Aristotle Made Me Watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Thank You Aristotle)

What is this, what you are reading right now? What caused it? There are multiple angles we could take to answer this question: it is an essay, it is a method for me to get a grade, it is a method to test my knowledge of Aristotle’s model of causality, it is a screen made by Dell or Apple or Samsung (arraigned in a particular pattern of pixels), etc. For the sake of the meta, we will be assessing the aforementioned Aristotelian model of causation to answer this question from the perspective of the essay which is sitting right in front of me, in progress.

Aristotle’s model of four causes was broken down by Dr. Andrea Falcon (2019) as:

1. The material cause

2. The formal cause

3. The efficient cause

4. The final cause

Each of the four causes are an expression for the reason why a particular object exists. Aristotle claimed that “men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it” (Matthews, 2018, pg. 12). Dr. Michael R. Matthews claims that Aristotle’s work in science rings into the modern era with its “empiricism, essentialism, naturalism, and teleology” (2018, pg. 5). Each of these four corresponds with Aristotle’s causal model. The material cause is “that out of which a thing comes to be;” naturalism tells us that objects are simply what they are, quantitatively, rather than having a supernatural cause. The formal cause is “archetype,” the essence with which it shares alongside other objects of its type or “form.” Aristotle describe the efficient cause as the “primary source” “e.g… the father [and mother] is the cause of the child.” This, of course, can only be learned via empiricism; by examining the evidence and analyzing the potential explanations. Finally, the final cause is deeply teleological: “the sake of which a thing is done.” We can think of the efficient and final causes a dichotomy: what is the object’s past and future, respectively? The material and formal causes are less strictly dichotomous, but do echo back to Plato’s dualism of the physical world in comparison to the world of forms.

A meta example was promised and is in order. I am writing this paper, right now, at 20:22 on 5/31/2021. My fiancée is sitting right next to me and watching Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this moment, is there a meaningful way for me to apply Aristotle’s model to the causal existence of this essay? I will try:

The material cause
o This essay is being written on my laptop and being written on Microsoft Word. The material, physical, aspects of this paper are far more extensive and intensive than much of what Aristotle studied. There are servers on Microsoft’s cloud servers currently storing the essay, likely hundreds of miles away from me. The RAM in my computer is holding the essay in local memory. The LED screen on my laptop is displaying the paper. Electrical signals, in combination with computer science which is currently beyond me, contains the information of letters and structure.

The formal cause
o This one is far simpler. This essay is an essay! Essays are a form of writing, and the work here resembles the form which Aristotle himself channeled as he wrote Physics. However, this aspect can be expounded upon further as this essay falls within multiple genres, which can be thought of as “subforms:” philosophical, homework, explanatory, meta, etc.

The efficient cause
o This is me! Scott Ryan Udall, born in St. George, Utah and whose favorite football team is the Baltimore Ravens. I am the artists who paints on this canvas, the dancer who shuffles on stage, etc. However, multiple efficient causes exist for this essay! Both instructors provided the structure for the essay, somebody else made the tools I am using, and so on.

The final cause
o I want to get an A, so I can get a good grade, so I can go to graduate school, so I can have an impact on the philosophy of psychology, to participate in a paradigm shift which helps end the replication crisis. The essay is also a form of entertainment for me, hence me taking on the meta aspect, the expression of ideas for their own sake, and talking about my fiancée’s video streaming habits.

With the explanation complete of what Aristotle’s model is, I am left with two of questions: 1) Is Aristotle correct in saying that the goal of science is to understand causes? 2) Does his model effectively allow me to enumerate and understand causes?

In regards to the first, this question is beyond me and in part the point of the class I am taking right now! Causality does seem central to scientific explanation and the pursuit of truth: systems theorists connect various forces in the world in a consistent whole of causes and effects, geneticists track the causal relationship between DNA and other aspects of biology, and even pseudoscientists like demonologist try and trace strange things in the world to some sort of cause. There are, however, other schools of thought on the matter. Operationalists, for example, work towards conceptual clarity, which sometimes involves causes and sometimes does not. As a laymen, starting in my study of history and philosophy of science, Aristotle’s model seems like a good rule of thumb, though I am not sure that he can express something central to modern physics: the concepts of a law being a cause. Can the universe and its underlying structure be an efficient cause?

For practicality, I also find myself split. I find myself thinking on Dr. Karl Popper’s warnings around finding ourselves in scientific infinite regresses (1959); I implied my thinking on this matter in the example section, where it seemed I could trace back Aristotle’s causes not just on the superficial answer but on deeper, more long-term, causes. It is not self-evident that one should identity the most “immediate cause” (when that is even possible) in many cases. Me writing an essay to “get an A” seems rather meaningless without the context of what that A gets me or what I might do in the future with it. The moon orbits the Earth because of gravity, but that does not make it uninteresting to investigate how it came into Earth’s gravitational pull in the first place.

However, similar to the answer to my first conclusory question, there is a certain “good enough” quality in Aristotle’s work. Professor Nassim Taleb describes heuristics, general rules of thumb, as being the highest form of knowledge because they can improve over time via iteration. In this case, perhaps Aristotle’s method is sufficient because I can innumerate the causes to my heart’s content, and then if I or another person finds that more causal explanation is needed, I can just build on the existing answer. If, for example, a reader of this paper wanted to know more about the causes of this paper related to Microsoft’s cloud servers, I could do in depth research on that topic until satisfaction is reached. Satisfaction is, by the way, a major final cause of why people are scientists.

As I wrap up this paper, I find myself thinking of Galileo’s strawman, Simplicio. Simplicio was an Aristotelian apologist who would probably feel that my “good enough” characterization of the model is an understatement. He likely believed that material causes could help us drill down an object’s causes down to (what we now know to be) its subatomic reality, the entire history of what is has been and why, its final destiny, and point us towards whatever transcendental reality it may or may not be connected to. He may be right! However, there is a good reason why we no longer use the framework: it has become dead language. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the phenomenon of dead language as terms which “causes lightbulbs to go off” and “deadens [what] lurks behind [terms]” (2015).

