit in, for example, or learning what is likely to make others uncomfortable and why. However, too much emphasis on pleasing others can reinforce undesirable tendencies. For example, autism is already linked to avoidant personality disorder (Vannucchi et al., 2014). An emphasis on avoiding making others uncomfortable may also inhibit the development of principled ethical thinking and action. Reframing social thinking to treat it not (or not only) as an end in itself, but as a way to achieve a variety of social and personal goals would go a long way toward addressing the weaknesses of the STC.

The STC

The STC fills a significant need for child-friendly learning tools to help children who have difficulties navigating social situations or simply fitting in—difficulties characteristic of autism (Crooke et al., 2008). As one practitioner describes it:

Social thinking is kind of a constant symphony of modifying and changing your behavior based on the recognition that people are having thoughts about you at all times. Any time you are with another person, your social radar kicks into high gear. For our kids that struggle with social [interactions], this [the STC] has been an extremely, extremely powerful and important methodology for helping them really understand the process of social thinking. (Nancy Clements, Social Thinking Boston, 2013)

The goal is to improve each child’s skill at being a “social thinker.”

Personal experience suggests that it would be hard to overemphasize the enthusiasm with which the STC has been embraced in US public education. The practitioner quoted above remarked that: “Michelle [Garcia Winner]’s work in social thinking has caught on like wildfire across the country” (Nancy Clements, Social Thinking Boston, 2013). Indeed, when one mother of my acquaintance expressed some doubts about the STC, a district-level special education administrator told her to “put [her] house on the market” and move to a different town.

Superflex and the Unthinkables

A fun and useful feature of the STC involves a superhero named Superflex, who helps citizens of Social Town recognize when their thoughts are controlled by unsocial villains, called Unthinkables. The Unthinkables include Glass Man, who causes us to have big reactions to small problems; Rock Brain, who makes it difficult for us to move on to new topics of thought and conversation; and Body Snatcher, who causes us to wander away from social situations or group activities (Madrigal et al., 2009). Giving names and images to tendencies that are common among children with autism allows for externalizing descriptions of behavior to reduce shame or the attribution of moral blame. Superflex has a “brain sensor” that provides strategies for flexible thinking which can help defeat the Unthinkables (Madrigal et al., 2009).

What would others think?

Another aspect of the STC is the emphasis on avoiding making others uncomfortable. Consider the following definition from Winner:

Good (okay or normal) thoughts: Others have thoughts about us based on what we do and say. When a person has a good thought (normal thought) about us, it means that we figured out how to act in that place with that person. When others have good thoughts about us, they feel good too and may remember how we make them feel. (Winner et al., 2008: 51)

Given that “good,” “okay” and “normal” are clearly evaluative terms, this definition moves away from the relatively neutral social/unsocial language surrounding Superflex and the Unthinkables.

Where “expected behavior” yields good/normal thoughts, “unexpected behavior” yields “uncomfortable/weird thoughts”:

Uncomfortable (weird) Thoughts: We have uncomfortable/weird thoughts about others and they have them about us, based on how people act, what people say, or how they physically present themselves. When a person has an uncomfortable or weird thought about us, it means we did some behavior that made people take notice of us in a more negative way, just like when we take notice of others’ behaviors that make us have “uncomfortable thoughts” about them. (Winner et al., 2008: 52)

The terms “expected behavior” and “unexpected behavior” are used heavily throughout the STC in conjunction with the idea that these cause (respectively) good or uncomfortable thoughts in others.

One STC game, with versions for elementary school children and for middle/high school students, is called “Should I or Shouldn’t I? What Would Others Think?” By promoting expected behavior and discouraging unexpected behavior, the STC emphasizes monitoring one’s own actions and those of others in order to maximize social acceptance.

The STC: merits

Although little studied, ² the STC has at least five prima facie merits as an educational intervention for children with autism: (1) the materials are fun and engaging; (2) the STC helps children identify and understand maladaptive thinking and behavior in themselves and others; (3) it can help children learn to get along in school and life; (4) by (presumably) increasing the likelihood of healthy social contacts, it reduces the risk of depression and low self-esteem caused by social isolation (Rubin and Mills, 1988: 916); and (5) it addresses specific elements of the diagnostic criteria. Each of these could be subjected to empirical verification, but that is beyond the scope of the present work.

