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Caring – December 23, 2007
I am feeling fortunate this year to have managed to avoid much of the
seasonal excess in which many people like to indulge. I am calm and
collected and looking forward to spending a few days of relaxation with
Rolf and one of our daughters. Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the
frenzied shoppers, the stressed out drivers and pedestrians, the
impatient travelers, the radio reports of increased gift spending, the
focus on consumerism. I hope that we all are able to take some time over
the next week to reflect on what’s important to us and to our future
– on how to become more caring about our friends and family, about our
neighborhoods and the planet.
As I take a few days off to be with my friends and
family, I wish you peace and joy.
Posted: 2007/12/23 5:14 PM
‘Tis the Season of Stuff – December 16, 2007
As Christmas approaches, so does the season of too much stuff.
Actually, says activist and filmmaker Annie Leonard, acquisition of too
much stuff is not just a seasonal problem. She’s just released a new
short film that takes a tour of our consumer-driven culture – from
resource extraction to iPod incineration – exposing the horrendous
social and environmental costs of what she calls our “use-it and
lose-it approach to stuff. The Story of Stuff was screened in
Berkeley, California a week or so ago. But it’s also available for
viewing online. It may change the way you and your family looks at all
the stuff in your life.
Posted: 2007/12/16 10:35 PM
When the “Cure” is the Problem – December 9, 2007
Last month, I wrote about
new research that found children who have been “diagnosed” as having
ADHD have normal brains that just develop later than those of other
children. That finding, I mused, should help end the labeling and
medicalization of so-called “learning disabilities”…the preferred treatment
for which is drugging with powerful and side-effect-laden
stimulants like Ritalin.
But now, the psychiatric watchdog group
Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says that report is misleading because the use of those
drugs wasn’t taken into account by the researchers. CCHR says the
researchers underplayed the fact that 66 percent of the ADHD subjects studied had been on stimulants,
which the FDA has warned cause suppression of growth – which could
logically include brain development. “With stimulant ‘treatment’ the only physical variable, and
ADHD never validated as a real disease, it is likely that the stimulant
drugs, not ADHD, are to blame for the slow brain maturation reported by
the study authors,” says the release. Earlier researchers have also ignored the probable
connection between the drugs and problems with brain size and growth. At a 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus
Conference on ADHD, 14 MRI studies of people treated for ADHD were
reviewed. The presenters
reported on-average 10 percent brain shrinkage in ADHD subjects and
pediatric neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman pointed out that the vast
majority of the ADHD subjects had been treated long-term with stimulants –
again, the only physical difference from the control group – suggesting that it was the drugs, not the so-called “disorder,” that
was causing the brain atrophy. Does this mean that the “treatment”
for the “problem” is actually creating the problem when none
existed before???
Bottom line is that the diagnosis of ADHD is
entirely subjective, based on a checklist of “symptoms” that sound a
lot like normal childhood behavior: “Fidgets with hands or feet or
squirms in chair” and “difficulty engaging in activities quietly.”
And for that we medicate children with drugs that can cause psychosis,
aggression, heart attack, stroke and sudden death, not to mention brain
atrophy! Many families have
found that the best “treatment” is to liberate their children from
the need to sit in chair for long periods of time and from engaging in
activities quietly. In order to accomplish that, they remove their
children from school, upon which the “symptoms” often subside or
disappear altogether. Now
there’s a research angle that probably won’t be funded by
governments or the pharmaceutical companies anytime soon.
Posted: 2007/12/09 1:10 PM
Protecting Kids From Second-Hand Smoke – December
7, 2007
I have to assume that people who still smoke are either severely
addicted to tobacco and need help, or are stubbornly self-righteous
about their rights and – well – need help. If it was only about
their health, that would be one thing. But it’s not. It’s about mine
and yours and our children’s health. Researchers say that second-hand
smoke is extremely detrimental to a child’s health – particularly in
an enclosed area like a car. Cynthia Callard, executive director of
Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, says that smoking one cigarette in a
car is worse for a child’s health than taking them into the smokiest
bar. Subjecting to children to second-hand smoke has even been called
child abuse. The Washington-based organization Action on Smoking and
Health (ASH) pioneered the idea that deliberate exposure
of children to secondhand tobacco smoke can constitute child abuse and
provides advice on having it used to revoke custody rights.
Thankfully, governments are beginning to understand
the severity of the threat to children and a few jurisdictions in the
United States, Australia and Canada have all banned smoking in cars where children are present. In
British Columbia and Nova Scotia, opposition politicians have recently tabled private member’s bills
recently that would also ban the practice. In Nova Scotia, the lead was taken by the Town of Wolfville
(population 3,600), which has just banned smoking in cars within its
boundaries. (Watch for the upcoming January/February issue of Natural Life
magazine, which details many other progressive initiatives taken by this
amazing little green powerhouse of a town.)
Some politicians, like Ontario’s premier, worry about regulating so-called private spaces. But many
governments require the use of seatbelts and child safety seats in
vehicles, so they’re already acting in private spaces. Shame on governments that
don’t act on the problem because they are more concerned with the rights of parents
than those of children.
Posted: 2007/12/07 4:42 PM
Learning About the Whole Wide World – December 4, 2007
When my daughters were little, one of their favorite books for awhile
was
Grover and The Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. The Sesame Street
character explores the rooms in the museum, which are dedicated to
specific categories of things such as “Things You Find On a Wall”
and “Things That Are Cute and Furry.” When he thinks that he has
seen all that is there is to see, he comes to a door that leads to the
outside world. I’ve always thought that was a great metaphor for life
learning.
And now, a group of freeschoolers in the UK
has created a web-based service called
The School of Everything. On the surface, this is a site where teachers
can advertise, and where people can browse for someone to teach what
they want to learn. But scratch a bit deeper and you’ll find that
it’s a good model for a replacement for our current education system.
It operates on the principle that learning is personal, and starts not
with what you should learn but with what you’re interested in. It’s
free to use, whether you’re teaching, learning or both (although,
because the group behind the site believes that people should be able to
make a living doing things they’re passionate about, teachers may
charge). It borrows from the Free University, a free university that
existed in Palo Alto, California in the 1960s and 70s (and that others
have tried to replicate over the years) and from Ivan Illich’s ideas
for decentralized webs of learning networks.
The School of Everything is made possible with open
source software over the Internet. And one of the neat things about this
sort of connection between “teachers” and learners is that age is no
barrier. And here’s a great illustration of that. It’s the
story of an 11-year-old in Scotland who used Skype to teach two other
kids in the U.S. how to use Scratch
(a programming language that allows kids ages eight and up to create
interactive stories, animation, games, music and art and share them on
the web). The father of the kid doing the teaching, writes:
“The implications of being able to find what you want to know from
someone who is willing to share… even if they are not present… turns
our traditional model of education on its head… and even more so when
you realize that the person with the knowledge you require might be the
person you thought you ought to be teaching!”
Posted:
2007/12/04 8:37 PM
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