Coates applies the concept to terms like “white privilege” and “mass incarceration,” two terms which describe important realities, but which have died in the culture, becoming useless to refer to because they shut down discourse. He advocates for the conversation to evolve, to better capture the ideas in ways which others can understand. Aristotle rests similarly in the picture of science, his words are good enough, but dead; the Kuhnian paradigm has shifted ever since Simplicio got shut down, and now we use words like “quantitative,” “historical,” and “systematic” to refer to causes. Were someone to use the Aristotelian model in a contemporary quantum physics paper, even if they exclusively spoke truth, people would cock their heads and maybe even reject their work. The efficient cause of this is scientific culture, which has its downsides, but has pushed us from an Ancient Greek academy all the way to the moon. The final meta point is this: had Aristotle not put together his ideas I would not be here writing this paper. No matter what words we use, there is not denying the causal link between Aristotle lecturing his students and me sitting here, waiting for my fiancée to come back downstairs with some tea to relax and watch some more TV.

References

Coates, T.-N. (2015). Author's Notes on "Mass Incarceration and the Problem of Language". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/mass-incarceration-and-the-problem-of-language/405511/.

Falcon, A. (2019). Aristotle on Causality. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FouCau.

Matthews, M. R.. (2018). Physics. In History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (pp. 7–32). Springer International Publishing.

Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co.

Taleb, N. N. (2013). Antifragile. Penguin.

Essay on Robert Louis Wilken's Book on the Spirit of Early Christian Thought

 Correct Thought

“Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you-unless you have come to believe in vain.”

I remember my first philosophy professor telling me that Paul had “ruined” Christianity with his dogmatic stances and his divine Christ-centered (rather than Earthly Jesus-centered) rhetoric. As a fan of Paul myself, I could not help but disagree, but the professor made an important point: the influence Paul had on all future Christianity. The above quoted line, coming from Paul in Corinthians 1, embodies a certain tone and value in early Christian thought: not only is the fact of the news important, but hearing the news and having correct beliefs about it is also essential.

Paul’s letters could be, cynically, summarized as, “Paul needs to correct all the dummies he used to teach.” Consistently, throughout his work, he found himself in a position where he needed to write to Christian churches and say, “No, you’re thinking about resurrection wrong!” “Hey, we need to make sure we’re on the same page on Gentile conversion!” “Renew your minds!” (Romans: 12). People had incorrect beliefs, and Paul needed to correct them.

It is possible that this was not Paul’s intention. He is thought of as a practical man, it is possible that he was more focused on the results of people’s actions, actions informed by incorrect beliefs, rather than on the beliefs themselves. However, the interpretation that correct belief is important seems to ring through from early Christian thought and into the modern era.

While the Gnostics and the now-considered Orthodox disagreed on much, this theme of correct belief was agreed upon by both groups. The Gnostics, coming from the Greek word which means “knowledge” maintained there was a secret set of teachings which came from Christ and ended up with them, exclusively. In the Gospel of Thomas, which is not strictly a Gnostic text but which was almost certainly revered by them (Thomas was found alongside more obviously Gnostics texts at Nag Hammadi) says:

“These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.’"

It is not just that one has to read Jesus’s words, nor is it that one has to believe in him, but one has to find the interpretation of the sayings. There is a correct belief here, buried in the symbolism and parables and obfuscations, and if you can put together the puzzle you can have some form of eternal life (which, to the Gnostics, likely meant transcending one’s body and achieving a spiritual awakening).

Irenaeus wrote an entire book about Christians, such as the Gnostics, who he disagreed with. He tears into their beliefs step-by-step and goes as far as saying,

“It is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth… For [Irenaeus’s church] is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them.”

Not only should one not believe the Gnostics and other heretics, but one should avoid them. The Church, though the truth, gives out life and the Gnostics, who are robbers, will take away your spiritual life.

I cannot help but imagine Paul being upset at this infighting. The man fought hard for a unified belief system, and therefore a unified body, but it did not take long for schisms to grow after his passing. Both sides claimed him, and after building up a Gnostic-schema for myself via our studies this semester I can totally see how they’d read him in support of Gnostic thought. History chose the now-Orthodox tradition to be the default position, Irenaeus won the battle. However, the war continues: in Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS he explains that once the Nag Hammadi “library” was discovered in 1945 a brand new spiritual revolution began, and with it, a new fight about what makes for a correct belief.

Space-Time

Another core theme of early Christian thought was in argument with the Greek tradition. The Greek concept for God: Logos, Monad, etc., was one which was understood via logical principles. Via a concrete understanding and the correct meditation practices, one could experience God. The early Christians, on the other hand, believed that God could be experienced both spiritually and historically. It was their stance that God’s plan was one which unfolded throughout time and that Christ’s life, death, and rebirth was both the culmination of previous history and the catalyst for all future history.

Paul, once again, set the tone in his first epistle to the Corinthians:

“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.”

Paul makes two points about progression throughout time, here. The first is that our bodies are in a growth stage; our current bodies and future, spiritual, bodies (this spiritual/physical dichotomy is, by the way, an instance where I can now read the New Testament through a Gnostic lens when I could not have when only exposed to the Orthodox tradition) are as comparable as a seed and the wheat it grows into. We, as beings, are still growing.

The second is the point he makes about the broader human history. He casts the first man as Adam, who gave us all our bodies via his life. Jesus, the last Adam, grants us a spirit via his death. God’s plan has unfolded, and none of us are the same anymore.

This perspective on the Patriarchs of the Old Testament gets expanded on by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho. Justin tells the story of his conversion, when he met an old Christian man whose arguments and testimony were so persuasive that Justin’s life was forever changed. The old man says:

“‘A long time ago,’ he replied, ‘long before the time of those so-called philosophers, there lived blessed men who were just and loved by God, men who spoke through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and predicted events that would take place in the future, which events are now taking place. We call these men the prophets. They alone knew the truth and communicated it to men, whom they neither deferred to nor feared. With no desire for personal glory, they reiterated only what they heard and saw when inspired by a holy spirit.’”

Via the old man, who may have been real or may have been a mouth piece, Justin venerates the ancient Israelite prophets as men of wisdom. These people were real physical people with actual lives and a connection with God via the Holy Spirit. Justine later says that all this goodness was meant to lead to something even greater in the future:

“Now indeed, for I have read, Trypho, that there should be a definitive law and a covenant more binding than all others, which now must be respected by all those who aspire to the heritage of God. The law promulgated at Horeb is already obsolete, and was intended for you Jews only, whereas the law of which I speak is simply for all men. Now a later law in opposition to an older law abrogates the older; so, too, does a later covenant void an earlier one. An everlasting and final law, Christ himself, and a trustworthy covenant has been given to us, after which there shall be no law, or commandment, or precept.”

