Time to stop punishing kids for having "ADHD" and other nonsensical diseases

  

ADHD, autism, dyslexia. There are so many bad things a kid can be diagnosed with. We have been working in cyber security these days. As part of that we are interviewing successful hackers. It turns out that our country’s top hackers were all diagnosed with these “bad” things.  They were almost all in special ed when they were in school. I find myself wondering if these bad are things are really all that bad.

Here are 14 common signs of ADHD in children according to health line: 

1. Self-focused behavior

A common sign of ADHD is what looks like an inability to recognize other people’s needs and desires. This can lead to the next two signs: interrupting and trouble waiting their turn.

2. Interrupting

Self-focused behavior may cause a child with ADHD to interrupt others while they’re talking or butt into conversations or games they’re not part of.

3. Trouble waiting their turn

Kids with ADHD may have trouble waiting their turn during classroom activities or when playing games with other children.

4. Emotional turmoil

A child with ADHD may have trouble keeping their emotions in check. They may have outbursts of anger at inappropriate times. Younger children may have temper tantrums. 

5. Fidgetiness

Children with ADHD often can’t sit still. They may try to get up and run around, fidget, or squirm in their chair when forced to sit.

6. Problems playing quietly

Fidgetiness can make it difficult for kids with ADHD to play quietly or engage calmly in leisure activities.

7. Unfinished tasks  

A child with ADHD may show interest in lots of different things, but they may have problems finishing them. For example, they may start projects, chores, or homework, but move on to the next thing that catches their interest before finishing. 

8. Lack of focus 

A child with ADHD may have trouble paying attention, even when someone is speaking directly to them. They’ll say they heard you, but they won’t be able to repeat back to you what you just said.

9. Avoidance of tasks needing extended mental effort

This same lack of focus can cause a child to avoid activities that require a sustained mental effort, such as paying attention in class or doing homework.

10. Mistakes

Children with ADHD can have trouble following instructions that require planning or executing a plan. This can then lead to careless mistakes — but it doesn’t indicate laziness or a lack of intelligence.

11. Daydreaming

Children with ADHD aren’t always rambunctious and loud. Another sign of ADHD is being quieter and less involved than other kids. A child with ADHD may stare into space, daydream, and ignore what’s going on around them.

12. Trouble getting organized

A child with ADHD may have trouble keeping track of tasks and activities. This may cause problems at school, as they can find it hard to prioritize homework, school projects, and other assignments.

13. Forgetfulness

Kids with ADHD may be forgetful in daily activities. They may forget to do chores or their homework. They may also lose things often, such as toys.

14. Symptoms in multiple settings

A child with ADHD will show symptoms of the condition in more than one setting. For instance, they may show lack of focus both in school and at home.

These are interesting problems. Are they reasons to drug your kid? I found myself wondering, as I read this list, how many of them apply to me?

  

1. Self-focused behavior

Aren’t we all self-focused? It would seem to me that being other-focused would be rather strange.

  

2. Interrupting

I was always being called to task for interrupting. When I have an idea I want to say it. My third grade teacher complained to my mother that I was always shouting out the answers. To this day, I don’t know why that was a problem. I knew the answer and was bored with listening to her call on kids who didn’t.

3. Trouble waiting their turn

I can’t stand in line and have no ability to wait my turn.

4. Emotional turmoil

I am not sure what keeping your emotions in check actually means. Does it mean pretending that you don’t feel how you actually feel? I am really bad at that.

5. Fidgetiness

I could never sit still. I still can’t sit still.

6. Problems playing quietly

Well I can do that. I am doing it right now.

7. Unfinished tasks  

I have written 31 books. I have started maybe 100. Does this count?

8. Lack of focus 

My wife complains about this all the time. She speaks and I say “what?” and she asks why I didn’t hear her and says I wasn’t listening. I am never listening. I am thinking about something else.

9. Avoidance of tasks needing extended mental effort

A lack of focus can cause a child to avoid activities that require a sustained

mental effort, such as paying attention in class or doing homework. 

Wow! there are people who pay attention in class and don’t avoid doing their homework? Not me. Not my children. Outside of worries about reprimand and worries about grades I can’t imagine why anyone would pay attention in class.

10. Mistakes

Children with ADHD can make mistakes because they weren't paying attention? Isn’t that true of everyone?

11. Daydreaming

A child with ADHD may stare into space, daydream, and ignore what’s going on around them. 

Good for them. They have stuff that they want to think about. Why is daydreaming a bad thing? Oh yeah. School.

12. Trouble getting organized

A child with ADHD may have trouble keeping track of activities. This may cause problems at school, as they can find it hard to prioritize homework, school projects, and other assignments. 

School again. Not caring about stuff that has been assigned in school is not a disease, it is a rational reaction to school.

13. Forgetfulness

Kids with ADHD may be forgetful in daily activities. They may forget to do chores or their homework.  

Here again this is about school, which is boring. A normal reaction to boring.

14. Symptoms in multiple settings

A child with ADHD will show symptoms of the condition in more than one setting. For instance, they may show lack of focus both in school and at home. 

