Why are So Many Children Put in Educational Boxes? Diagnosed with ADD/ADHD...etc.? Fascinating Watch

[KoKo]

This RSA Animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award. Uploaded on Oct 14, 2010
Watch this lecture in full here: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/ar...

The RSA is a 258 year-old charity devoted to driving social progress and spreading world-changing ideas.

Find out more about the RSA at http://www.thersa.org

Found this at random search when DU Posters Archived "Journals" Popped up when I hit wrong log in button for DU "Log On" today. There is some good stuff there in DU Journals....and this one is a fascinating read.



NYC_SKP's Journal...worth the read in his introduction:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NYC_SKP/23

[msongs]

1. "when I looked back on all the crap I learned in high school..." - P. Simon nt

[Ford_Prefect]

2. ADHD is quite real. It is no more mythological than an allergy to mold spores. Ask the NIH.

The degree of increase in diagnosis is due in part to increasingly better diagnostic tools, to previous misdiagnosis, cultural, and yes educational stereotyping. Drugs are not the only viable or recommended response. Ken Robinson is a bit disingenuous about his biases there as his reasoning on ADHD propagation demonstrates.

However, the points made about cultural bias regarding education are spot-on and have been true for several decades. The over emphasis on certain kinds of intellectual process as the goal of education and the measure of it have taken a system of inquiry and made it into dogma.

It should not be the measure of learning that we all think the same thoughts arrived at by the same orthodox method based on the same set of authorized information. Education should be about how to use the mind and our experiences to understand the life we are living so that we can make informed and wise choices and learn from that process. It should also emphasize and recognize differences in perception and process such that each person is not only acquiring the tools they need to think clearly but also learning to understand their individual process and perceptions. We are (not meant to be) DEVO!

We live in a culture that demands we participate as quickly as possible without thinking. This leaves us open to infinite manipulation and the result is fear and fear driven cultural choices as the recent rush towards war in Iraq (again) and Syria is but one example.

[chervilant]

6. Sir Robinson is quite clear that he is addressing

the alleged epidemic of ADHD. He explicitly acknowledges the existence of ADHD.

[Ford_Prefect]

9. Sir Robinson's biases are well known on this subject.

Rather like a climate denier.

He does not deny the existence of ADHD. He disputes the degree to which it exists in the population. He also attacks the methodology of drug prescription for ADHD. While he may have intellectual standing he lacks experience in the field.

He chooses to ignore, as do others, that ADHD often has other conditions associated with it and as such requires an integrated and individualized response.

If we are to accept his view of the "alleged epidemic of ADHD" then we must also accept that the condition has been diagnosed purely subjectively and without validation. The same argument was used against Fibromyalgia and PTSD by insurance companies and employers. All 3 conditions were at one time considered hypothetical and hysterical responses to situations allegedly explained by "conventional" means. NIH now list all 3 as real conditions with genuine consequences and genuine treatment schemes.

That Sir Robinson wishes children were not drugged is laudable sentiment but disregards the research and the results as well. One cannot but be a bit disappointed in that part of the presentation. He uses his biased views on this one subject to illustrate a condition he otherwise illustrates quite accurately and well. Rather like the economist who illuminates the historical financial sources of racism and its dogmas and then chooses an inappropriate allegory using the N word to make his point.

[chervilant]

10. You must have watched a different video. n/t

[Ford_Prefect]

11. That would be this one? (Above)

Also on you tube:

#t=11

Perhaps you can provide an alternate explanation of the remarks beginning at 3:43 in which he disparages the notion that Psychologists and Educational professionals have asserted that the condition is real. A situation he describes as both Fictitious and Misplaced.

Perhaps you can illuminate further his contention that children who are assigned these labels are then irresponsibly "medicated as routinely as we had our tonsils taken out." 4:20 or so in the sequence.

Perhaps you can explain how he refuses to discuss ADHD as anything but a children's disorder.

Please hear me clearly once again. I don't dispute his assertions regarding the problems of modern public education and the effect its of its roots in classical education on the cultural expectations we now carry into the new century. I think he has illustrated that set of problems quite well.