The old prophets were great, but now is the time for a new page in history, says Justin. God was, through Christ, creating an even better world. This sort of active involvement and dynamism, while not meaning that God Himself changes, stands opposed to the Greek conceptualization of a totally static God. History is God’s story, said the early Christians, and the best way to participate in the narrative is to take on the good news, with the previously discussed correct beliefs, and to enter into this new and everlasting covenant.

Seeing God

A central similarity between the Greek tradition of God and the forming tradition of God remained similar, the desire to experience a felt-connection with God. Justin, back when he was a Platonic philosopher during in his debate with the old man, believed at the time that Platonic transcendent thought was the most effective way to viscerally experience The One. The old man’s arguments convinced him, however, that some of his ideas about how transcendence worked were flawed, and so he transitioned to Christianity.

Paul is, of course, central here was well, and does a good job of expressing how the Christian conceptualization was different from the Greek style of God experiencing. Paul did not simply meditate and connect to some vague feeling of higher-being. Christ showed up and knocked the dude on his ass. Paul was blind for days. Connecting to God was not a steppingstone of slowly going beyond oneself: it was often big, dramatic, and it would change you forever. This was the key to early Christian ideas on experiencing God: just like God’s story is a concrete series of events through history, the act of experience God was something real, not ideal.

The stories of the martyrs emphasize this point. Think of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, as Polycarp stood strong against the Romans:

“But as Polycarp was entering the arena, a voice from heaven came to him, saying, ‘Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man…’ [Polycarp is sentenced to death, and then prays] and when he had concluded the Amen and finished his prayer, the men attending to the fire lighted it. And when the flame flashed forth, we saw a miracle, we to whom it was given to see. And we are preserved in order to relate to the rest what happened. For the fire made the shape of a vaulted chamber, like a ship's sail filled by the wind, and made a wall around the body of the martyr. And he was in the midst, not as burning flesh, but as bread baking or as gold and silver refined in a furnace. And we perceived such a sweet aroma as the breath of incense or some other precious spice.”

Or the Passion of Perpetua, when Perpetua dreams of meeting God:

“And I saw an enormous garden and a white-haired man sitting in the middle of it dressed in shepherd’s clothes, a big man, milking sheep.  And standing around were many thousands dressed in white. And   he raised his head, looked at me, and said: ‘You are welcome here, child.’ And he called me, and from the cheese that he had milked he gave me as it were a mouthful. And I received it in my cupped hands and ate it. And all those standing around said: ‘Amen.’”

In both stories the individuals involved did not experience God in a rational or meditative state, but rather with an actual voice and a physical miracle or a vision based in symbolic importance rather than some sort of logical arraignment of truth. These two martyrs share in the tradition of Paul, in the tradition of those in the book of Acts who spoke in tongues, and those who witnessed Jesus himself performing miracles while the Son of Man performed miracles in Palestine.

It should be noted that some Christians did not deviate as far from the Greek tradition. Saint Augustine, for one, based his desire to experience God in strong philosophy:

“Yet unless we love him even now, we shall never see him. But who can love what he does not know? Something can be known and not loved; what I am asking is whether something can be loved which is unknown, because if it cannot then no one loves God before he knows him. And what does knowing God mean but beholding him and firmly grasping him with the mind? For he is not a body to be examined with the eyes in your head.”

In The Trinity Augustine says that knowing God and experiencing God are synonymous. Augustine, then, follows the Greek tradition by going back to knowing and focusing on a rational form of God-experience. However, Augustine too is differentiated from Platonists and the like: there is a step before knowing and it is belief and love:

“But then to behold and grasp God as he can be beheld and grasped is only permitted to the pure in heart-blessed are the pure in heart, because they shall see God (Mt 5:8); so before we are capable of doing this we must first love by faith, or it will be impossible for our hearts to be purified and become fit and worthy to see him.”

Augustine starts with faith and love, faith justified in his trust in the Christian tradition as it stood and trust in the positive experience he already had with Christianity, and moves towards understanding based in that love. This echoes, but is not the same, as the Platonist striving towards the Good, who already “knows” the Good via logical axioms.

Gregory of Nyssa described the experience of God in a more contemplative manner than the other early Christians I have cited, and in a manner in which I believes honors Augustine’s goal of knowing/beholding:

“As you came near the spring you would marvel, seeing that the water was endless, as it constantly gushed up and poured forth. Yet you could never say that you had seen all the water. Howe could you see what was still hidden in the bosom of the earth? Hence no matter how long you might stay at the spring, you would always be beginning to see the water… It is the same with one who fixes his gaze on the infinite beauty of God. It is constantly being discovered anew, and it is always seen as something new and strange in comparison with what the mind has already understood. And as God continues to reveal himself, man continues to wonder; and he never exhausts his desire to see more, since what his is waiting for is always more magnificent, more divine, than all that he has already seen.”

Is there a balance point here? Is there a spirit to early Christian thought which can capture both the visceral experiences of Paul and Perpetua with the heady meditations of Augustine and Gregory? Did the Christians have something which the Platonists didn’t? Well, I am running out of time to finish this essay, but I suspect that it has something to do with love. To the Classical Greeks, one might love God like one loves an idea. Raw agape, appreciation for transcendence or for the symphony of the universe. To the early Christians, however, one loved God like one loves a person, embodied through Jesus. God was there, showing his love for the early Christians, whether it was in the dramatic fire or the calm spring. Early Christians entered into a relationship with God, and used one of the most personal words for Him, “Father.”

Neurodiversity and Religious Institutions

When I was a teenager, my neighborhood block had the highest concentration of neurodiverse minors in my city. This diversity aside, the area was highly homogeneous, meaning we all attended the same church each Sunday. My biggest involvement with this part of my community was working along a peer with Down syndrome: attending the same classes, administering the eucharist together, and going on outings in the same group.

Retrospectively, I realize we did not do a lot of work to facilitate his being there. The effort was put onto his parents. They oversaw the supplementation of his religious education, left their own classes and roles in the church to take care of him, and he was forced to miss out on many activities where accommodations were not made for his participation. This rings true for all my neurodiverse churchmates: the work to facilitate the needs of neurodiverse church members was being done by their families. This was not the case for physical disabilities and illnesses; I remember how cautious we were during sacramental services to keep our hands clean and avoid contamination while serving sacramental bread to participants with gluten allergies.