If you are into what you are thinking about you, will be into it at any time of day. Guilty.

So I have ADHD. I am glad they didn’t have this diagnosis when I was a kid because I certainly would have been drugged into submission. (My mother believed in doctors.)

Not every kid is the same. We want to identify potential hackers so we can teach them to hack. (The country needs them badly.) Could we figure out if a kid is likely to want to hack so we can get them out of special ed and into something they might love and we might need?

Here is a list of types of kids that I came up with:

• Puzzle solver
• Diagnostician 
• Deal maker
• Builder
• System creator 
• Rule breaker 
• Describer
• System analyst
• Orchestrater
• Organizer
• Helper
• Designer
• Performer
• Maintainer
• People person
• Dilettantes 
• Neats

Imagine that we could identify the kind of kid you are and create a curriculum for you that fit in with who you are as a person. That is what this list is for, helping us treat kids as they need to be treated.

Imagine that a kid is in school and the teacher is talking. Will they be paying attention? Will they be able to focus?

Puzzle solver

ADHD? Not if they can’t stop thinking about a puzzle

Diagnostician 

ADHD? If they are stuck on a problem they will not be paying attention to the teacher.

Deal maker

ADHD? If they are in middle of a deal.

Builder

If they are thinking about what they want to build or are building, they will not pay attention to you.

System creator 

Maybe.

Rule breaker 

Thinking about what he could get away with.

Describer

A describer might be paying attention because they are looking for things to describe.

System analyst

They are always looking for the underlying system. 

Orchestrater

Only paying attention if there is nothing to orchestrate. 

Organizer

Same.

Helper

Is there someone who needs help?

Designer

Thinking about designs.

Performer

Waiting his or her turn.

Maintainer

They are probably paying attention.

People Person

Is thinking about someone else in the class.

Dilettante

Only paying attention if the subject fascinates him.

Neats

Neats like order. It is orderly to pay attention.

ADHD is clearly a personality feature that anyone with a particular way of looking at things will often exhibit. School is the problem, not the kids. School demands that you stop thinking about what you were thinking about and pay attention and do what you were told. We think that kids who resist this are weird and need to be drugged. We should be finding out what they are thinking about, and help them think about it better. Nah. Too obvious.

They didn’t use the ADHD diagnosis when my son was in school. Lucky for him. (He refused to do his reading homework when he as a kid. He said it was boring. I looked at it  — a bunch of random  paragraphs followed by multiple choice questions. It was really boring. I went to see the teacher. She asked me what she should be doing. I suggested giving him a book to read. This worked fine until the other kids in his reading group complained about having to read a book.)

How about my son’s son? They had him drugged so fast it was impressive. He exhibits every trait we just saw, so drug him please.

How about my daughter? I will let her explain (she is the writer.):

Breaking News:
41-Year-Old Still Bad At 3rd Grade Reading Comprehension

Every night when Milo asks for help with his homework I get a little nervous.  As long as he needs help with a researching a report or writing something or practicing spelling words I feel on safe ground - these are things I know how to do -  but I've been waiting for the day when I have to tell him I simply don't know the answer to something.  That day turned out to be yesterday.

Milo reported that his class had taken a practice "assessment" (they don't call them tests because they don't want the kids to freak out about being tested all the time, so they call them assessments so that instead the kids can eventually freak out about being assessed all the time). He had gotten two answers wrong on the assessment so his assignment was to change the answers to the correct ones and explain why those were the correct answers. Since he wasn't sent home with an answer sheet this meant his homework was really to guess at the correct answer, make sure I agreed, and then come up with an explanation for the answer we'd agreed upon.

Much to my dismay, the assessment he brought me wasn't math homework, which I still feel pretty confident with since we're at a 3rd grade level, but reading comprehension.  I totally, totally suck at reading comprehension. Or, more accurately, I suck at reading comprehension "assessments." I scored the same on the math and verbal SATs despite the fact that I never really got math and spent huge quantities of my childhood with my nose in a book. 

I took Milo's reading comprehension assessment and sighed.  This was going to be okay now, right? After all, I'm an adult. I read lots of books and one assumes I comprehend them or I would have stopped reading long ago. Not only that, Simon and Schuster and the New York Times agree that I'm a writer. No published author could be bad at reading comprehension, right?

The first thing I did was look over the questions and the answers, which was how I always approached reading comprehension as a kid. The passages they give you to read are always so mind-numbingly boring that my usual strategy was to see if I could answer the questions without actually reading the passage (wait, maybe that explains why I never did well on these things ... but I digress). My heart sank as I realized in order to help Milo with his assessment I was going to have to actually read the passage. It turned out to be a mind-numbingly boring passage about a kid who went to camp to learn to swim. He didn't want to be in the group with the non-swimmers, even though he couldn't swim, so he kept asking when he could be moved up into the group for swimmers. Day after day he goes to the camp, does the stuff he's supposed to do, and asks if he can be moved up to the group with the kids who can swim. Eventually he learns to swim and gets moved up into the group. The end. ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?? Just checking.