[chervilant]

12. Sir Ken Robinson

"disparages" the concept of an epidemic of ADHD. It is the alleged epidemic of ADHD that he labels fictitious and misplaced. Further, he notes, rather correctly, that the increased incidences of ADHD correspond with increases in standardized testing. This correspondence is one aspect of his position that I do question, as I've not found defensible research that substantiates that this is not a spurious relationship. As he noted in the video you linked, the debate about ADHD rages on (as evidenced by our back and forth herein).

I have not seen any presentations wherein Sir Robinson "refuses to discuss ADHD as anything but a children's disorder."

I hear you clearly, and I stand by my original post, as well as this one.

[bbgrunt]

3. I gotta admit that I am a sucker for these videos......and

I spent way too much of my life in "educational" institutions as both a student and teacher.

I love this "summerhill" type of educational philosophy, but I can't see it ever being applied to the masses or general public because there is no metric for "measuring results"......and if this country is about anything, it's about being able to crow and market yourself based on on your (questionable) measurable success. Broad public funding would never be provided without strings. I think at best, this kind of education will be available to the already elite.

The saddest thing of all, though, are the directions that current reform are taking us--whether unintentionally or (I expect) intentionally--to a joyless and robotic existence. If Arne Duncan had a soul he would be ashamed (along with many others who should know better).

[Ford_Prefect]

4. I believe the question comes down to whether we are training socialized robots,

or exploring the universe one person at a time.

I can see that the need to validate results drives the fear that an allegedly un-quantifiable dividend is wasted effort. I disagree with those who insist on the lowest denominator as the metric of choice.

[Johnny Rash]

5. Great find! Thank You!

Can we just "Stop turning our kids into senseless killers!"

This animated video clip engages the viewers to "Think outside the box", in a most effective way.

[blackspade]

7. Excellent commentary.

[antigop]

8. the arts are the victim. Thanks, KoKo. nt

[DeSwiss]

13. They're put into boxes because they're easier to store that way.

- Whether it's for the cubicles. The warehouses. Or the unemployment lines of the future. The boxes and the pills for ADD/ADHD...etc. will help keep it all neat and orderly.

They think.

K&R

People need to wake up. There are no jobs. We gave them all to the machines. Remember? The machines we loved so much we sacrificed everything for them?

[KoKo]

14. If I had the money or capital...I'd open "Alternative Schools" all over the USA....

I think the time has come ...Not for Arne Duncan's Way....but a rebirth of Education like the Montessori Schools were in the 70's as a way of trying to change the Education Model. From what I've read they didn't work out so well and there are none of them where I live these days...but, in the early 70's there were lots of Education Models being talked about.

I always felt that Kids learn in Different ways. And, many adapt and achieve with whatever model our Current Education Philosophy is for our Public Schools....but the Creative Kids...the ones THESE DAYS diagnosed and put on Meds are a Failure of our Education System to deal with the Creatives, the Ones Who See Life Differently, and those who come from Disadvantaged Places who just have a whole different view and experience of Life than what our National Based EduSystem seems to think kids need to become "successful, product, high income wealth producers to Govt. and Society at Large. .....Those kids get put into BOXES like they need Reform School or Something!

[DeSwiss]

15. That'd be a wonderful undertaking Koko.....

...but I don't think the Montessori Schools or any other the other alternatives from back then, ''failed.'' Maybe from a corporate model's perspective, yeah. Which is what education has been designed around and for all this time. Corporate tails, wag-the-dog. What we've come to view as education in this country has always been about conformity and the preparing of cogs for the machines.

But the human creative potential is limitless. And it can overcome and accomplish much if given the resources and freedom to truly educate. But that will never happen under the current regimes.

The current education system is too ensconced into the existing power structures to anything more than to be tools of control. We've reached a tipping point in the man-vs-machines struggle and the machines won. And it is in the nature of top-down hierarchical systems to devolve into cost-saving monopolies (that means less of us) as we're seeing happening now. And like all cancer, nothing else can exist -- until nothing exists.

It would be preferable to me and many others if we could intelligently transition into a newer better model of governance. Using the knowledge and truths that we have gained from our education(s) instead of this ridiculous politicking, bullshitting and acting as if what we do has no negative impacts upon anyone else. But I don't think that's gonna happen, given our past history. We'll wait until there's a crisis and then look for another guru to save us from ourselves.

- When the truth is and always was, we're the only ones who can do that.....