This marginalization, via lack of accommodation, does not line up with the neurodiversity model. Neurodiversity is the belief that neurological differences, like autism and ADHD, are natural variations to the human genome. John Elder Robison, an author who himself has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), states that “people with differences do not need to be cured; they need help and accommodation instead” (2013). Common to this ideological framework is not just that neurodiverse individuals require and deserve these accommodations, but that they also have unique ways to contribute to their social groups, such as Temple Grandin’s claim that her autism helped her think concretely and solve engineering problems (2010). Bruce Parsons refers to this as “optimizing,” as in “optimizing autism:” a process of neurodiverse individuals harnessing their skills and talents in a manner which maximally contributes to their communities (Week 13).

This paper is going to be a breakdown of how religious institutions can better facilitate spiritual growth with a neurodiversity model, with an emphasis on assisting members with autism, though the framework provided could be used to improve circumstances for many people with various conditions. Two axial assumptions are made: 1) religious participation is valuable for enough individuals with autism that making improvements to religious communities is worthwhile 2) religions can be discussed in a practical, non-dogmatic, manner where changes (minor or dramatic) can be made to serve the needs of particular communities. It is not necessarily the case that either of these are true; there are members of the New Atheist community who believe that religion is largely destructive for everyone involved (Jillette, 2007), neurodiverse or not, and there are fundamentalists who believe their particular religion is perfect, regardless of criticism (Akin, 2019). However, these two core assumptions will be used to find a proposed middle ground where religion can be treated as a valuable way to develop socially and personally while treating religion not as something one serves, but rather as a tool to serve humanity. With proper accommodations in place, the neurodiversity model under the Parsonsian assumption of optimization predicts not only that individuals with autism can benefit more from their religious activities, but that they will be better able to provide unique contributions to their spiritual communities which may benefit all who walk a spiritual path.

We will be relying on the work of James W. Fowler and Mary Lynn Dell to provide a structure for this discussion. Fowler, a theologian, and Dell, a psychiatrist, collaborated on a summary of research and theory of religious development titled which broke down several stages of spiritual growth in the context of developmental psychology, summarized here:

Adapted from (Fowler & Dell, 2005).

Fowler and Dell say that only stages one through four are inevitable in normal development, some people never break through to five and beyond; each step involves an expansion of identity and a more mature understanding of the universe. Adulthood stages can be reached earlier, or later, than cited; they note relatively young people, such as Martin Luther King Jr., as having reached the Universalizing stage. Each stage is both a personal achievement and facilitated by religious institutions/philosophies, and some of these steps could use improvements in institutions/philosophies to better serve autistic members. We will break down the stages where this is the case and offer potential solutions or research avenues for each one with the goal of best serving the needs for the religious development of believers with autism.

Stage 1: Primal/Infancy

The primal stage occurs before children have significant interactions with religious institutions. Screening for autism should be done at the ages of eighteen months and twenty-four months, with the hopes that autistic youth can be diagnosed and enter key treatment at the age of two (Carbone, Week 4). During this time, however, religion can provide solace to parents who may be stressed out or overwhelmed. One relevant thing of note: the primal stage is often mythologized by religiously charged pseudo-scientific psychoanalysis. Statements such as, “your autistic child has entered a state of disconnection from the world due to his disconnection from the archetype of the eternal mother,” is not appropriate, does not line up with actual diagnostic criteria, and is akin to other issues related to autism and the blaming-of-parents.

Stage 2: Intuitive-Projective (Early Childhood)

During the earliest stages of socializing in a religious context, children of all types are often asked to engage with cosmological (“God created the universe”) and didactical (“Don’t be like Jonah, follow God’s commands the first time they are given”) themes. It should be noted that some research has shown that children with autism are more likely to struggle with imagination and tend to think more concretely (Craig & Baron-Cohen, 1999). While some question this research, this does align with the subjective claims of some adults with autism, including Temple Grandin (Grandin, 2010). No broadly codified existing techniques exist to accommodate the spiritual needs of autistic children in this area. Were I in charge of a research program, my first move would be to do qualitative research in the vein of Hickey, Crabtree, and Stott’s interviews with autistic adults (2017). Their research on autistic self-acceptance, retrospective life narration, and social connections can act as a model to ask autistic individuals about their earliest stages of meaning-making in both religious and non-religious contexts, to see what they say helped and hurt the most.

Stage 3: Mythic-Literal (Middle Childhood)

Moral development is key to this stage, with children focusing on a “what goes around, comes around” perspectives on the universe. Most individuals find out, at some point during this stage, that the world does not work on a reciprocal morality (Fowler & Dell, 2005). Sometimes good guys lose, sometimes bad guys win. God’s role, it is found, is not to bless His people with temporal blessing and, sometimes, the divine allows terrible things to happen to one’s loved ones. Two pieces of research are central to understanding the relevance of autism to this stage: 1) autistic adults have been shown to have a more negative, fearful, relationship with God than their peers (Schaap-Jonker, Roekel, & Sizoo, 2012) 2) autistic adults have been shown to value fairness over other forms of morality (Dempsey, Moore, Richard, & Smith, 2020).

I hypothesize that autistic children at this age become aware that the world is not designed for them, that our society often considers them to be an afterthought. This hypothesis could be proven by polling autistic and neurotypical children with questions about whether the world treats them fairly. The null hypothesis would be that both groups consider the world to be equally fair, but if autistic children reveal their disbelief in the fairness of the world from an early age, perhaps some work in the theology of fairness, such as work from theologian John Rawls, could be adapted to serve autistic children to give them spiritual language for their insights.