So the first question Milo had gotten wrong was something like: 

The kid in this story is:

a. lazy

b. keen

c. reckless

d. angry

Milo had put down that the kid was lazy. 

"I get that," I said to him. "I totally get that. You put down that he's lazy because he didn't want to have to do all the things he had to do to learn how to swim, right?"

"Yes," said Milo. "He just wanted to go right to the group for kids who knew how to swim."

"Here's a tip that it took me a really long time to learn," I said. "The answer is never that the main character is lazy.  Or mean, or evil, or a slob. The main character in these things is always something nicer than that. I can't explain why, but that's how they write them. Even though you're right.  He is kind of lazy."

"So maybe it's reckless?"  Milo said.  

"Maybe," I said. "I mean, anyone who doesn't actually take the time to learn to swim and just tries to swim is a little reckless. It's not angry, though I could make an argument for why it could be angry. Maybe he's angry about having to be in the group for non-swimmers."

"Is it angry?" Milo asked.

"It's not angry,” I said. "Let's look up what 'keen' means." Milo was shocked that I didn't know what it meant. I explained it's a word that no one has used in the last fifty years, so it makes perfect sense that it would appear in a reading comprehension assessment for eight year olds. The definition for "keen" is 'confident'. The answer was "keen."

We moved on to the next question. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out the answer. I found myself making an argument for every single answer. They all seemed equally valid.  And then I remembered why I couldn't do reading comprehension as a kid. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't stop arguing with the people who wrote the test.  

I always felt like if they would just give me the chance to make my case in person I could convince them to see it my way. I wanted to accompany my responses with long essays about how all answers could be right if viewed in the right way. It wasn't that I didn't care.  It was that on some level I cared too much about writing and reading to fill in a letter on a bubble sheet and move on. I always found myself editing the passages as I read them, thinking about how I would rewrite them. As I read through the answers I saw them all as correct because writing is fluid and open to interpretation and that is what makes it such a joy to experience. One person may see a kid in a story as lazy and another may see him as angry and they are both right, and if you don't understand that then you haven't comprehended anything about what you've read.

Does Milo have ADHD? It seems doubtful from this. He is a good kid who just wants to get the answer right (a neat). Does my daughter have ADHD? She certainly has “I don’t want to do it your way.” Looks like ADHD to me. I should have drugged her.

As I am writing this, the FDA has just announced that it approved a treatment for ADHD that is A nerve-stimulating medical device that sends therapeutic signals to parts of the brain thought to be involved in ADHD.

Oh good. If they won’t pay attention, zap ‘em. Individual differences be damned.

Let’s move on to autism. We used to have many child development challenges that were labeled by various name like Asperger’s and non-speaking children. Lately these have been put on the “autism spectrum” so that we can pretend that they are all the same thing. There are plenty of sites that list recognized autistic behavior such as this one (autism speaks):

Autism’s core symptoms are

• Social communication challenges

• Restricted, repetitive behaviors

In autism, these symptoms

• Begin in early childhood (though they may go unrecognized)

• Persist

• Interfere with daily living

Specialized healthcare providers diagnose autism using a checklist of criteria in the two categories above. They also assess symptom severity. Autism’s severity scale reflects how much support a person needs for daily function.

Many people with autism have sensory issues. These typically involve over- or under-sensitivities to sounds, lights, touch, tastes, smells, pain and other stimuli. Autism is also associated with high rates of certain physical and mental health conditions.

Social communication challenges

Children and adults with autism have difficulty with verbal and non-verbal communication. For example, they may not understand or appropriately use:

• Spoken language (around a third of people with autism are nonverbal)

• Gestures

• Eye contact

• Facial expressions

• Tone of voice

• Expressions not meant to be taken literally

Additional social challenges can include difficulty with:

• Recognizing emotions and intentions in others

• Recognizing one’s own emotions

• Expressing emotions

• Seeking emotional comfort from others

• Feeling overwhelmed in social situations

• Taking turns in conversation

• Gauging personal space (appropriate distance between people)

Restricted and repetitive behaviors

Restricted and repetitive behaviors vary greatly across the autism spectrum. They can include:

• Repetitive body movements (e.g. rocking, flapping, spinning, running back and forth) 

• Repetitive motions with objects (e.g. spinning wheels, shaking sticks, flipping levers)

• Staring at lights or spinning objects

• Ritualistic behaviors (e.g. lining up objects, repeatedly touching objects in a set order)

• Narrow or extreme interests in specific topics

• Need for unvarying routine/resistance to change (e.g. same daily schedule, meal menu, clothes, route to school) 

Many of the hackers we interviewed had been diagnosed as autistic and placed in special ed programs. Could there be another way? What if we simply assessed kids to see who they are and suggested programs of study that fit with their personal tastes?

Instead of saying that there is something wrong with them because they have narrow or extreme interests in specific topics, couldn't we just see this as a feature rather than as a bug?

