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To: Timesink
from the article:
[As it stands, the result is that too many boys are diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder or its companion, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The U.S. -- mostly its boys -- now consumes 80% of the world's supply of methylphenidate (the generic name for Ritalin). That use has increased 500% over the past decade, leading some to call it the new K-12 management tool. There are school districts where 20% to 25% of the boys are on the drug, says Paul R. Wolpe, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the senior fellow at the school's Center for Bioethics: "Ritalin is a response to an artificial social context that we've created for children."]

Too many clueless women teachers, (and a few who don't like anything male/masculine), demanding that little boys behave like little girls in overcrowded classrooms w/o enough normal physical activity.
Today Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would be drugged and sedated their entire childhood. What will the future Delta Forces look like?
And, the flurry of school schootings in the past several years by teenage boys - there must be a connection.
40 posted on 05/16/2003 9:20:16 AM PDT by LibertyAndJusticeForAll
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To: LibertyAndJusticeForAll
What will the future Delta Forces look like?

Likely just fine. I've always figured that schools should use the military's methods when teaching boys: namely, instruction first followed by a PRACTICAL EXERCISE. There's many times I wanted to scream at my engineering profs and the dean about this. Generally, the classes I hated were the ones that had no labwork (ie. the "practical exercise" portion). Of course, the labwork itself was frustrating because half the equipment never worked, since we got hand-me-downs from the grad students (familiar lament of hard science and engineering students everywhere). But even so, you could generally see for yourself the real-world example/application of what you were being taught in the classroom.

Bone-headed curriculums didn't help either. For example, the electrical engineer students had to take two classes that in content were, for all practical purposes, exactly the same. One class was an engineering core class (meaning all engineering disciplines had to take it) that was basically an intro to electronics, and the ones that the EE students took after that was exactly the same in content. In other words, the EEs had to take the same class twice. Pretty much every EE student I knew hated this setup, since that meant that one classs was wasted. When I asked what should be put in its place, they all said "Something practical!" with "practical" ranging from FPGA programming to printed circuit board layout, neither of which you get until you get on the job.

As for me personally, I never much cared for homework, and I never much cared for classes that didn't have a practical aspect clearly shown to it. Strictly lecture classes just didn't do much for me.

I guess what I'm saying is that organizations that use the "learning by doing" approach, such as the US Army, won't have problems with the quality of their male recruits, since such methods work a lot better for guys, myself included. So the Deltas will still be able to kick al-Quaeda or anybody else's ass for the forseeable future.

43 posted on 05/16/2003 9:46:26 AM PDT by adx (Will produce tag lines for beer)
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To: LibertyAndJusticeForAll
overcrowded classrooms

Have you fallen for this NEA propaganda? Many years ago when urban schools were crowded with immigrants it was not unusual for a classroom to have 50 or 60 students in a room. Students sat quietly and they were learning. No one worried that the boys would be wimps. The children were motivated to learn English and succeed.

98 posted on 05/19/2003 10:17:27 AM PDT by ladyjane
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