Stage 4: Synthetic-Conventional (Adolescence)

Social development is the central theme in Fowler and Dell’s work during this age range. Teenagers develop a social identity, in the context of authority and peer ship, and this synthesized with one’s religious identity. In Christian cultures, church is going to be central to this process. Christian youth groups permeate religious society in the United States, many of which are interest-based with faith themes rather than the reverse. To best facilitate autistic children work could be done to help integrate them into an existing program, also populated by neurotypical children, or the development of autism-specific programming can be done. Research into which is more effective is, unfortunately, ambiguous (Waddington & Reed, 2017). Dr. Cheryl Wright’s work in strength-based programming may be relevant here:

In research not related to autism, but rather strength-based mental health programming, “having faith that one's own life matters and life has meaning, including a moral sense of connection to others” has been theorized to be essential to the creation and maintenance of a personal model of resilience (McCamey & Murty, 2014). If this principle holds true across contexts the following might be proposed: 1) strength-based programming is an area of high need for autistic children and adolescence (Wright C. , Week 7) 2) these sorts of programs are also developed with social interaction in mind (Diener, Wright C., Wright S., & Anderson, 2016) 3) religious institutions could launch such programs, attempt to guide autistic youth in matters of faith and meaning, develop a personal model of resilience, and help cultivate their social identity in the context of working alongside other youth with ASD.

Stages 5 & 6: Individuative-Reflective (Early Adulthood) and Conjunctive (Middle Adulthood)

A “theology of autism” is far from common knowledge, but if the Individuative-Reflective stage is about the creation of a unique identity in a religious context, it does not seem fair to ask autistic individuals to create a cosmological understanding of their position in the world without the help of thoughtful experts on the topic. Similarly, while my essay here has been Christian-toned, autistic individuals live all around the world and grow up in many religions. The Conjunctive stage centers on open-mindedness and pulling from truth, no matter its source. Both stages, which Fowler and Dell speak in less depth about, require an education which is beyond my own understanding. Relying on research, I have created a starting point for that education with a reading list on autistic-theological topics. Religious institutions would be doing a good by creating their own neurodiversity cannons to support their autistic membership and to help their neurotypical members learn about an area of life they may not be familiar with:

1. Confessions of an Autistic Theologian: Doing Theology in Pictures-A Contextual, Liberation Theology for Humans on the Autism Spectrum, by Daniel Aaron Salomon

2. Autism and the Church: Bible, Theology, and Community, by Grant Macaskill

3. The Autistic Buddha: My Unconventional Path to Enlightenment, by Thomas Clements

4. A Neurodiverse God?, by Samuel Wells

5. An Ethnographic Study on Religion, Spirituality and Maternal Influence on Sibling Relationships in a Muslim Family with a Child with Autism, by Brinda Jegatheesan and Klaus Witz

6. Autism and Spirituality: Psyche, Self, and Spirit in People on the Autism Spectrum, by Olga Bogdashina

Stage 7: Universalizing (Late Adulthood)

This final stage is the pinnacle of spiritual development. In a Christian context it might be described as holding a space of true love for not just God, not just one’s family, but for all of creation. Buddhists have nirvana, a mental and metaphysical state of liberation and compassion.

The attainment, or even the possibility, of achieving this stage is beyond the scope of this paper. However, in the context of religious institutions providing neurodiversity-oriented accommodations for this stage, we can look at research being done which indicates that many autistic adults feel disconnected from their social worlds (Hickey, Crabtree, & Stott, 2017) and that, as they age, autistic adults often lose their support networks (Wright S., Week 14). If the Universalizing stage is a major step towards ultimate connection, how can an autistic individual achieve this while feeling so disconnected? Religious institutions here, more than anywhere, have an opportunity to help their membership by developing an inclusive culture and actively supporting neurodiverse membership. The world could benefit immensely from this; as someone passionate about religious studies, both ancient and contemporary, I cannot wait to encounter my first autistic prophet/bodhisattva/psychic/etc., fully connected to the universe, no matter which religious tradition they come from. This would be a sacred version of “optimizing autism.”

The ultimate perspective, when it comes to neurodiversity and spiritual development, is that autistic individuals have a divine potential which is either equal or equivalent to the potential of neurotypical believers. Religion is a source of joy and community for billions, including many autistic theists, and I suspect there are many great religious minds in neurodiverse communities who are waiting in the wings for religious institutions to get their act together and create a space of love, compassion, and understanding which includes people with autism. The kids on my old block deserve to live in a world where their spiritual gifts are accommodated, and it can be done.

 
References

Akin, D. (2019, September 10). 3 Reasons to Believe the Bible is Inerrant. Retrieved from Lifeway Voices: https://lifewayvoices.com/bible-theology/3-reasons-to-believe-the-bible-is-inerrant/

Carbone, D. P. (Week 4). Module 2. Autism in Early Childhood: Pediatrics and Childcare.

Craig, J., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). Creativity and imagination in autism and Asperger syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord.

Dempsey, E. E., Moore, C., Richard, A. E., & Smith, I. M. (2020). Moral foundations theory in autism spectrum disorder: A qualitative investigation. Autism, 2202-2212.

Diener, M. L., Wright, C. A., Wright, S. D., & Anderson, L. L. (2016). Tapping Into Techinical Talent: Using Technology to Facilitate Personal, Social, and Vocational Skills in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In T. A. Cardon, Technology and the Treatment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pp. 97-112). New York: Springer.

Fowler, J. W., & Dell, M. L. (2005). Stages of Faith from Infancy to Adolescence: Reflections on Three Decades of Faith Development Theory. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence (pp. 34-45). New York: SAGE Publications.

Grandin, T. (2010, February). The World Needs All Kinds of Minds. Long Beach, California.

Hickey, A., Crabtree, J., & Stott, J. (2017). ‘Suddenly the first fifty years of my life made sense’: Experiences of older people with autism. Autism, 1-11.

Jillette, P. (2007). There Is No God. In C. Hitchens, The Portable Atheist (pp. 349-350). Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

Jimmy D. McCamey, J., & Murty, K. S. (2014). The role of spirituality and religion in the strength base approach to mental health treatment among African-American women. Journal of Scientific Research and Studies, 1-8.

Parsons, B. (Week 13). Module 5. Autism and Adulthood and Aging: Adulthood & Midlife.

Robison, J. E. (2013, October 7). What is Neurodiversity? Psychology Today.

Schaap-Jonker, H., Roekel, J. v.-v., & Sizoo, B. (2012). [The God image in relation to autistic traits and religious denomination]. Tijdschr Psychiatr, 419-428.

Waddington, E. M., & Reed, P. (2017). Comparison of the effects of mainstream and special school on National Curriculum outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder: an archive‐based analysis. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 132-142.