My son had (and has) a narrow interest in specific topics. He was, and is, obsessed with subways. Has this hurt him in some way? He is doing just fine as the chief innovation officer at the LA MTA. But his son, on the other hand, has been diagnosed as autistic and is now in a special school and therapy for his “illness.” I never saw my son as having an illness because he was obsessed with subways. I let him go with it. Today they would drug him.

My daughter was always obsessed with writing and still is. She ignored school if it didn't entail writing. Has this hurt her in some way? (Her latest book, The Ambition Decisions, did pretty well.)

All the “terrible” things that are listed on the above site don’t look so terrible to me. I love routine. I know plenty of people who feel overwhelmed in social situations. And I know plenty of people who cannot recognize the emotions of others. Am I autistic because I love routine (as did my father before me)?

It is possible that these are genetic traits and not symptoms of a disease? It seems that we have signaled out certain genetic traits as being bad. So we take people who don’t fit our ideal and marginalize them. We can do better than this.

The problem is, of course, school. It is a rare moment when an adult has to sit quietly and say nothing while someone talks for a long time. It is a rare moment when an adult must worry about passing a test that shows that they were listening.

So the real problem with ADHD and autism is that these kids make bad students and won’t sit still in class. But learning does not depend on sitting still and listening. It depends upon goals you really have, not ones that are imposed upon you by school.

An autistic kid will probably grow up to be a very annoying adult and is certainly difficult to raise as a child. If school weren't the real problem ADHD would not be a real problem. Autism is annoying, but many people are annoying. 

Most annoying of all is our failure to recognize that kids are different and have different proclivities. We should stop making them learn algebra or literature of anything else they don’t care to learn. (My daughter got an F in Latin in her fancy middle school. Good for her.)

(I should point out that I got the categories above by interviewing many adults. The puzzle solvers almost all became doctors. The maintenance people became dentists. I am not trying to predict what kids should be. I just want offer them choices. Like puzzles? Maybe you would like to try our doctor simulation.)

The "Knowledge Transfer" problem

tell

listen 

memorize

recall as needed

Underlying this “truth” (that all the world seems to believe) we have the notion of knowledge. How would you know something if someone didn’t tell it to you? There is truth and you need to know it, so the truth must be told. Knowledge is power. Everything I know I learned from great teachers.

We need to re-think. Philosophers have been talking about knowledge for as long as there have been philosophers. If they really understood the idea they wouldn't be debating it so much and for so long. It is relatively safe to conclude that knowledge is an undefined and amorphous thing.

Let philosophers keep debating. The problem is that educators believe there is knowledge, that it is important for kids to acquire knowledge, and that this can be done by listening and reading and then we can know if the knowledge was acquired by testing the acquirer. Educators believe in “knowledge transfer” and focus on how best to do it.

This is simply wrong and has ruined education for generations of children (and adults). No one much cares about this because the provider of education is usually the government and governments have truth they want children to learn. Just like religions, governments want the truth to be told, but for sinister reasons. In my country everyone “knows” that we will live in greatest country in the world and that we also the most free country in the world. How do they know that? The schools tell them that constantly and they believe it.

Our education model is built on the idea that there is knowledge and that it can be transferred. What happens when we question that assumption?

An interview with Rep Steven King (from Iowa) in the New York Times (Jan 10, 2019) had this quote:

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Mr. King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

A very good question. Why did he sit in classes that taught that?

If you disagree with what he was taught, this sounds horrible. But, if you agree with it, there seems to be nothing wrong with it — and that is the problem. Knowledge transfer is the same as indoctrination except that when teachers are transferring the Quadratic Formula or Archimedes’ Principle to student’s heads it seems more reasonable. It isn’t reasonable there either.

What is education about then if it isn’t about knowledge transfer?

It should be about learning how to ask questions, and how to find out the answers for yourself when those answers matter to you.

Education should be about inquiry. We want kids to wonder about things. We want adults to not simply accept what they are told. Being intelligent means have an “inquiring mind.”

We have all heard that inquiring minds need to know. But the curious thing is the origin of that phrase. It was an advertising slogan of The National Enquirer, a gossip newspaper. So, apparently we expect people to inquire about movie star’s lives and politician’s love affairs but not about anything that matters.

How to we move from transferring knowledge to promoting inquiry?

We need to move from teaching knowledge to instigating inquiry. A good teacher could do that instead of rambling on and giving tests, but of course the system won’t allow it.

learning starts with curiosity (and do does AI)

 About 40 years ago I was having lunch with a Yale colleague (Bob Abelson — a famous social psychologist) who was also my closest friend at the time. 

I complained to him that my wife could’t cook steak rare. (I hate overcooked meat.) He replied that back in 50’s he was in the U.K. and he couldn’t get his hair cut as short as he wanted it. (Crew cuts were in style in the U.S. then but not in the U.K.) 

That’s all there is to know about learning. 

Huh?

