Posted on 09/28/2011 3:17:23 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
A special education teacher wrote to me about the abuse of Ritalin. The teacher said: “My students are on Ritalin. This is a brain shrinking, top tier heavily psychotropic drug, as you know. The authorities KNOW this is their weapon for the most intelligent boys... ”
The teacher believes this is a high-level NWO plot, which is not a road I like to go down. But the teacher got me thinking...
Here are the two parts I’m personally sure of:
1) The Education Establishment in this country, for 75 years, has used bogus methods (i.e., Whole Word) to teach reading. For many millions of children, the result is illiteracy and a COLLAPSE of each child’s confidence, with a concomitant increase in anxiety and misbehavior.
2) A separate set of experts (these are in the psychiatric community) diagnose millions of young children as having something called ADHD. The common treatment for this hyperactivity is Ritalin. Interestingly, according to a government site, “This pattern of behavior usually becomes evident in the preschool or early elementary years, and the median age of onset of ADHD symptoms is 7 years,” which just happens to be the age when children, taught with Whole Word, wake up to the fact that they are falling behind their friends and seem in some way to be damaged.
I would like to think that these two groups of experts are separate and sincere. The thought that the two groups are actually working together is almost too horrible to think about.
Here is my question: does anyone have solid evidence or personal anecdotes that can help illuminate this issue?
(Final thought: Inability to read will usually destroy a child’s sense that he is smart and in control. At the very least, shouldn’t all those highly-paid medical professionals assess the reading abilities of their patients, and then DEMAND that the education experts do more to make sure these children can actually read by the second grade? Even if these groups are separate and well-intentioned, it seems to me you still have a serious dereliction of duty if doctors are prescribing powerful drugs to children without understanding the actual cause of their anxiety and misbehavior.)
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(For more on why Whole Word causes illiteracy, see “42: Reading Resources” on Improve-Education.org.)
http://www.improve-education.org/id65.html
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mark
Your source page has no mention of ritalin. What exactly are you trying to say/post?
I had to look it up, because I don’t have kids. “Whole Word” sounds like a horrible approach to me. Seems to me, and I am just going by my gut so perhaps I am no help at all to the question asked, but seems to me that teaching people phonics is the better approach. Whole Word will come once people know their phonics.
I have said for a long time, again this is just anecdotal from what I have observed, that if people don’t learn the stuff they are supposed to teach in Kindergarden and 1st grade at an early age, then those people will have a hard time learning how to learn. When kids are young, they learn how things associate. They learn letters and phonics. They learn colors - primary, secondary, tertiary. They learn simple math. If you don’t learn that stuff early on, you can’t learn more complex issues. You don’t learn how to make associations, you don’t learn how to learn. But perhaps I am off track for what this thread is about. Don’t mean to derail it.
I think he is trying to get some anecdotal evidence that might show a relationship between illiteracy and Ritalin use. I think he is trying to generate a hypothesis that kids trained in the “whole word” school of teaching might have higher rates of ritalin use vs kids taught reading through phonics, because (according to the hypothesis) whole word is a failed approach to teaching literacy resulting in more anxious kids (kids who can’t read will be easily distracted in situations where reading or attention to detail is critical).
“This is a brain shrinking, top tier heavily psychotropic drug,”
BS
My source page explains the reading side of the equation; it explains why children are anxious, which then sets up—as we see— the overuse of ritalin, That is the other side of the equation and well known to the public.
The post is exploring the human or intellectual connection between reading and ritalin.
I started taking a form of it about a year and a half ago. It has changed my life for the better in so many ways; I can't tell you what a blessing it's been for me! It's amazing, and I thank God for it. I hope you have the same positive experience. Good luck.
?
— I have **never** met a homeschooler with ADD or ADHD who has been homeschooled exclusively. This is true only if they never attended government school.
— I have** never**met an obese homeschooled child, if that child was homeschooled from the beginning. Again, this was my observation if they had never attended government school. In fact, I can't even recall having a cubby one.
— Academically successful homeschoolers and successful institutionalized children spend the **same** amount of time in formal study at the kitchen table or their desk. I conclude then that the real learning is happening in the home due to the home life of the family, the efforts of the parents and/or child ( himself), and friends or family of the child.
Conclusion: The only thing government school does is waste the child's life, promote ADD and ADHD, increase the likelihood that a child will be illiterate and innumerate, and make kids fat.
You consistently ignore the following:
— Government schools teach children to think and reason godlessly. The children **must** think godlessly just to cooperate with the godlessly secular humanist curriculum and instruction. This is a gross First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination not only for the child but the citizens who pay for it.