Wells, S. (2020, May 27). A neurodiverse God? The Christian Century.

Wright, C. (Week 7). Module 3. Autism in Middle Childhood and Adolescence: Educational Programs.

Wright, S. (Week 14). Module 5. Autism in Adulthood and Aging: Aging & Later Life.

Go-ish Power Rangers: Failures in Schools, Mixed Successes in Representation

Megazord: An Analysis of Billy Cranston

It is surprising to say that a movie featuring the topical character charging through the streets in a mechanized triceratops to do battle with a winged demon made of liquid gold might have some valuable insights into the experiences of students with autism in the United States, but it holds true. Billy Cranston, one of the five main characters in the 2017 Power Rangers reboot, is not a perfect representation of individuals with autism spectrum disorder, but as the first explicitly autistic superhero appearing in a blockbuster film (Green, 2018) he stands as a major step in expressing the value of neurodiversity in mainstream media. I will be discussing three key aspects of Billy’s character in this section: his abilities, his relationships, and his status as a student.

As a superhero Billy is portrayed with super strength, speed, reaction time, and endurance. These abilities enable him both to conquer his bullies at school and to do battle with the evil ex-Ranger, Rita Repulsa. Yeah, that really is her name. However, his competencies go beyond the supernatural abilities he gains from his power coin. Yeah, that really is how they get their powers. Billy is portrayed with two other primary skills: he is an explosives expert and an excellent investigator. His interest in explosives is tied into the plot twice: the heroes meet in detention (Billy is there for accidently setting off an explosive lunch box in his locker), and the power coins are discovered from Billy purposefully setting off explosives at a mine (where an ancient alien spaceship happens to be buried). In both cases he is portrayed as skilled, but not supernaturally a “savant.” His knowledge is impressive, but the harmful and unrealistic stereotype of the super-genius-autistic-kid (Gambacurta, 2020) gets averted as he also makes mistakes, such as the accidental explosion. As an investigator he manages to discover the location of the source of all life on Earth underneath a Krispy Kreme. Yeah, that really is where the magic crystal is buried. It is one of the most important moments in the plot in terms of moving the story forward, and he manages to do it solo. Dr. Marissa Diener has said that communicating the efficacy of autistic individuals to the public is a central issue in her work (Week 2); Billy strikes a balance between unrealistically genius and helpless victim, he is a smart and competent individual who makes mistakes.

Early on in our class we discussed the concept of “normal” as it pertains to individual humans. Power Ranger’s thesis on normality is that nobody is normal and that is a flawed concept. Billy is autistic. Other characters are queer, poor, dealing with social marginalization and depression, or otherwise feel like they do not fit in to their small town. This rings of what we read from Lennard Davis, “If we rethink our assumptions about the universality of the concept of the norm, what we might arrive at is the concept that preceded it: that of the ‘ideal,’” (2013, p. 2) Each character in the film is struggling with ideals from their expectations or the expectations of others. Each wants to be “normal” and cannot admit they are not until they open up and talk to each other. Billy takes a central role in creating an atmosphere where vulnerable communication is possible through his heroic actions and sacrifices; the characters accept each other for their diversity, neurological or not, and come together as a team which benefits from the uniqueness of each participant. The Rangers take on a neurodiversity model for teamwork in the face of a society which refuses them.

Billy’s time in detention, where he meets the other Rangers, exemplifies what makes the Rangers special in the face of a broken society. In a world more educated, more big-picture oriented, and more compassionate none of these kids would be in a grungy basement with a teacher who is only there for the extra pay and because he has got nothing better going on in his life. This is especially true for Billy. While the “lunch box explosion” is a silly and exaggerated case, there are many real-world students with autism who struggle meeting “normal” expectations and end up getting marginalized. Instead of investing the necessary resources to help these students they end up getting tossed in with the problem kids. Billy lives in a small, isolated, fishing town that does not have a big enough population to support a major initiative like the Spectrum Academy in Utah, which offers extensive programming to students who are struggling academically and to high function students like Billy (Guevara, Week 6), but an effective plan from the school’s administration could better guide Billy towards a safe application of his talents. Billy might not be eligible for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) because his educational performance does not seem to be negatively impacted by his disability. However, a 504 plan would be possible because his communication and thinking skills are explicitly impacted by his disability (The Understand Team, n.d.). While the movie does not say this outright, there is a subtext in the film that the way Billy is being treated is unjust, and if this situation happened in real life a 504 plan would involve his mom, school administration, and teachers to work together and find a way to accommodate Billy and help guide him towards safer expressions of his interests (instead of sneaking into a mine and blowing up a wall).

From Big Budget Blockbuster to Low Budget Education Program

A recent piece in The City online newspaper (Zimmerman, 2021) highlighted the lack of resources and training being dedicated to special education and how problematic it can become in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The story focuses on the struggles parents and their children with ASD have ran into while trying to enroll into Learning Bridges, an educational program tasked with helping working parents with childcare and education needs as they deal with changes to lifestyle and work during the pandemic:

“The root of the problem, according to some advocates and providers, is the system was not designed to accommodate all students. City officials leaned on community-based nonprofit organizations to quickly create tens of thousands of seats for Learning Bridges, an enormous task that will cost at least $93 million from the education department’s budget, city officials said.

But unlike traditional schools, those community providers may have limited experience working with students with special needs. The centers are often staffed by people without any specialized training, making some of them nervous about enrolling students with more complicated needs.”

In the midst of a global pandemic little effort was dedicated to supporting students with ASD nor their parents who lost jobs. Paraprofessional support was refused, leaving parents with the choice of tossing their kids into a program which was not prepared to suit their needs and low-level educational facilitators being left in the awkward position of being asked to care for students they have no training to help.

The article highlights the difficulties in implementing the neurodiversity model. If we are going to create interactive environments which serve all or most kids, despite their needs, we must figure out ways to fulfill those needs. The story covers the backlash against Learning Bridges for not giving the needed support and how the local government took six months to appropriately respond by requiring centers to work to make arrangements with the state education department to bring in a paraprofessional educator, though it should be noted that research has shown this method is not always the most effective (Waddington et al, 2016).