1.  learning starts with a conversation
2. the first speaker has a problem and wants help thinking his problem out
3. the listener relates his friend's problem to a problem of his own
4. the link is through an explanation that the listener thinks might be the explanation both parties are seeking
5. so he replies to a story with a story 

Underneath all this are some simple truths

1. Learning starts with curiosity. (This is one reason that school is really not a good way to educate. If I need to be curious in order to learn, school would have to try to relate to something I am already curious about — but how could that happen with fixed curricula and many students in class each of which is curious about different things?} School can try to make me curious. (But really how many people are curious about algebra? Actually I was one of those who was curious about algebra. Four years of being a math major convinced me to become curious about something else, in my case computers and human thinking.)
2. Listening can only work if the listener is curious too. A listener may not be curious about what the speaker is curious about but the speaker is trying to make the listener curious about something. If they succeed the listener will attempt to find in their memory something that they have experienced so the listener can respond to the speaker with a story of their own, satisfying the goals of each. How might we do that? (Modern AI doesn't even ask this kind of question oddly.)
3. Matching underlying goals and plans is a kind of pattern matching but pattern matching in AI these days tends to be about words or pixels and not about ideas. It is hard for a computer to pattern match ideas, so when we talk about how computers can learn we must be very sceptical about the kinds of things they are matching. Bob was matching on “not getting what you want when it is easy enough to provide.” He had a goal and he couldn’t achieve it. He needed to find an explanation of why something we were both asking for wasn't given to us. Human understanders know what they are trying to understand. Computers not so much.
4. Explanations are the basis of understanding. Bob was searching for an explanation. He constructed one by matching my story to his story. But what was he matching exactly? He was matching on the plans and goals held by the actors in the story and his own curiosity about what their points of view might have been. He unconsciously constructed an explanation: maybe the actors didn’t want to accede to the request because they thought that the request was too extreme.
5. When we match our stories to the stories of others we do so in order to learn from them. When we think about a story we have heard, we do so in order to construct an explanation of the events in the story. We can only do this by finding experiences we have had that relate to the experience being told to us. We pursue this path if we are curious about an explanation (typically because we think that explanation will help us understand something we were curious about.) 
6. But what do we match on? Certainly not words or pixels. We match on high level abstractions like goals, plans, and intentionality. My goal was to eat the way I like. Bob’s goal was to look the way he wanted. But at a higher level of abstraction my goal was to get someone to do something for me and so was his. So any explanation would have had to have been about convincing other people to do what we wanted. That kind of goal (how to convince someone) was never actually discussed but that is what we were both curious about and such goals drive learning.

Learning starts with curiosity. We seek explanations and use those explanations until we get confused again. Marvin Minsky once told me he loved being confused. He liked to think about difficult stuff.

To put this another way: if you are not confused nor curious you will not learn. This applies to every form of education and every form of AI.

Teachers: confuse your students. Don't give them explanations. F=MA explains nothing your average student is curious about. They know already that the harder you hit a ball the further it goes.

Curriculum designers: start with what your students are confused about. As I have said many times, learning happens when students wants to learn, not when teachers want to teach

AI people: you will never make computers intelligent by focussing on words, no matter how well you can count them or match them. Everything starts with goals and the ideas that underlie them. Dogs have goals but they don't have words. Amazingly, dogs can think intelligently about getting what they want. When modern AI can do what dogs do every day in order to achieve the real goals that they have, please let me know.

Understanding Understanding: real AI vs. Modern AI

What does it mean to understand? This seems like a simple question but it isn’t. These days, AI is a field that attempts to understand simple English sentences like “Alexa play me a Beatle’s song.” But the understanding required to perform this command is considerably different than what is needed to read A Tale of Two Cities and understand it.  Trying telling Alexa that “it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.” Say that to a person and they might say: “what do you mean?”

Or, consider this from today’s New York Times:

President Trump, ramping up his assertions of extraordinary powers, declared in a tweet that he had “the absolute right” to pardon himself for any crime.

            The claim was the latest in an aggressive series of moves, as Mr. Trump and his legal advisers have argued that his authority places him above the reach of obstruction statutes.

What does a person do when they read this? They have  to rely upon knowledge about the situation that they had before they read this. You have to know, for example, about Mueller’s investigation of Trump and you have to know about Presidential pardons. You also have to have the ability to realize that no one worries about pardons unless they are afraid of being found guilty of a crime. So, an intelligent reader who realize that this is discussion is based on the idea that the reader, and Trumps’ legal advisors, must have been thinking about what happens if the President is indicted. We have nothing like that in modern AI, no could we, because counting words won’t help. Why not?

Because the word “indicted” doesn't appear anywhere in the Times story. How would Alexa or Siri understand this article? They wouldn’t. Any intelligent reader knows that indictment is the underlying issue. And what would modern AI systems be able to do with this? Nothing. Modern AI systems are not actually about understanding no matter what IBM says about “cognitive computing" 

The imminent arrival of AI is in everything we read these days due to a serious misunderstanding of the real issues in AI, which haven’t changed over the last 50 years.

Old time AI folks like me were always concerned with what it means for a human to understand. 