The STC: concerns

The STC fails to respect neurodiversity

The STC explicitly promotes conformity to social norms. The ability to conform is a useful skill. However, conforming to social expectations is not good in the same way that health, happiness, or fairness are good. Fairness is good intrinsically—in itself. Fairness may also be good instrumentally—as a way to get something else. For instance, fairness might increase happiness. Social conformity can promote safety, self-esteem, and other desirables, but it is not good in itself.

For some, autism diagnoses are prompted by an individual’s “failure” to conform. In these situations, lack of conformity is seen not as a social or ethical issue, but as a medical one. Conformity is understood to be valuable because it is healthy. Proponents of neurodiversity reject the idea that conformity is valuable because it is an aspect of health, arguing instead that although individuals with autism “are neurologically, cognitively and behaviorally different, they do not necessarily suffer from being neurodiverse nor do they need to be cured” (Fenton and Krahn, 2007: 1). Framing this in terms of power relationships, treating lack of conformity as a medical problem looks like a clear example of what Thomas Szasz (1997: xiii) called “the therapeutic state.” From the neurodiversity perspective, promoting conformity as if it were good in itself or good because it indicates health is simply a tool for maintaining the hegemony of the average.

In her discussion of courage and moral education, Infinito (2004: 211) claims: “The dominant culture [defines] expected roles, relationships, and orientations through a system of rewards and punishments administered by its major institutions.” She goes on to remark that Foucault identified this “process of normalization” as a tremendous threat to the freedom of individuals. Unlike conformity, freedom does look like an intrinsic good.

Of course, even if freedom and accepting people with differences are good in themselves, they must be balanced with other goods. These include goods that can result from social conformity, such as functional social institutions, happiness, and the social success of individuals. Social conformity does bring desirable outcomes, but we should look very carefully at what these are before sacrificing freedom in their favor.

The STC inhibits moral courage

While social norms often reflect positive values, they can also reinforce prejudice and other unjust power relationships in communities. Thus, conforming behavior is not necessarily good behavior. Some social norms are merely matters of etiquette, where making people comfortable is the primary goal. For instance, we say “please” and “thank you” mostly to conform to social rules, where conforming costs little and failing to conform can be disruptive. Where socially expected behavior is ethically questionable, however, making other people uncomfortable can be obligatory.

The very idea of moral courage (generally considered a virtue) includes “doing what seems morally required, rather than what seems physically safe or socially expected” (Morris, 2004: 12–13). Thus, “moral courage involves facing the particular fears and dangers arising from the possibility that one will be punished (broadly speaking) for taking a moral stand,” where punishment includes “risk of ridicule, retaliation, social rejection, and so forth” (Pianalto, 2012: 167). In other words, moral courage requires putting aside concerns that other people might have uncomfortable thoughts about one’s actions.

Moral courage is distinguished from courage in the face of inanimate challenges in that moral courage requires recognizing the other “as a subject (or agent) like myself, and thus as something more than a mere object, an obstacle to be surmounted or destroyed” (Pianalto, 2012: 165). Thus, moral courage requires developing key skills that those with autism need to work on—seeing others as subjects like the self, perspective-taking, and related skills. Appropriate exercise of moral courage requires both recognizing that others have thoughts and a willingness to make others uncomfortable when there is good reason to do so. The STC explicitly discourages the second of these elements.

The STC inhibits development of moral reasoning

Kohlberg’s widely accepted model of moral development suggests that moral decision-making based on independent, general principles is more mature/advanced than moral decision-making based on social convention (Gilligan, 1982). Of course, the application of principle-based reasoning will vary according to social factors. For example, a moral principle that calls for protection of the most vulnerable will require different actions in different communities. This does not, however, mean that these different actions do not emerge from the same principle. Neither does this variability in application indicate relativism or the rightness of conformity to social convention.

Even in the face of competing theories (Gilligan, 1982), principle-based reasoning is more justifiable than mere conformity. It also seems a better fit for the systematizing tendencies of individuals with autism. The STC works against this.

Conclusion

On its face, the STC offers benefit to students with autism by helping them learn to meet social expectations and develop social relationships. However, implementation of this curriculum (and perhaps future revisions) should take into account that the STC encourages conformity to a questionable “normal,” that it discourages standing up for what is right in the face of expected conformity, and that it fails to provide a basis for justifying reasonable dissenting behavior. Future empirical investigation on the impact of the STC and theoretical work on desired outcomes are needed to promote successful and responsible use of the STC and similar interventions. Meanwhile, students should be taught that social thinking is a technique that brings valuable results, not that it is valuable in itself.