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Archives
- March, 2007
Treating the
Symptoms and Not the Problems – March 26, 2007
Today, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada is releasing a
new study on the societal costs of learning
disabilities in Canada. Putting a Canadian Face on Learning Disabilities took three years and
$300,000 of federal government funding to develop. The study examined 20
years of Statistics Canada reports looking at key areas of a person’s
life, including education, employment, social relationships, family,
health and finance to develop indicators of how a so-called “learning
disabled” person compares with the general population. And, not
surprisingly, they lag behind in most of those areas. Learning
disabilities were defined as any one of a number of “disorders” from
dyslexia and dysgraphia (writing) to dyscalculia (mathematics). The
solutions suggested by the authors include a broader societal approach
to dealing with learning disabilities, including mandatory early
screening for children aged four to eight, publicly funded support
through provincial health insurance plans, more awareness and training
among medical, mental health and educational professionals and raising
awareness of employers to offering accommodations to their workers.
Two things trouble
me about this report. First of all, the underlying assumption is that
school is the best and perhaps only method of education and that anyone
who cannot learn in that environment has a problem. I can’t describe
how angry I am at the idea of mandatory screening of children to find
“symptoms” of a “disorder” that doesn’t need to exist! Who is
spending $300,000 worth of taxpayers’ money to figure out how to
dismantle our archaic school system and replace it with a
community-based, learner-directed one where children are free to learn
naturally…and that doesn’t victimize, medicalize and stigmatize its
unsuccessful clients? Unfortunately, we are apparently going in the
opposite direction. An article in today’s
Toronto Star about the report quotes its co-author Alexander Wilson of
Mount Allison University as saying, “We have to get away from thinking of this as an education
problem. We need to make a systemic change and look at this across a
person’s lifespan and involve more agencies in their care and
support.”
And that leads to my
second concern. The study found that about 40 per cent of children who
were identified with learning disabilities at age seven were prone to
ear infections and allergies at age three. Since, according to the
study, up to 85 percent of those labeled as having a learning disability
also have a reading disability (not sure how they differ), there is a
need for early learning disability screening, presumably so that
children can learn to read better. Here, once again is a confusion
between symptom and problem. Of course, someone who doesn’t feel well
will have trouble functioning, especially in a structured, noisy
environment like school. But ear infections and allergies aren’t
normal. In fact, like many so-called learning and behavioral
“problems” experienced by children in school, they often are
associated with diets full of chemicals and processed foods, and with nutritional
deficiencies or weakened immune systems.
Conventional
medicine treats ear infections with antibiotics rather than addressing
the underlying causes of the problem; this report wants to “treat”
children who don’t learn well in school in the same manner, rather
than questioning our assumptions about education and health. The way to
really help stem the mushrooming “problem” of people with
“learning disabilities” is to admit that our factory model of
education doesn’t work anymore and needs a major demolition and
reconstruction. Maybe we need to get rid of junk food first, so that we
all think straighter!
Posted: 2007/03/26
12:31 PM
Liberating Education – March 18, 2007
Thanks to a reader for sending me the link to this
opinion piece that he recently read in the Times of India while on a
flight in that country. (Alert: if you open the link, you’ll get lots
of ads popping up in addition to the newspaper’s site.) It’s really
quite an remarkable article, especially given the formality of formal
education in India. The writer, a college professor, clearly understands the difference
between being taught and learning. The piece begins, “When learning is
eventually liberated from institutionalized teaching, people will wonder
how a system as inefficient as the current education system lasted so
long.” It argues for a more open, learner-directed style of education,
noting that, “It is decided for them by the system what they will
learn, from whom they must learn and in how much time they must learn
it.” And, the article goes on to say, the system also dictates where
students will learn what they’re told they should learn. The writer knows why,
too: “This is because institutionalized teaching primarily exists to
support itself, and to ensure its own continuance, authority and power.
This overrides any thought of reforms.” Yup. Same in this part of the
world. The writer also points out that most parents actually welcome this
deprival of freedom for their children. Change happens slowly, but it
happens.
Posted: 2007/03/18
4:38 PM
Classifying and Dividing – March 17, 2007
I had forgotten how students are taught to write in college…until
recently when I came head-to-head with a development English textbook
that is used in college composition courses. Well, actually, it’s a
textbook in preparation. And an article I wrote for Natural Life
magazine a few years ago has been chosen to appear in the $60 book as an
example of a rhetorical style called “Classification and Division.”
Hmmm, sounds like math to me, not writing! And I’m not at all sure
I’m flattered. Aside from the usual parsing of sentences, the book
breaks the process of writing a paragraph into various topics like:
“Time-Order or Process Development,” Comparison and Contrast
Development,” “Definition Development” and, of course,
“Classification and Division.” Presumably, the broken down bits
comes back together at the end of the book and the student is able to
write a coherent piece. I can only hope that they skip the details and
just read the examples. Or skip the whole course, read a good book or
ten, and write.