Yesterday, there was a interesting article in the Boston Globe about an old AI guy (Patrick Winston) at MIT who is trying to address what understanding really is:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/06/02/toil-and-trouble-how-macbeth-could-teach-computers-think/h9kbBEX7BVkp4Rc6XbJrPM/story.html

It won’t get much attention because what Winston is doing is not what the AI hype is all about.  

School shootings, teacher's strikes, anxious kids; solution? eliminate cumpulsory schooling

Compulsory schooling has been around so long that nobody questions it. But in today's world we need to re-think. Here are some of the problems with compulsory schooling:

school shootings: Why do crazy people shoot up schools? One reason might be that school was one of the great miseries of their childhood and they are angry. If school were optional, school shootings would most likely disappear.

bullying: One reason kids hate school is that they are picked on by other kids. This is difficult to control in a classroom of 30 or 40 kids. We have set up school so that it enables kids to pick on the kids who wore the wrong clothing, or didn’t know the right answer, or said something dumb. In real life, we can avoid people who belittle us. In school we cannot.

poorly paid teachers: If kids had their choice of schools (or the choice to not go to school) we would value teachers more. No one would choose to go to a school where the teachers were unhappy because they were just eking out an existence. Happy teachers help make happy kids and we would find a way to encourage those teachers to stay in teaching.

buildings in disrepair: More and more we hear about the disrepair of older schools. No money to fix this? There would be money if anyone really cared about kids, but kids don't vote and politicians are really not worried about them. Fancy private schools keep their buildings in good repair. Let kids opt out of school and we can close down these dangerous places and build places kids can’t wait to go to.

segregation: We live under the delusion that segregation is over in schools. Really? Schools reflect the neighborhoods they are in, and neighborhoods tend to be homogenous. If school weren't compulsory, kids in “bad” schools (which means there are lots of poor people really) could opt out and live less danger-filled lives

constant test prep: Why do we permit school to be about testing and test prep? We seem to have no choice. But, if schools didn't look at test scores, this would go away. Colleges look at test scores in order to spend less time considering each kid. Special high schools use them because otherwise it would be difficult to decide who gets the privilege of going to a school that has only smart kids in it. If school were not compulsory, schools would need to compete with each other on the quality of the experience provided in order to attract kids.  

high anxiety: It is compulsory education that makes school such an anxious experience. Students are tested, graded, and constantly compared against each other, There are winners and losers. Every day is a kind of contest. Who thought that up as a way to learn? Learning is supposed to be fun. Proponents of school typically claim that learning is hard work. That is only true if you are learning something that doesn’t interest you.    

government propaganda What is school really for? I can say it simply —Indoctrination. We want you to sit still, do what you are told, and do mindless repetitive tasks so you can work on a low level boring job when you grow up. We want you to know who is in charge and to respect their right to be in charge, We expect you to believe that we have the best country in the world, and that you should be thrilled to fight for and defend that wonderful country. How can we do that without compulsory education? Who would voluntarily attend a school where such rules are hammered in daily?

truth Lastly, we know the truth. Students need to know the truth as well. No matter that the “truth” might be in question. We want you to memorize simple truths: the quadratic formula, the laws of physics. We want you to know that George Washington never told a lie and that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. We don’t want to hear any other point of view. (Please don’t tell me that Washington owned 300 slaves.) We want to make sure you learn lots of mathematics because mathematics teaches you to think and we don’t want you to ask how we know that or what evidence we have for that. We want you to memorize facts about science, not actually do science (which might include questioning things we tell you and demanding evidence for them.) 

What would happen if school wasn't compulsory? We would have to find other methods of day care for children. We would have to invent hundreds of new curricula that students could choose between. We would have to have teachers who weren’t actually teaching but were helping kids do what they want to do. We would have to realize that experts are everywhere (but maybe not in your home town) and find ways for those experts to be available virtually as needed. We would have to make sure that our day care locations are safe and that the kids who choose to go to them are happy.

Please… no more compulsory school.

Best way to oppress women: more math tests!

I happen to be a regular viewer of the “Judge Judy” TV show. The reason is simple enough. She looks (and acts) just like my mother (who is long gone.) So it is nice to be reminded of her.

Judge Judy (who is phenomenally successful by anyone’s standards) can’t add. She counts on her fingers to figure how far April is from October and for anything more complicated she asks her assistant (Byrd) to do the math for her.

Why am I writing about this, you wonder? Because the news lately has been running segments extolling that the Girl Scouts now offer STEM merit badges.

STEM is a nonsense idea being touted by the educational establishment. STEM is so important that no one has bothered to create high school engineering courses for it (That’s the E in STEM.) Science is the same old memorizing formulas as it always was and, well, then there is math.

I have written elsewhere and often about why algebra is a waste of time and why the “math teaches you to think” argument is totally unsupported by facts. I suppose there might be a worldwide mathematician shortage but I missed it. Math is important because the testing industry loves it. OECD and ETS thrive on math scores and panicking kids into learning it.

But, and here is my main point: math oppresses women. I don't normally concern myself with women’s issues, particularly not now when that is all you hear about in the news. But, why don't we ever about the number one oppressor of women? Really? How does math oppress women? Let me explain.

