Why so many disorders in children?

[TheFaithfulStone]

Cedars makes a good point. My grandfather finished high-school and was able to get a decent job. Now, this takes at least a college degree.

It used to be that the stakes weren't quite so high for kids. Now, if you're not winning the science fair at six, they've already got you "tracked" for an exciting life of minimum wage jobs.

What causes all of these "problems" in kids? It's that we demand so much perfection from our children, that anything less that perfect little consumer / worker bee must be an actual mental illness. Anybody who doesn't fit the mold early and perfectly gets chunked aside. There is nowhere for normal people to go.

It's the same reason kids today are "stupider" than they were when I was in school, the young whippersnappers. It's not because they're any dumber, it's because a few of them are much, much smarter. Are kids really that mentally ill? No, but we've pushed and pushed until we do have a few that are able to meet the astronomical standards we've set.

And that makes everybody else look bad.

TFS

[HydrogenBond]

In America the peak of average scholastic achievement was back in the 50's and 60's. Teaching was based on the basics instead of fads. It was also based on a miltary style of order.The basics are a simpler set that allows for ingenuity and order made things easier for teachers. Things now are too dependant on memorizing fad method and repeating data with less emphasis on ingenuity and application. What also changed was culture went from a more masculine based culture (post war) into a more feminine culture. The result was cool logic being replaced by warm fuzzy emotions. Emotions are not the best way to learn science since it makes everything ambiguous and subject to individual interpretation and fads. Or science becomes liberal arts, with plenty of subjective liberty. Emotional discipline is also subject to projection by parents destroying the orderly logical environment for teaching and reward.

If we were using this science forum back in the 50's and 60's we would all be rooted in the same science basics brainstorming the new frontiers. Now there is very little consensus science foundation leading to the frontiers with most of the debate using emotional valance and relative reference. If we look at global warming this is an emotional science topic with many points of view driven by emotional valance. If a scientists needs funding, just cater to the fear. If the environmentalists wants to sway emission policy, just play to the fear. If the data and theory was cold hard fact, we would all come to the same conclusions and could act appropriately. But this takes away the emotional valence which has become the fuel for speculation. The loss is resisted because the emotional buzz is sort of fun and can be used to manipulate common sense.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Regardless of the fact that everyone of import has reached the same conclusion regarding global warming, I think you may be over-mythologizing the 1960s.

When my folks went to High School then, the highest math class offered was Pre-calculus. Geometry was a high school course.

My brother took Cal II (for college) in high school.

I think high school is a much different place now, and its much, much harder.

TFS

[nkt]

Zero-goal education in the USA has a lot to answer for. The same as the comprehensive system in the UK.

When you reach 12-16, you should already be capable of driving in a nail, and doing minor DIY, the same as you should be able to read and write and count. At this point, having sampled the two major paths for a person with regards to employment, that person should be allowed to make a choice. Either work with the hands, or work with the brain.

Sadly, not everyone can be a rocket scientist (Ask North Korea!) and not everyone can be a brain surgeon. In fact, most people cannot. Even if they were, the population of the world would be wiped out quite quickly by a nasty virus on telephones, due to the lack of office cleaners.

I started writing a book, but have now given up. It was called "Flooding the foothills", taken from the work of Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University robotics institute in December 1997. Read this passage, and see if you can sork out the problems today?

The Great Flood

Computers are universal machines, their potential extends uniformly over a boundless expanse of tasks. Human potentials, on the other hand, are strong in areas long important for survival, but weak in things far removed. Imagine a "landscape of human competence," having lowlands with labels like "arithmetic" and "rote memorization", foothills like "theorem proving" and "chess playing," and high mountain peaks labeled "locomotion," "hand-eye coordination" and "social interaction." We all live in the solid mountaintops, but it takes great effort to reach the rest of the terrain, and only a few of us work each patch.

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose (Moravec 1998) that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life! For now, though, we must rely on our representatives in the lowlands to tell us what water is really like.

