Mindless zombies or citizens.

I was discussing with the lad a topic for a speech he has to do. It is on challenges — he is choosing to challenge the local teacher’s union, which is continually going out on strike.

I’m so proud of him. He is already an independant thinker. The better teachers recognise this. The lass (who is older, and was educated  in another country, was diagnosed with ADHD, as is her daughter.

The problem, from the school’s point of view, is that they are bright and bored. In New Zealand, that is seen as a teaching challenge. However, in America, it is seen as time for some partially trained nurse to recommend Ritalin.

I was one of those restless boys who was smart enough to read books several levels above everyone else, be they novels or nonfiction, and subsequently couldn’t pay attention to the dumbed-down public school curriculum that I had to endure for six hours a day, five days a week. I got yelled at by my teachers hundreds of times for not paying attention in class, and even managed to get on the bad side of one particularly nasty student teacher who repeatedly confiscated whatever book I was reading at the time, snidely reminding me that “there was a time and a place.” Bitch. My parents, God bless them, resisted any and all attempts the school made to put me on Ritalin, which would have lengthened my attention span at the cost of turning me into one of the drooling zombies the American educational system caters to.

via In Mala Fide.

There used to be a blogger called Dr Crippen. He called nurses who recommended medication on their clinical impression — without a full assessment (I was taught child psychiatry by one of the better psychopharmacologists New Zealand has produced. We  did a workup involving three to four assessments and then, if there was no other cause, cautiously prescribed…. and even then, Ritalin only helped a bit). Nursey.

Nurses hated him. But Nurses Rock. Nursey is dangerous. She makes Zombies.

Bored kids need challenges. I suggest Latin, Physics, Calculus and doing biology field work at the end of 20 mile hikes. Those were factors in education.

But Fernidad is right — the US system now is about removing the wonder and originality from children. We are thus left with Zombies.