Judge Judy can’t do math. Neither could my mother.(She was pretty successful too.) Neither can my wife. Neither can my daughter. Neither can my granddaughter. Surely this is just odd. Not really. I just IM-ed the senior designer in my company (who was one of the smartest PhD student I ever had):

me: how did you do in math in HS?

me: how are you at math now?

Tammy: Are you kidding me? I'm afraid of the word

Don't get all worked up. I'm not claiming no women can do math or that women have an innate inability to do math. There are certainly women who are accountants, scientists, etc. and many who just love math. That's not my point. Let's focus on the point.

My daughter has a major book coming out in June and also has a very successful career as a user interface designer. Can she do math? She is also afraid of the word.

In 1986, when my daughter was 14 and taking algebra I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. Since I was a math whiz as a kid I couldn't understand what her problem was. I still don’t. But I know she did just fine without knowing algebra (as did my mother before her and Judge Judy.) In 1986 I began to examine why we taught math at all. Being a math whiz as a kid didn’t mean I would ever use algebra as an adult. I haven’t.

Back then I learned about the Committee of Ten that created the modern day high school curriculum (in 1892) and read about the math professor who was on that committee who was trying to sell an algebra textbook at the time. So, I figured the reason for algebra was just random and as usual, had to do with money.

I have since changed my mind. 

I now believe that math is emphasized is school as a subtle way to oppress women. It is commonly stated that woman are bad at math for any number of reasons having to with their lack of confidence or male oppression or stereotyping. But how about considering another idea? This is the right question:

So what?

The normal answer to this is that then women can't be engineers or scientists.

And I say again: So what?

Are these the most important professions?   Many women are kept out of a great many professions because of the math test score obsession. They are kept out of professions that do not require mathematics but nevertheless require math scores to gain admission to the schools that teach them  (Medical and law schools rare two good examples.)

My wife wanted to go to medical school but couldn’t because of her math scores. How many women want to get a PhD or a law degree or an MD but can’t because they had bad math scores? Tammy got into graduate school to study with me because I don't care about math GRE scores. Others are not so lucky.

So here is a good idea: let’s make Girl Scouts learn math. I checked the Boy Scouts site and found that Boy Scouts have STEM Merit badges as well. Here are two STEM merit badges for boy scouts: archery and softball.

What?

Maybe I misunderstood. Then I found out that a Girl Scout can get a cyber-security merit badge. I got the idea. They are marketing to parents who are desperate that their kids go to college and STEM is an obsession that parents have been told to have. The kids are simply pretending. That is ok with me.

But what is not ok with me is that we continue to make girls feel less than adequate because they are bad at math. Instead of writing endless articles about how girls are not really bad at math or how there are Girl Scout STEM merit badges, can we simply get over the math thing?

Do I think all girls are bad at math or all boys are good at it? Of course not.  No one is watching out for how boys are oppressed by math either. We just accept it.

My company (Socratic Arts) has way more females than males. I asked some of them how they felt about math. Here is what one them (Susan Ward — a senior designer) wrote:

In high school, I particularly loved science. In fact, one of my best subjects was biology. I found it very easy to understand and sailed through regular and advanced biology, botany, and basic Chemistry. In fact, I had dreams of becoming a marine biologist, or perhaps going into some aspect of veterinary medicine. But, in the end, I was turned off by the emphasis on higher math that is typically required to enter those fields. While I got As and Bs in math, when it came to trigonometry and calculus, I was turned off. It didn't feel as applicable to the world around me in the same way that science did. Fast forward many years, to my chosen career as an Instructional Designer. In my role, I've designed a number of CME programs for the medical field. I worked with doctors and other medical experts on disease state training, as well as education for pharmaceutical sales reps. The more I learned, the more I regretted not going into some aspect of medicine. Being a horse and dog owner, I have also loved learning from vets over the years about diagnosing and treating various issues (when you own a horse, you often have to be your own vet tech!). In my observations, while medical professionals do use math when writing prescriptions, administering medications, and analyzing x-rays and CAT scans, most aren't solving complex, abstract higher math problems in their day-to-day practice. I wish schools would de-emphasize higher math as a requirement for entering careers in the sciences, and instead give students the opportunity to learn the math needed for their field in context with their specific areas of interest. 

Really? Do I believe that math is there to oppress women? I was reading a book by the only guy more radical than I am about education —John Taylor Gatto. He points out that school was always meant to keep the lower classes in their place and that we adopted much of what we do in  school from the Hindu education system which was specifically designed to keep the Brahmins in charge. This is from Gatto’s book (paraphrased):

Hinduism had created a mass schooling institution for children of the ordinary, one inculcating a curriculum of self-abnegation and willing servility. In those places, hundreds of children were gathered in a single gigantic room divided into groups of ten under the direction of student leaders with the whole ensemble directed by a Brahmin. In the Roman manner, paid pedagogues drilled underlings in the memorization and imitation of desired attitudes and these underlings drilled the rest.

