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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (181895)	1/29/2004 7:36:21 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574610

re: I can't tell you how normal its become to have a guy be ADD or special ed. and to be on Ritalin or the latest schiesse that they've come up with to drug kids. I wonder what's going on as well. When I was a kid (admittedly a long time ago), sure we had a few kids that appeared hyperactive, maybe one per class. Now it seems like it's an epidemic. Is it our society, is it some chemical in the environment? Or is it just increased diagnosis (I doubt that). I'm have no clue, but I think is worth a very serious study. John, I am sure there have been studies. From my own experience, I suspect the kids are not getting a lot of attention at home......with a single parent or both parents working. Its easier for the parents or parent to medicate the kid rather than deal with the problem. A few years back, my friend's kid was having a lot of trouble coping with his parent's impending divorce. The kid was in first grade and wrote a fairly dramatic letter [for the first grade] that caused the teacher and the school counselor to recommend some counseling. Instead, my friend and his mother decided that time would heal all wounds. Well, a couple of months went by and the kid began to look worse and worse........he had lost weight and was paler than a ghost.......and this was summer in CA. One day, I mentioned to both my friend and his mother that Kameron was looking really stressed. After pressure from me [yeah, I don't how I got into this one], they got him into a child psychologist and within 6 months Kameron was back to relative normalcy. One of the reasons I decided to teach was because of this experience with Kameron. Our society has become a lot more intense in the last ten years...........the net has opened the world in ways we couldn't imagine. Everyone remarks that kids today are so adept on computers......and they are but let's face it, there is a lot of pressure on them to keep up..........the complexity of computers is daunting for even a 6 year old. Meanwhile, its a time when both parents are working, or there is only one parent and he or she is working. And if the parent or parents are weak and insecure and the home is really messed up, then the pressure on the kids is just that much worse. I have been marking essays for this one teacher.........and one of the topics that was asked is what the kids would think should their parents be required to come to school if a kid screwed up. Kid after kid said they would be humiliated and horrified......their words, not mine.....to have their parents come to the school. These are 6th graders; I was stunned at the level of fear they expressed over this question. Many would say its a good thing that they have this much fear and concern but I wonder. Many of today's kids are taught reading and writing in pre school. They are expected to know computers by the first grade. Keep in mind that even today there are adults who are competely flummoxed by computers, and yet, kids are expected to know them inside and out by the time they are 7. But really I think its the quality of loving that they get at home that makes the difference. Some kids are really well adjusted and you just know that things are well at home. The kid I posted about today is very bright. When I speak to him, it feels like I am talking to an adult. His vocabulary and grammatical syntax is much advanced for the grade he's in. He usually waits until the last ten minutes to do the work that takes most of the kids the entire period. However, his dress and the direction in which he was walking tonite suggests he's from a poor neighbhorhood. I suspect his parents may be blue collar and he happens to be smarter than them. I also suspect he doesn't get much support at home. And I guess that's the bottom line.......I think maybe our overall prosperity masks the cracks in the societal infrastructure. I think a lot of people are having trouble keeping up. The advances in technology have separated the boys from the men. If you don't keep up at work.....even in manual labor jobs, then you're screwed. And if you're struggling to keep up at work and with your money situation, how much do you have left over to love and nurture your kids? This isn't political (so probably OT). I wonder if other countries are experiencing the same problem. That's the beauty of this thread......there is nothing that is OT! <g> I don't know but I suspect its not as bad.........you rarely hear of a kid shooting up his school or doing some other bizarre behavior in a European country. One time, my German friends and I discussed the differences between American and German hi schools. One of the things I really liked is that the Germans have tried to take away some of the competitiveness in school sports and other activities. For an example, there are not school soccer teams but city wide soccer teams. Kids who are into soccer can try out but sports are not the end all they are in American schools. Consequently, jocks have less influence and pressure German schools. Similar things are done to remove the competitive pressures in other school activities. The good news is that, according to their testing, this change in emphasis has not effected the overall test scores for students. In other words, the impeccable German standards for their schools have been maintained. However, I don't know if that makes a difference with the capabilities of the guys. My male German friend is a structural and computer engineer while his wife is an architect. I have to point out that his presence in the computer lab would bring balance to Amy's all Asian lab at Berkeley. FWIW! <g> ted