The Glade 4.0

Very interesting discussion on the topic from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/experts/exist.html




Does ADHD even exist? And even if it does, should we be medicating children for this?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

ADHD is over diagnosed, but there is an actual condition that exists, with defined neurological differences behind it, which requires medication to maintain.

Not every exuberant, excitable and overactive child is ADHD, however.

I'll also add that I love how the interviews are presented- with the vehement "against" positions first, followed by all of the "for" positions, with no distinction between the two. For most people that just read a little bit, they'll come away with the idea that it's all very conspiratorial and unsubstantiated, without reading the definite substantiation at the bottom.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

The disorder certainly exists, but like Nphyr said, is wildly overdiagnosed.

As for the paragraph posted, we've always had schools that expect children to sit quietly, and parents have in the past had much harsher standards of children's decorum. The problem is that kids are in school too many days of the year and too many hours of the day in a "more is better" ham-handed attempt to shore up problems in the education system, and to demand the throwing of more money at it. As a result, they spending more time sitting quietly and less time burning off energy and doing all the playing that is also supposed to be part of childhood.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This. x10

In addition, it is standard practice to take away recess, the only outlet for burning off energy, when children wind up finding creative ways to burn energy in the classroom...which only compounds the problem.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Not only is it over diagnosed, but worse, it's over medicated...

Everyone is so pill happy these days...

Er... What was the question?

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Some children have problems chemically in their brains that manifest in their behavior and medicine can certainly help restore the balance.

Conversely many children whose brains are chemically balanced do not fit well into the conventional one size fits all model that is public education and react as expected. I'd imagine the first group is smaller than the second.

The rest I'm not qualified to answer.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Classrooms are a very new and unnatural phenomenon. Kids are meant to be running around hitting each other with sticks, and flipping rocks over looking for salamanders... Not sitting in a dreary classroom where they are yelled at for every sound or movement.

ADHD does exist, it's just overdiagnosed because most people end up becoming crappy parents, because they're stupid.

Kids need to play and learn constantly and if there isn't a strong father/mother presence to take on these duties and instead the kid is shoved into conformity (school, daycare, etc) and the only free time they have they're being ignored and the only interaction with their parents is to get yelled at about stupid **** based on the retarded institutions they've trapped their puny little minds in, the cycle is likely to continue. Then, these kids (most kids these days are raised this way with a focus on conformity and discipline rather than exploration and learning and fun) will turn out to be even shittier parents and the cycle will continue and the only thing we will have to rely on to solve this problem is Darwin. Unfortunately the industrial revolution has made it more and more possible for stupid people to survive a very very very long time, and you don't need to be a smart, strong or even sane and healthy person in order to live what the metaculture has repeatedly bashed into these ignorant f*ckers heads to be a "fulfilling, successful life".

So, because that doesn't work we will then have to rely on economic downfall, war, famine and disease to help large groups of stupid people kill themselves off (a country, for instance). Lets face it, the dumber people get the weaker the society becomes. For this reason I believe "No Child Left Behind" is a precursor to epic future happenings that end up killing a lot of the stupid, ugly and unhealthy people off and then maybe I can enjoy my life without being bombarded by stupid advertisements, having to hear about things like ADHD and PSTD and IBS, the faggot emo kids that are going to play at the next superbowl, and Snooki's vagine...and I won't have to sit in traffic with 6 of these f*ckers packed in a minivan in front of me going 5 under in the fast lane.

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Ron Paul 2012

I'm fond of a saying one of my old martial art instructors had, "Huckleberry Finn would not have been the same on Ritalin."

As has been said, there are kids that suffer from ADHD, but most kids just suffer from being over fed/sugared and under exercised (mentally and physically).

Nev, well said.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I am glad you think that this is how every classroom is run.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

We are all wallwishing on the topic of inflation right now. The kids then are to go to my edmodo site where half the kids are the Aztecs the other half are the Spanish and they have to defend their reasons about their part in the Spanish invasion. I would like to use my QR codes for my kids for their homework, however the majority don't have smartphones, so i just stick to my BLOG for Homework. Finally, they have about 10 minutes of free time to play on Edheads.org most choose to do some brain surgery or hip and knee replacements.

As for ADHD, I think someone posted the "Sir Ken Robinson—Changing Education Paradigms" video in the random video thread. I can't get to it here at school because they block youtube, (GRUMBLE) however I believe his video should sell it to you about ADHD and education and I believe his ideas are part of the way to go towards education.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

Please stop taking every negative remark about teaching personally. You know damn well that there are a lot more terrible teachers than there are amazing ones.