A military chaplain, newly arrived in India, named Andrew Bell decided to try the Hindu system in an orphan asylum he was running. He found that it led students quickly to docile cooperation, like parts of a machine. Furthermore they seemed not to have to think, grateful to have their time reduced to rituals and routines. He praised Hindu drill as an effective impediment to learning writing and ciphering, an efficient control on reading development. Joseph Lancaster concluded that this would be a cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes ignoring Bell’s’ observation that it did just the opposite.

In 1798, Lancaster opened a free school for poor children in London. Word spread and children emerged from every alley, craving to learn. The Duke of Bedford provided Lancaster with an enormous schoolroom and a few materials. Transforming dirty ghetto children into an orderly army attracted many observers. Bell opened competing schools based on the idea that schooled ignorance was better than unschooled stupidity.

Harvard and Yale were set up originally as the Brahmin schools. (Google “Boston Brahmin.”) I assume that there was no required math score for admission in their first 100 or 200 years. Harvard and Yale were all about keeping the elites in power. The SAT was created in order to enable the lower classes to get into places like Harvard. But, not that many women were going to Harvard and Yale (did I say none? -- because that was the number.)

Harvard and Yale have stopped barring the lower classes  and women are no longer barred from admission.  Yale kept Jews out, but when the SATs came into being, many Jews scored very well and couldn't be rejected. (They were kept out of social clubs of course.) Here is something from Commentary:

By the 1920’s, however, nearly 10 percent of Yale undergraduates were Jewish, and the Jewish applicant pool was expanding every year. Worse yet, to Yale administrators, most of these Jews were poor New Haven “townies,” who concentrated on their studies and did not participate (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) in extracurricular activities.

Faced with what it considered a crisis,  Yale enacted an unwritten quota to keep the level of Jews at or about the then-current 10 percent.

Here is the problem. While they could easily keep women out of Yale, when they did admit them they did too well. In Princeton’s first coeducational class of 1973, women were 18 percent of the class but 32 percent of those elected to Phi Beta Kappa. It is obvious what happened. The requirements for women to gain entry were tougher. They admitted only ones whom they were sure of and they were better on average than the men.

If women were able by judgment of strict merit to be 90% of the entering class at Yale, Yale would flip out. They were quite upset at Yale when Jews started taking over the faculty. The last two presidents of Yale have been Jews and Yale has lost its role as a Brahmin university.   The make up of the student body and the faculty is a constant issue at Yale, not that you will hear about it publicly. In the late 1970s, at a faculty meeting of the Computer Science department we were discussing why Yale never did what we asked of them. One person suggested that we hire a non-Jew to the senior faculty. Every senior faculty member in Computer Science was Jewish and we all knew that the administration was not amused.

We let it drop, but we all knew it was there.

Harvard and Yale have a long history of keeping people out. They were started for the elites and are still controlled, but less so, by the elites. This attitude includes keeping women out. But, how can they do that and get away with it? Math test scores. Using the math SAT they can make sure that they only get the very best women (those who will follow the rules and not ask why.)  Why would Harvard and Yale care about this? Ask yourself this simple question: if the entering class were 90% women what do you think the reaction of those who rule these schools would be? The math SAT ensures that this will never happen. 

Am I saying women are not good at math? No. Hardly. I am saying they tend to dislike it more than men do. I don’t know what the reason is.

The other day I was doing a TV show via Skype, shot from a colleague’s home in the UK. We were discussing math and then the man’s 9 year-old daughter walked by. I said to him “stop her and ask her how she likes math.” He did and she said “I hate it.” (I know that not all females hate math. One of the smartest women in my company has a master’s degree in math.)

If women want to make their lot in life better they should start lobbying against the math SAT. Instead of offering math merit badges in the Girl Scouts, they should be making scouting fun, no?) (And the Boy Scouts should stop the BS. Softball is a STEM activity. Really?)

I will give the last word to Wendy Lehnert (the woman with the math degree whom I mentioned earlier. She was my student at Yale and is a retired professor of Computer Science):

 I taught calculus to premeds at Yeshiva University, to all-male classes of guys hell-bent on getting into medical school. This was a long time ago.

Some of them really got it and some of them didn't - but everyone was determined to get into medical school - that's all that mattered. Calculus was a "do-or-die" hurdle. Nobody ever showed up in my office to talk about how the course was making them rethink their life goals. There was plenty of "point grubbing" - everyone wanted to make sure they got the best possible test scores and therefore the best possible grade and therefore the best possible chance of getting into med school. But there was absolutely no evidence that anyone took the course as a serious indication of self-worth. Calculus was just a hurdle. It was just part of a big game called "succeeding in life" - or - "making it into the club"

A few years later I was teaching undergraduate courses in CS, and I was struck by how many bright students in my introductory programming course seemed to really take programming to heart. Turns out these were all female students, who had probably always gotten straight A's and were thoroughly traumatized by the anything less than an A. Getting a B on a test was enough to make them question their choice of major, their self-image, and their self-worth. The female students were just not playing the same game as the guys. They were actually internalizing all these test scores and then reacting accordingly. I've never seen a guy do that.