Despite a recent Academy Award nomination, Doug Biklen, dean of the School of Education, is receiving widespread criticism in his recent appoint as head of the college.

Biklen, who has taught at SU for 32 years in the School of Education’s Cultural Foundations and Teaching and Leadership programs, and the university itself are being dealt blows by professionals in the education, psychology and science fields for Biklen’s research work with facilitated communication, a technique that aims to help autistic children learn how to communicate.

Biklen acknowledges the technique is controversial as facilitators help autistic children communicate by holding their hands while typing and says it can be easy to influence the child’s typing.

‘We’re working towards independent communication or working to improve authorship,’ Biklen said.

Therefore, he said, the criticism of his appointment as dean doesn’t surprise him.

Andrew Skolnick, executive editor and news editor for the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Health, said many leading professionals are disappointed in the university’s inadvertent support of this technique by appointing Biklen.

‘Facilitated communication is nothing to be proud of,’ Skolnick said. ‘It is pseudoscientific therapy or practice that has been thoroughly discredited.’

Skolnick referred to the technique as a ‘hoax’ and a ‘crackpot remedy’ and said people advocating the technique are sometimes unknowingly perpetuating a hoax.

‘Proponents are clinging to it like flat-earthers,’ he said.

‘Frontline’ on PBS did a segment on the technique and showed a child not looking at the computer screen while a facilitator was working with the person.

‘My mouth dropped open when I saw it,’ Skolnick said. ‘It was so obvious to me that the facilitator was doing the typing.’

He also said parents of autistic children can become so desperate when finding ways to help their child that they can be ‘taken advantage of’ by advocates of facilitated communication. He also referred to cases where facilitated communication has proven harmful.

Skolnick claims there have been cases of facilitators ‘assisting’ children in typing stories of sexual abuse by parents and consequently breaking up these families.

‘Any method can be harmful if it is used badly,’ Biklen said, laughing. ‘Anything in education could be harmful.’

Biklen said while he has always wanted to come up with a less intrusive method, he sees profound results with facilitated communication.

SU has one of the most famous inclusive education programs, according to Biklen. He said while he does include examples from his research in the classroom, he does not teach students only this technique.

‘It’s part of a whole array of things,’ he said, adding that he teaches students many techniques and lets them decide which they prefer.

As dean, he said he has no plans to change the way he has been doing anything in regard to facilitated communication.

‘I would never back away from any SU strength,’ he said.

Barbara Applebaum, a colleague of Biklen’s in the School of Education for the past four years, said she is delighted about his appointment as dean, especially in the era of Chancellor Nancy Cantor.

‘His career couples a commitment to innovative research, as his work in facilitated communication demonstrates, with a deep understanding of teaching and how to shape the educative experience of students in positive ways,’ she said. ‘Anyone who has the good fortune to get to know (Biklen) knows he is a man of integrity and would never misuse his position in the way that critics suggest.’

Rachel Polansky, a senior education major who had Biklen as a professor her freshman year in the Study of Elementary and Special Education Teaching course, also expressed positive sentiments regarding Biklen.

‘He was a great professor,’ Polansky said. ‘He really strives for personal relationships with students.’

Polansky also worked at the SU day-care center on South campus while enrolled in Biklen’s course and said she got to work with autistic children.

‘They were able to transition really nicely with other kids,’ she said.

Biklen said he has seen cases of children eventually being able to type on their own and some even learning to speak due to facilitated communication.

‘I’ve always felt I needed to put my work out there,’ Biklen said, who also founded the Facilitated Communication Institute at SU in 1992 to give focus and secure grant money for his research on the technique. ‘Some debates can be hasty in the academic world, but this is just bullying.’

Published on August 28, 2005 at 12:00 pm