Posted: 2007/03/17
11:10 AM
On the Assembly Line at Birth – March 14, 2007
There was an article in the Guardian newspaper yesterday about a
new legally enforced national curriculum for children from birth to
five. Every childcare provider other than parents (although one wonders
if that will be the next step) in Britain will have to monitor babies’
progress towards a set of
69 government-set “early learning goals,” recording them against
more than 500 developmental milestones. Apparently, it’s in place so
that when children enter school, they are able to read (using a phonics
approach,) count to ten and sing simple songs from memory. According to
the Guardian, babies up to 11 months of age should “play with their
own fingers and toes and focus on objects around them” and
“communicate in a variety of ways including crying, gurgling, babbling
and screaming.”
I don’t know about babies, but when I read about
this outrageously misguided compulsory regimentation, I cried, gurgled, babbled and
screamed. I hope that saner heads will prevail and understand that this
is exactly the opposite of what is needed to nurture the sort of
critically thinking, creative people society needs. And if saner heads
do not prevail, I hope that the UK authorities are prepared for the inevitable increase in the number of
unschoolers.
Posted: 2007/03/14
11:25 AM
We’ve Come a Long Way – March 8, 2007
1975 was a good year. My lovely and lively daughters were two and three,
and I was beginning to find my voice as a writer, something I’d always
had a hard time taking seriously. I shared my fears, frustrations and joys
with some women who met regularly for coffee. We called ourselves a
“consciousness raising group” – a term I haven’t heard in years.
That year was also designated as “International Women’s Year” by
the United Nations, and I learned a great deal about the history of the
women’s movement. I learned that a meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark
in 1910 – the year after my mother was born! – had decided to create
an International Women’s Day, which was celebrated on March 19 the following year in
Denmark, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. I learned that the date was subsequently moved to March 8 in honor of a women’s
peace strike in Russia, a fact that got me thinking outside my own
boundaries towards what I could do to fix the world. For me, March 8 is now a day to think about, agitate for and celebrate
issues that affect not only women but our families, the environment and the human condition in general. IWD is even an official holiday in some
countries that were part of the former USSR, as well as Mongolia and Vietnam.
When my daughters were teenagers, I sensed that
they felt that all the battles had been won for women and didn’t seem
to understand the complexity of patriarchy and how much it is part of
the fabric of society. Women are still not proportionately represented in
politics and in many jobs. There are still grave problems globally in
terms of women’s education, health and violence. And, as I’ve written
about here and in other places, there are many differences and
disagreements among women about what choice and equality really mean.
On the other hand, we have come a long way. Here in Canada, women officially became “persons” under the law the year my mother
turned 20 (she says she did not notice...was probably having too much
fun dancing!). And now, some countries have female leaders, women are
pursuing higher education and non-traditional careers in unprecedented
numbers, and we do have real choices. Today is a day to celebrate these
choices as well as all women and our individual and collective
achievements…so Happy
International Women’s Day to us all.
I like to remember what Judge Emily Murphy (one of the five women who
fought for Canadian women to have legal status) wrote in 1931: “We
want women leaders today as never before. Leaders who are not afraid to
be called names and who are willing to go out and fight. I think women
can save civilization. Women are persons.”
Posted: 2007/03/08
10:04 AM
Freedom to Read – March 1, 2007
This is
Freedom to Read Week in Canada. A project of the Book and Periodical Council, this is an annual event
that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment
to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed under the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms. In spite of the fact that Canada prides itself on being a free country, books and magazines are
continually challenged and sometimes censored, mostly for use by
children. The BPC maintains a
list of such titles, along with the reasons for being challenged and any
known outcomes of the challenges. (The American Library Association has
a similar event each fall, called
Banned Books Week.)
As part of the week’s festivities, the Writers’
Union of Canada has awarded its annual Freedom to Read Award to a child…for the first time ever. Evie Freedman won for what Union Chair Ron Brown calls her “impassioned defense” of
the book Three Wishes when it was banned last year by the Toronto
District School Board. Brown says, “Although many notable individuals
defended the retention of the book in the schools, Ms. Freedman was best
able to reflect the concerns of those most affected, the students
themselves. She did so most ably in front of a large press conference as
well as in a number of media interviews.” She was nine years old at
the time.
Three Wishes, by Canadian author Deborah Ellis, is
a compilation of the author’s interviews with Israeli and Palestinian
children who expressed a wide range of hopes, fears and hatred on the
conflict in their region. The Canadian Jewish Congress launched a
campaign among school boards across Ontario to have the book withdrawn from the popular Silver Birch Awards
competition. While only a handful of school boards agreed to do so, the
Toronto board was the only one to remove it from the public schools entirely.
In media coverage when the book was banned, Evie
was quoted as saying that adults were always underestimating what kids
can understand and she was adamant she didn’t need anyone to tell her
what she could read. At the same time, the books’s author Deborah
Ellis said, “If children are tough enough to be bombed and starved,
they’re tough enough to read about it.” Well said. And congratulations
to Evie Freedman.
Posted: 2007/03/01
11:41 AM
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