Christmas and Easter have been and gone since last I wrote. Trust me, they have. My various jaunts were all very pleasant (apart from a few bouts of illness which threatened to overwhelm me and another, once resulting in a memorable fainting) and I have had a jolly nice few weeks- no school and much merriment. I am now faced with the unwelcome prospect of completing the second written assignment for my P.G.C.E. That is what I should be doing now. I have recently returned from the library, laden with publications with gripping and exhilarating titles, such as ‘Communication and Learning in Small Groups.’

My written assignment is to be on the subject of Inclusion and Social Learning. Ooohh. Ahhh. This essentially means that I will be looking at how children who have problems interacting with others (such as children with Asperger’s Syndrome, a disorder on the Autistic Spectrum) cope with group work and whether they can benefit from it. Now doesn’t that sound stimulating?

I started off well. I have much relevant material. I have even read some of it. Unfortunately I decided to have a flick through what is essentially a novel, albeit a novel told from the perspective of a child with Asperger’s, attempting to solve the murder of his neighbour’s dog. I suppose it is technically related, as it does give quite an insight as to how those with Asperger’s view the world, but it is something I should have read a few months ago, when planning my research lessons, rather than a week before the essay is due. An extract and then I must crack on-

‘Heaven doesn’t exist. I said there wasn’t another kind of place altogether. Except there might be if you went through a black hole. If Heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren’t, or people would notice.’(The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.)

Now there’s logic for you. This passage may also illustrate why I find talking to children with Asperger’s so interesting. They may well see the world differently but still certainly manage to make more sense than a lot of people.