The article, though, slightly loses the thread as it begins to tackle big systematic issues. I could not tell you about what happened with the two neurodiverse children, one with autism and one with ADHD, highlighted in the story. It is mentioned that some parents are still frustrated and that others have lost trust, but it is not clear if the accommodations made by the state made it possible for either child to enter the much-needed programming. This is a concern I have about the way the neurodiversity model can be applied: focusing on the big picture and losing sight of the actual human beings involved. In my personal life I have seen similar issues pop up in other arenas of equity, such as a person concerned with “solving racism” but being dismissive of the actual people of color in their professional circles. While these abstract models and frameworks are important, we cannot lose the trees for the forest. The article ends with a zoomed-out perspective, with the only specific person mentioned being a politician who has not accomplished anything in this field.

A Tale of Two Failures

Billy Cranston could be one of the kids discussed in the news article. Stuck in a school which cannot provide for their needs, his mom, alone since his father’s death, is required to fill in every gap. His mother is put under undue stress and ends up relieved when Billy finds friends and confidants in his neurodiverse group.

Power Rangers covers the topic quite differently, though. In the film the story is focused on the Rangers, with Billy as one of the main five characters. He has a story arc and personal growth. The film does not focus in on his mother or on his school, but instead they act as pieces that fit into the puzzle that is his life. The City’s article zooms out from the individuals involved, showing a cute photo but never providing a name. To me the piece commits a cardinal sin of covering marginalized people: it takes on the viewpoint of the people impacted by their ASD rather than focusing on how they themselves are impacted. This makes it seem as if they are a problem to be solved, rather than a life to be specifically valued. Neurodiversity as a model must think of the big picture, sure, but at the end of the day a neurodiverse group of people is made up of people, not abstract ideas. I cannot believe I am writing these words: Power Rangers is a work that forefronts the humanity of someone with ASD, the news article does not and is part of a cacophony of media which fails in this area as well.

Make It A Good Movie, Though

The intention of this assignment was to leverage my criticisms and ask for changes at the end of the essay, but it was impossible to summarize the article without mentioning its failures because its failures are intrinsic to the questions we are asking in this class. Because I do not want to repeat myself by giving the same criticisms for the article, I do want to mention some potential issues in Power Rangers and how it could improve. This should be done in an important context, however, which is that the film seems to have been generally celebrated by the autistic community (Magro, 2017) (Bergado, 2017).

The primary improvement I would make would be for a wider inclusion or thoughtfulness about neurodiversity both in the context of autism and beyond. The film really drops the ball on its other neurodiverse character, Zack Taylor. Maybe. I say “maybe” because I do not know what Zack’s deal is. He comes from a poor family, he has got a sick mom, and he describes himself as “crazy.” It is hard to know if the film wants us to think he is merely overcompensating for his struggles by acting erratically, or if he has an actual disorder which he needs help with. There is a scene in this movie where he repeatedly smashed a rock wall with a hammer while everyone around him is screaming and telling him to stop because he might damage a valuable archaeological find.

Zack is more over-the-top than any person I have met in the real world, and he likely meets all the requirements for a diagnosis for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) with his irrational refusal to comply with the wants of others, his active desire to annoy or upset others, and his easily lost temper (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2017). If neurodiversity is the belief that most, if not all, neurological differences are the result of normal and natural variation in the expression of the human genome (Robison, 2013), those with ODD deserve the same respect the film gives to those with ASD. I have worked with kids with ODD and they do have a unique and important contribution to make with the world, just like those with autism; their boldness shakes up the status quo, their rebellion forces those in power to adapt, and their expressiveness prevents problems from stagnating. I wish Zack had been taken as seriously as Billy.

The secondary improvement I would make would be to make Power Rangers an actually good movie. Seriously, I have been quite about this the whole time, but it is not a good film. The CGI looks ugly and aged. They criminally underuse Elizabeth Banks and Bryan Cranston as two ancient aliens fighting over the fate of life on earth. Sometimes the dialogue gets clunky and unrealistic, but not because of a stylistic choice, but because the writers seem to be struggling to accomplish their artistic goals. Joking and complaining aside, with a Metacritic score of 44% (2017) and with six potential sequels canceled (Mendelson, 2017), it is a bummer that the first superhero movie to prominently portray and autistic hero had to have been so poorly received for almost everything other than its portrayal of autism.

Despite my negativity on both the film and the article, both represent something good: forward steps. Power Rangers stands as the potential that we can have more movies reflecting the neurodiversity model in mainstream media. Zimmerman et al’s article represents a push to ensure the government takes on a neurodiverse approach in their educational programming, even when it is not as easy as they would like it to be. Power Rangers also represents a second point of positivity, the creation of a charming character who will always be in my memory for his bold desire to do good and for his love of explosives.

References

Bergado, G. (2017, March 29). The 'Power Rangers' Autistic Superhero Is So Important. Teen Vogue. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/power-rangers-autistic-billy-blue-superhero

Davis, L. J. (2013). The Disability Studies Reader (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

Diener, M. (2021). Week Two, Module One. Introduction to autism and neurodiversity: Neurodiversity.

Gambacurta, C. (2020, January 6). Autism Representation in the Media. Organization for Autism Research.

Green, D. (2018, April 2). Opinion: Why Accurate Representation of Autism is so Important in Film, TV [Editorial]. Middle Tennessee State University Sidelines.

Guevara, C. (2021). Week Six, Module Three. Autism in Middle Childhood and Adolescence: Schools.

Magro, K. (2017, March 29). I Have Autism And This Is My Review Of The Power Ranger Who Has Autism [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://kerrymagro.com/i-have-autism-and-this-is-my-review-of-the-power-ranger-who-has-autism/

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2018, January 25). Oppositional defiant disorder (odd). Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/oppositional-defiant-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20375831

Mendelson, Scott. (2017, March 12). "Box Office: We're (Probably) Not Getting A 'Power Rangers' Sequel". Forbes.

Metacritic. (2017, March 24). Saban's power Rangers. Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://www.metacritic.com/movie/sabans-power-rangers

Robison, J. E. (2013). What is Neurodiversity? Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-life-aspergers/201310/what-is-neurodiversity

The Understand Team. (n.d.) The Difference Between IEPs and 504 Plans (A. Lee, Ed.). Understood.org.

Waddington, E. M., & Reed, P. (2016). Comparison of the effects of mainstream and special school on National Curriculum outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder: An archive-based analysis. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 17(2), 132-142. doi:10.1111/1471-3802.12368

Zimmerman, A., Antonios, C., Chalkbeat (2021, February 25). Students with Disabilities Turned Away From NYC’s Free Pandemic Child Care Program. The City.