When do I ever call people out Lenas? The one time I do you jump down my throat. You prove to me another time I have taken personally and I won't go after people who intentionally troll often. I don't know many teachers in my building who yell often. If that is the case then why the hell do they teach? That is a serious shame if the norm is about yelling at students across the country.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

This is false. There are a lot of average teachers in completely shitty circumstances, with the same 10% who are amazing and 10% who suck on either ends of the bell curve.

I'm so glad you don't have any problems in your life. I'm saddened that your easy life has made you so disdainful and clearly hateful towards people who do have real problems. I'm glad to know what you think of me (2 outta 3 ain't bad, right?) and the problems I struggle to deal with and function as normally as I'm able to despite which.


You're assuming a normal distribution. It's the argument of people who suggest as Lenas does that the external pressures on people who select education as a career are such that it attracts a non-normal distribution. Namely, the sheltering of poor performers and the tenure system attract a disproportionate number of people (compared to the average distribution, whatever that might be) who find those to be appealing systems.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I can only speak for the Ed majors that I know, and while there were some that were in the program because they were genuinely interested in teaching, most of them were there because it was a really easy major.

The students I knew that were passionate about a subject, and really wanted to teach it, ended up getting a degree in that subject and then a Masters in Ed or a certificate allowing them to teach. I knew lots of people in Secondary Ed- Math that were there because they couldn't pass the majors math classes, so were taking education math classes instead. Ditto for those in many of the secondary ed science programs in general.

I have a lot of friends that are outstanding teachers, but from everything I've seen and here them say about the system in general, they're not the norm, but rather exceptions. That most of their colleagues and peers want to put in as little effort as possible to get their paycheck, that they don't know the material they're teaching, and that they don't think they need to put in any effort to make their classes better.

Also, to tag on to Kaffis: I'm really sorry you have such an extremely negative perspective, Nev... And quite honestly, I'm surprised that LK seems to agree with it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Seems to me you get the eye-roll smiley ready every time someone has something bad to say about teachers. Look, we all know you're a great teacher and it sounds like I would have a blast in your classroom. I agree with Lex, though, and I don't think he was trolling. I'm sorry you feel like I attacked you, but I knew it was coming just like Sas mentioning her UMPC or Elmo talking about reloading.

I'm pretty sure I remember someone here demonstrating that an education degree in a specific subject was actually harder to get than just a "standard" degree in that subject, but that the problem actually was that schools are hiring teachers who don't even have education degrees at all, or assigning people with one type of education degree to teach an unrelated subject.

I can guarantee that this is highly school dependent. At my undergrad institution, education degrees weren't the easiest degrees on campus, but they were one of the easier degrees.

As to whether they were easier are harder than the standard degree, that just depends on the program. Our secondary education program required between 6 and 18 hours of coursework in the subject you wanted to teach- not bad- but the kicker was that it could all be at the "non-major" level. For instance, a Secondary-Ed chemistry degree, you could take two "survey of chemistry" classes, and then "introduction to organic chemistry" and "introduction to biochemistry", which were the non-major equivalents (and half the credits) of their normal equivalents. Also, you got to skip all of the labs except for a single "chemistry for education majors" lab. It ended up turning out new teachers with almost no reasonably knowledge of what they were going to be teaching, but a lot of hours worth of credit in *how* to teach it.

That said, all of this talk about education is quite off the tracks for the original ADHD topic.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Ok! so I admit I do roll my eyes a lot , therefore I feel ahamed . However, I am happy that you said you would like to be in my class. It does make me sad to see that teachers would yell at children so often. My students make me laugh and sometimes they even surprise me. That is why I hate the over use of meds for the "ADHD" kids. It is usually some bright idea from some doctor to shut up the parents by telling them. "Oh your child has ADHD." . I mean it really does piss me off . The parents, the teachers, and the doctors just need to see that a sterile classroom is not one for learning. I have my kids get up and move around. sometimes the simpliest acitivity I do is hand out grouping cards when they work in groups and depending on how many kids I want in that group they get up to find their partners. Like a group of three I have cards labeled Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry, Larry, Moe, and Curly, and Past, Present, and Future. Just that two minutes of moving around to find their groups gets them more focused and on task with their groups. I think I am redirecting my anger at the wrong people. I am well aware of the condition of our education system it just shocks me that people who claim to be educators can continue to give someone like myself who has a passion and drive for this job a bad name . Just needed to get that off my chest (insert boob smiley). Thanks for being so cool Lenas.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

Moo, I think she's talking to you.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Interesting. I remember a completely opposite demonstration.

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