Our representatives on the foothills of chess and theorem-proving report signs of intelligence. Why didn't we get similar reports decades before, from the lowlands, as computers surpassed humans in arithmetic and rote memorization? Actually, we did, at the time. Computers that calculated like thousands of mathematicians were hailed as "giant brains," and inspired the first generation of AI research. After all, the machines were doing something beyond any animal, that needed human intelligence, concentration and years of training. But it is hard to recapture that magic now. One reason is that computers' demonstrated stupidity in other areas biases our judgment. Another relates to our own ineptitude. We do arithmetic or keep records so painstakingly and externally, that the small mechanical steps in a long calculation are obvious, while the big picture often escapes us. Like Deep Blue's builders, we see the process too much from the inside to appreciate the subtlety that it may have on the outside. But there is a non-obviousness in snowstorms or tornadoes that emerge from the repetitive arithmetic of weather simulations, or in rippling tyrannosaur skin from movie animation calculations. We rarely call it intelligence, but "artificial reality" may be an even more profound concept than artificial intelligence (Moravec 1998).

<snip>

As the rising flood reaches more populated heights, machines will begin to do well in areas a greater number can appreciate. The visceral sense of a thinking presence in machinery will become increasingly widespread. When the highest peaks are covered, there will be machines than can interact as intelligently as any human on any subject. The presence of minds in machines will then become self-evident.

So tell me what use there is for another 10,000 degreed social studies graduates to McDonald's and Burger King?

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

I was wondering why there are so many new attention, learning and behavior disorders being found in children. I came up with a short list of possible reasons. Does anyone have an opinion?

Could be that we are making an improper measurement, that we are not taking into consideration all of the new skills today's youth are required to learn... skills with which their parents and grandparents never had to contend. Basically, it's possible that we're using old and inaccurate methods to measure today's children.

Or, maybe we are breeding too closely and mutations have ensued... mutations which have not had the time to show their worth.


Or, every generation thinks the next is on the path to disorder and chaos, and it's just your turn to make the same observation your ancestry has.


or...

. .

[KickAssClown]

Well, seeing as Psychology is a recent thing in human history.

I would venture to guess that perhaps it is simply a matter of sudden collection of a body of data that was not there previously. That we now are more accurately and more often are identifying the various disorders, in a more honest way than previous.

[HappytheStripper]

I asked the kids .. check this out ..

http://www.facetheissue.com/communit...396#post140396

Ashley

[HydrogenBond]

The meds are not being used to help to make the kids smarter. They are being used to help control something inside many of them that gets in the way of their ability to focus or have self control. Most of these disorders suggest the unconscious mind is becoming more active in many children as though a type of repression has occurred and is trying to correct itself.

I was visiting up north for vacation and a neighbor's child, who is very bright, was totally out of control. His mother took him off his drugs for the summer to rest his liver. It was like he was deaf to his parents and descructive to house and home. When I engaged him he was very self composed, unless his mother was around. When he would visit my sister's house to play with her kids, he was very polite with no outward signs of attention disorder because she won't put up with his crap and he knew it. His disorder appears to be part of a family game dynamics.

[InfiniteNow]

In our evolutionary past, much of our time was spent foraging and hunting for food... for survival. Now, with supermarkets and other cultural/societal assistances, we still have the same proclivity and energy, but it does not get spent the way it used to. So instead, it's turned inward, same energy, different use, and results in many neuroses.

The point that we are simply measuring it more and more accurately is an incredibly valid one, however, it must also be coupled witht he fact that we have a different set of daily tasks and needs, but the same evolved tendencies and energy stores which results in more mental issues. The two (more measurement, more issues) are not necessarily seperable.

[KickAssClown]

I was visiting up north for vacation and a neighbor's child, who is very bright, was totally out of control. His mother took him off his drugs for the summer to rest his liver. It was like he was deaf to his parents and descructive to house and home. When I engaged him he was very self composed, unless his mother was around. When he would visit my sister's house to play with her kids, he was very polite with no outward signs of attention disorder because she won't put up with his crap and he knew it. His disorder appears to be part of a family game dynamics.

Sounds allot like me when I was younger. I had allot of emotional turmoil. Ultimately it arose from allot of things. Injustices experienced, weather real or imagined, Hyper-sensitivity, Alienation, and Isolation.

For a while I felt entirely alone, rejected, and generally unloved. Mostly it was just me with my realization of suffering. I suffered because I realized I suffered.

What ultimately fixed it was I was placed into a classroom full of kids who truely suffered, in ways I can not compare to. I stopped staring inward at my pain and ended up staring at their's, trying to figure out how to Alliviate their suffering. It transformed my anger/depression into compassion/sympathy.