R Code Finding Stanovich

x= sample(x = -1000:1000, size  = 500)

y= sample(x = -1000:1000, size  = 500)

xpos = sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

ypos = sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

s = c()

t = c()

for (q in 1:1000) {

  x= sample(x = -1000:1000, size  = 500)

  y= sample(x = -1000:1000, size  = 500)

  xpos = sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

  ypos = sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

  

  s[q] = c(summary(lm(x~y))$coefficients[1,4])

  t[q] = c(summary(lm(xpos~ypos))$coefficients[1,4])

}

summary(s)

summary(t)

e= sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 500)

f= sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 500)

epos = sample(x = 0:500, size  = 250)

fpos = sample(x = 0:500, size  = 250)

k = c()

h = c()

for (q in 1:1000) {

  e= sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

  f= sample(x = 0:1000, size  = 250)

  epos = sample(x = 0:500, size  = 125)

  fpos = sample(x = 0:500, size  = 125)

  

  k[q] = c(summary(lm(e~f))$coefficients[1,4])

  h[q] = c(summary(lm(epos~fpos))$coefficients[1,4])

}

summary(k)

summary(h)

Summary of findings: splitting the data into a half-sized category with a positive/negative split creates a nearly immeasurable difference where the normal data reveals no relationship, while the split data "reveals" a statistical significance strong enough to be considered a cosmic or particle physics discovery. With just the positive data, both come out as "significant" but the significance gets cut in half with the split data.

Infant Education Scams: Fake iPads and Misleading Concepts

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, but what happens those words are meant to mislead parents?

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Baby-Kids-Tablet-Educational-Toys-Birthday-Christmas-Gifts-for-Boys-Girls-Fun-Learning-English-Toys/228455226?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=1973

We’ll talk about the science of this in a moment, but may I just complain that one of the largest, most powerful, corporations in the world sells products which are obviously designed to trick consumers and which are obviously useless?

The Baby Kids Tablet Educational Toy does not include a particularly dynamic product description, its page claims that it is a “multifunctioning learning toy pad” which helps kids “easily win at the starting line.” It also claims to have “screen touch control” which sets off a red flag of the product evoking a touch screen while swapping the word as a legal defense. While the marketing remains vague, I found a helpful YouTube video reviewing a similar product; I do not speak Hindi but I am very grateful to this content creator for showing what the toy looks like and what it does:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBf0PUvFiuo&ab_channel=SahiBUY

It is just a chunk of plastic that says things connected to the various buttons on the fake screen. “A for apple” type stuff. While a normally developed B.S. detector can spot most of the issues here without going into depth, it is worthwhile to develop that intuition by going into how this product is wrong in the context of marketing and the pseudoscience it proports.

An overview of infant development (Fogel, 2014) reveals the first point of audacity in this image: this “baby kid,” per the product description, cannot read or even comprehend the concept. Let us estimate that the child here is twelve months old. Infants do not begin to speak their first words until approximately 9-12 months of age (pg. 304), they cannot carry a dialogue even at twenty-four months (pg. 413), and in a separate survey of 1,023 parents the earliest reported age for beginning to read was 3.5 years old (Kern & Friedman, 2008). There is a good chance that the pictured baby cannot even speak beyond “mama,” much less engage in ideas like the alphabet (infants at this age are only just beginning to grasp the basic concept of cause and effect (Fogel, 2014, pg. 287)). In fact, the marketers knew how ridiculous their product is; compare our first image:

To the marketing used on a different, slightly sketchier, website:

https://www.oio-7.top/ProductDetail.aspx?iid=90947950&pr=34.99

Who knows why the price has tripled here, but note how the infant in question is posed in the exact same position: arms and neck and so on, but if we look closer:

Walmart

Dorno

We can see, amongst other amateurish photo editing mistakes, that the “tablet” in question has been placed there digitally; see the gap between the baby and the toy in the first and second pictures and how it shifts? Notice, also, in the above picture (the Walmark photo) how it looks like the baby’s knee is oddly shaped and convex and how the cut aligns with where the tablet lies in the lower photo (Dorno)? Even the makers of the product do not bother giving children their useless toy.

It is so telling that the infant in question sits here alone in this picture. “I would like my child to succeed, but I am too busy trying to succeed myself, so I will buy this hunk of plastic for them,” is the core of the marketing pitch. I cannot help but compare the inferred laziness and cynicism of this approach to the hard work done by scientists to actually understand the connection between early reading and success in life. Kern and Friedman put together more than 7,000 words of analysis on the Terman Life Cycle Study, which was a longitudinal study which focused specifically on gifted children. This created a massive storehouse of data on participants whose information was sampled every five to ten years. This gave Kern and Friedman a rich dataset to do their analysis about educational milestones and success. Luckily, given the terrible reviews and lack of apparent traffic on the product pages, our Fake Baby iPads and the marketing ethos seems to be losing out to parents who are dedicated and loving, who are more interested in the truth, like Kern and Friedman, than a inevitably flawed (and if it is used to replace methods which actually work, potentially damaging) easy fix; it is too bad that Walmart seems to support the latter.

Ethically, perhaps the biggest problem with the marketing is its pitch that it will help kids “easily win at the starting line.” It takes advantage of a common desire, to want one’s children to succeed at life, but totally obfuscates the methodology to accomplish this. It is true that learning to read at an early age is associated with better success in school, and even a longer life (Kern & Friedman, 2008), but trying to automate this learning using the aesthetics of high tech removes the most important element: parents directly involving themselves in the teaching process (Hulme & Snowling, 2015).

Kern and Friedman did not find a magic bullet which creates “gifted” children, the idea that one can “easily win at the starting line” is a lie, and parents should not waste money on a product like this. Parents should save the $10 plus shipping and spend an extra hour with their kids, it’ll do good for both of them.

References

Fogel, A. (2014). Infancy: Infant, family and society.

Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2015). Learning to Read: What We Know and What We Need to Understand Better. Child development perspectives, 7(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12005

Kern ML, Friedman HS. (2008) Early educational milestones as predictors of lifelong academic achievement, midlife adjustment, and longevity. J Appl Dev Psychol. 2008;30(4):419-430. doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2008.12.025.