— Godless government schools violate every First Amendment Right. They treat children who have committed no crime like prisoners, and the danger is that children will grow into adulthood being compliant prisoners of the voting mob and government.
I have basic need to know reading skills. Books? I don't have the necessary attention span to read one usually. I never have been able to read many books cover too cover. Maybe a dozen in my adult life. I was a Special Education student myself back in 1970-72. Since that time I have acquired a pretty good understanding of my disorders which back then were thought to be ADD ADHD I was thought to have back in 1965 in second grade.
The behavioral issues it looks like are starting about the time kids get video games for Christmas, birthdays, etc. There is nothing wrong with the games itself to most kids. However to kids who have sensory processing damage in the auditory or visual processing and interpretation part of the Optic/Vestibular portion of the brain these games and many other things can in fact trigger common ADD ADHD type symptoms. Simpy put it is over taxing their sensory processing system and the ADD ADHD symptoms are the result of that. They likely do not have ADD ADHD.
BTW generally no pills will help this as such. It take classroom and home environment modifications and a lot of patience and understanding on the part of parents and teachers. I don't mean letting them get away with bad behavior I mean a modified communication environment. It can be caused by birth defect, early in childhood chronic ear infections, chronic sinus allergies, etc. In some cases it carries on into adult life and the progression worsens. It can be serious enough to at some point become disabling.
I do not buy into the ADD ADHD epidemic. But I do see a clear link in the increased symptoms in a large percentage of kids as related to technology advances of the past 30-50 years.
A little bit of basic detective work can help determine if Central Auditory Processing Disorders or C.A.P.D. is the actual cause and not ADD ADHD. An Audiologist or Speech Pathologist trained in CAPD testing is where I would start right after getting an extensive medical history of a kids childhood ailments. A Shrink would be my last resort.
If you look at my profile, you'll see one. When you've got a child who likes to read, draw, and eat, and doesn't like to exercise, you'll get a child who's overweight. And you can't eliminate food from the house when there are nine others who need to eat.
I do not understand any of this.
I don’t have kids but I do remember my days learning to read and I do remember other kids in the class learning to read. And I remember my little sister learning to read.
Reading came easily to me and I liked it. I would read everything I could. I read every sign I saw, every billboard I saw, every word that came up on the television. I really don’t think I needed a teacher to teach me how to read. Once the alphabet was learned, I was reading beginner books that my parents had in the house. There were easily 50 beginners books in my house to read. Maybe more.
I really believe the only thing a child needs to learn to read is lots of things that are easy to read and at least one parent that will spend time helping the child when he/she misses a word now and then. That’s all I needed.
My sister on the otherhand learned a little slower than I did. She didn’t like to read for some reason. It was boring to her...at first. But once it started to click, she was reading every sign she could see and every billboard also and you couldn’t stop her from reading.
So this whole notion of “whole word” and ADHD is a bunch of nonsense to me. Just buy the kid some damn books. That’s all it really takes.
Have your thyroid checked.
I think you may be onto something, but I have no evidence. My kids went to school that used a version of Whole Word - what a disaster. I taught them to read at home using phonics. In the first grade class, the children listened to books on tape repeatedly, until they were memorized. Then they “read” the book back to the teacher, and they thought they were reading! Then they couldn’t understand why they couldn’t read other books. I can see how they would get frustrated and not be able to sit still.
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. I was scared I was going to get flamed to ‘man-up’. I’ve been doing that these last few years when I was sure I had it, I need help
I can tell you some things too look for though. Look for a kid with below average coordination. Check the ears and eyes as well. Check for working vision in both eyes at the same time. I passed two armed forces entrance exams and I'm single eye functional. Look at their shoes. How are they wearing? Are they broke over the sides? That can point to walking off balance.
Try verbal commands and retention while doing dual tasking. Have a radio playing or some other distraction and see if they become agiated while trying to task or communicate. The kid you have too tell too take out the trash three times and the third time acts like they just understood you likely did just understand you. Look for Dyslexic signs as well as skipping words, sentences, even paragraphs while reading out loud.
For the above any kid with chronic ear infections, allergies, sinus troubles, etc I would watch closely for this to become a possibility. Or for that matter this applies to adults as well.
If a doctor doesn't catch it and a Shrink starts writing meds like Ritalin or SSRI's etc very bad things can happen. I'm not a doctor. I'm a patient who as an adult diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder had to gather enough information about my disorders so Shrinks didn't kill me. LOL. It all pointed back to the clues I listed above :>}
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