No, you've got the Hebrew seriously wrong.

Instead of what you have, it should be  יוֹחָנָן סוּכַּרִיוֹת

What you had there, instead, was roughly equivalent to "John JOHN."

I'm worried about PECS because I have seen PECS salesmen at conferences and trade shows saying things like "one of the advantages of PECS is that the limited vocabulary makes it very easy to prevent inappropriate language usage such as perseveratively repeating out-of context statements like 'The other kids hit me' or 'The gym teacher put her hand on my leg' — just remove the words that are building blocks for the problem communication behavior, such as 'hit' or 'leg,' and the inappropriate communication behavior cannot be produced." In at least one conference, there was some applause and there were some people saying that this gave them a convincing reason to buy into PECS as their preferred system. ?!?! I don't have kids, but I'm a special-ed professional who is autistic and who is disgusted by this (or maybe that makes me "a special-ed professional with autism and disgustedness"...)

Introduce the Cat to Little Rabbit Foo-Foo's Norse epic, THE FÚFUMAL — http://kip-w.livejournal.com/215011.html

Re:
“ ... once you allow human reason to determine the rightness of any idea, you have turned your back on the right path, because ... ”

Once he _ceases_ to allow “human reason,” he has turned his back on the concept of “because.”

I wonder what happens if the medical profession decides that the "social construct model" of disabilities is completely correct and fully applicable to every disability. If we have to say that paralyzed limbs or lesioned organs "work differently" rather than ever admitting that the limb or the organ is _not_ working, or that it has been damaged — then it becomes, conceptually, easy to deny care. (After all, if there is no such thing as damage or dysfunction, then there is nothing to treat.)
There are things about myself that _do_, objectively, work wrong — and that I would very much like to work right. When some part of my body (including any part of my brain) does not serve its purpose (or my purpose), none of this is made easier or more dignified by calling the obstacle a "difference."

Even if society and its artifacts did not exist, or had no influence or purpose, there are some people who will be less than able in any imaginable environment. What is the environment, for instance, in which a human being who cannot reason will be more able than a human being who can and does?

I am not convinced that capitalizing "autistic" (other than a the beginning of a sentence) makes sense. Nobody similarly capitalizes "left-handed" or "dyslexic" or "intelligent" or "musical" or "tone-deaf" or "color-blind" (though each of these categories includes people who find that these characteristics powerfully influence their lives and sense of self).

Mandating cursive on the grounds of "brain development" —given how hard the research has to be twisted to fit that claim — is not intelligent.
Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The research is surprising. For instance, it has been documented that legible cursive writing averages no faster than printed handwriting of equal or greater legibility. (Sources for all research are listed below.)
Further research demonstrates that the fastest, clearest handwriters are neither the print-writers nor the cursive writers. The highest speed and highest legibility in handwriting are attained by those who join only some letters, not all of them – making only the simplest of joins, omitting the rest, and using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree.

Reading cursive matters, but even children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there's even an iPad app to teach how: named "Read Cursive," of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive .) So why not simply teach children to read cursive — along with teaching other vital skills, including some handwriting style that's actually typical of effective handwriters?

Educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When even most handwriting teachers do not themselves use cursive, why mandate it?

What about signatures? In state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)

Questioned document examiners (these are specialists in the identification of signatures, the verification of documents, etc.) inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest.
Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger's life easy.
All writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on unsigned work) which student produced it.

Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.

SOURCES:
Handwriting research on speed and legibility --
Arthur Dale Jackson. “A Comparison of Speed and Legibility of Manuscript and Cursive Handwriting of Intermediate Grade Pupils.”
Ed. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970: on-line at http://www.eric.ed.gov/?id=ED056015
Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May - June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September - October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
Survey of handwriting instructors – http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H29...
Indiana University handwriting research – http://www.tinyURL.com/Indiana-University-Handwri...

[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
and the World Handwriting Contest http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com

Re:
"The idea behind the cursive writing bill in the general assembly right now is enhancing brain development."

To judge the intelligence of that effort, It is instructive to look at the efforts of the bill's introducer, Senator Jean Leising.

In each of Senator Leising's two previous attempts to mandate cursive handwriting (2012 and 2013) she has publicly made erroneous statements in order to gain support. These statements were made to the Indiana media and, in at least one instance, were made under oath to her fellow legislators during her testimony in defense of her cursive bill.

Details:

/1/
In 2012, Leising's erroneous claim to her fellow legislators was that cursive was supported by an Indiana University research study ("Neural Correlates of Handwriting" by Dr. Karin Harman-James). The senator had handed out this study to her fellow legislators as she introduced the bill — after adding to the study a front-page statement (or "abstract"), written by her and replacing the study's original abstract. Senator Leising's added material, and her description of the study as she introduced the bill, asserted that the study had compared printing with cursive and that it had found advantages for cursive. The fact, however, is that the study had not even involved cursive. When legislators and other recipients of her claims went beyond the first page, then looked up the study themselves, they quickly found that the study had been a comparison of printing with keyboarding (and that printing had come out ahead).

/2/
In 2013, her second attempt, Leising stated in the legislature (in a dramatic assertion that was picked up by her state's media) that research done by "the SAT people" (her phrase) had shown that SAT examinees who used cursive on the test's essay section got 15% higher scores. Again, a check of sources (in this case, inquiries to the SAT/College Board administrators, made by me and apparently by other persons) swiftly revealed that Leising's claim diverged from the facts.
The score gap between print-using and cursive-using examinees, it turned out, was not 15% or anywhere near that —but was a mere one-fifth of a point (0.2 points) and was on the essay portion alone: so small a difference that it is, for instance, less than the score difference between male and female students taking the same exam. (The only "15%" anywhere in the research was the percentage of students who used cursive rather than in some other form of handwriting.)

It remains to be asked why she has allowed her two previous efforts to rely on misquotation and misrepresentation to her fellow legislators and to the other citizens of Indiana. Let us focus on this year.
What has she claimed _this_ time?

/a/ While she still talks about "research," she has stopped providing any traceable source. She invokes, instead, unnamed "child psychologists ... locally and nationwide." I have yet to find one psychologist (including any child psychologist) who holds the position on cursive that (Leising tells us) child psychologists hold. Perhaps she is finding it easier to make statements without a named, traceable source than to use identifiable sources (as she has in the past) whose misrepresentation, too, can be identified).

/b/ She has now started claiming that cursive writing is important because (she tells her audiences) joining letters is what causes us to read from left to right. It would hurt her case — perhaps it would hurt her feelings — if her audiences recollected that the left-to-right direction of our alphabet existed for centuries (at least) before handwriting began to join. Certainly, children are taught to read (and often become very good at it) years before they are taught to join letters: even texting, which is definitely not cursive and whose practitioners are often life-long print-writers, goes as thoroughly left-to-right as any other form of the written language.

/c/ This year, the Senator has stated that she doesn't care whether children (or, presumably, other people) can write their own names decipherably, as long as they are doing it in cursive.

When she learned that half of the cursive signatures on a college petition supporting cursive were indecipherable, she did not think that this detracted from her trust in cursive as a literacy cure-all.

Would the Mises Institute or its readers like some documentation of incidents in which legislators with. Business interest (or other interest) in cursive handwriting methods have warped the legislative process (e.g., by misquoting or misrepresenting research) in order to create government mandates for cursive in the schools of their state?
These endeavors (some successful, others defeated by concerned citizens including me) took place in 2012 and this year: further battles are expected for the remainder of this year and into 2014 at least. Reporters or others wishing documentation or other further info can e-mail me at 518-482-6763 to request this and/or to schedule an interview.