Are you interested in your child’s education? Well, duh. Of course you are. (-:
Watch this video by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renown education and creativity expert. It’s definitely worth watching. A friend was telling me she had seen a “fascinating video about the history of education that also shows a map of how the (so-called) ADHD epidemic spread across the U.S. It shows how there aren’t too many prescriptions in California but then the epidemic starts up somewhere in the mid-west and by the time you get to Washington D.C. (where I am, a place I call the Land of Over-Achievey Parents), it peaks.”
Interesting.
He’s not saying ADHD doesn’t exist. What he is doing is using animation to underscore the statistics so people like me (people who have ADHD but have somehow gotten through life without being medicated) can understand him.
All the things he has to say about how our current model of educational systems is built on the Industrial Age (modeled after factories – how outdated is that?), fascinates me. He says we are using an outdated mode of education for our children – we’re boring them, basically. Teaching them that there is just one way to answer a question and it’s in the back of the book. And to add insult to injury we’re punishing them for being bored. So we’re anaesthetizing them through their boring education with drugs.
I don’t want to offend anyone whose child needs to be on medication for ADHD – I know people whose children are being treated for ADHD with medication and who clearly need it, and benefit from it. But the thing is, as a lay person watching the ADHD trend from the sidelines right smack in the middle of the Washington D.C. metro-area – it just seems too common. Seems to me like too many kids are being medicated – not just the ones who need it, but most of them. It seems like it’s become a cultural trend, something people – teachers, other moms, grocery clerks – will suggest, because it’s that common.
And that disturbs me. Americans are getting so used to drugging themselves for everything – bad diets, high cholesterol, sadness, sexual dysfunction – you name it, there’s probably a pill for it. And now it’s trickling down to our children.
Anyway this video really made me think, about education, about our children, and about ADHD.
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