3 ms·

I really struggled in school, specifically the part where I had to sit close to 8 hours a day listening to someone else talk. I attended an all day seminar rece

I really struggled in school, specifically the part where I had to sit close to 8 hours a day listening to someone else talk. I attended an all day seminar recently, and nothing really has changed. As a kid, the only thing I looked forward to in school were the sports classes where I got to run around and play football. But seriously, how/why do we expect high energy kids to be okay with our school system where it's basically just sitting all day? I'm pretty sure I would be a diagnosed with ADHD or whatever if I grew up today, or in a developed country. What if what we call ADHD is just a normal state of being for a lot of people? I had really good grades too, but the normal class system just did not work for me.

readthenotes1 3y ago
I was talking with a friend about this the other day. There is absolutely no way that keeping a teenage boy in a desk all day makes sense.
thorum 3y ago
Children are born with endless curiosity about the world and in too many cases our schools systematically squash it. I’ve never understood why the default assumption when we see a kid struggling to pay attention in class is that there is something wrong with the kid, instead of the obvious: the class is boring.
- junofan 3y ago
  It’s an ADA-recognized disability. If somebody can’t walk, we give them a wheelchair. We don’t pontificate about the place of stairs in society.
  - darkhorse13 3y ago
    It's clearly not the same thing though. A teenager who is unable to pay attention in Geography where it's an hour of fauna analysis is not the same thing as someone who is unable to walk. The first clearly has to do with a lack of interest. Just because it's ADA recognized doesn't suddenly make it universally accepted.
brnaftr361 3y ago
It's ADHD when it affects the individual's ability to achieve their goals, otherwise, yes, it is just a normal state of being. However this classification schema is not necessarily well abided. And so diagnostics can become an expedient. What we end up with is a rather confusing dreck that is more consistent with art than it is a science - rightly so. However, scientific justification seems to be increasingly necessitous in academia and is permeating more and more into the commons. The consequence of this is a whole field of people who may well be great artists posing as rigid empiricists and this retards both the development of the art while complicating the science by shear bulk, and jointly discrediting it. The healthy thing to do, I think, is just pointing out that everyone is peculiar, strange, twisted, traumatized and that's simply the human condition. There really isn't a great deal of normal when we consider the multidimensional nature of a person, and existence in even a single tail in some distribution can drastically alter one's inclinations and abilities or cast them deeply into stigma. In turn I think we would then necessarily have to accept the cold hard fact that a society fit for the human can't be engineered with mechanical expectations, which is a great deal of where these disorders stem from in the first place, the abstraction of man into a mechanical unit, for the sake of expedience. Blah blah, rambling. Sorry.
mikecoles 3y ago
The normal classroom was designed for the teacher rather than the student.

readthenotes1 3y ago

I was talking with a friend about this the other day. There is absolutely no way that keeping a teenage boy in a desk all day makes sense.

thorum 3y ago

Children are born with endless curiosity about the world and in too many cases our schools systematically squash it. I’ve never understood why the default assumption when we see a kid struggling to pay attention in class is that there is something wrong with the kid, instead of the obvious: the class is boring.

junofan 3y ago
It’s an ADA-recognized disability. If somebody can’t walk, we give them a wheelchair. We don’t pontificate about the place of stairs in society.
- darkhorse13 3y ago
  It's clearly not the same thing though. A teenager who is unable to pay attention in Geography where it's an hour of fauna analysis is not the same thing as someone who is unable to walk. The first clearly has to do with a lack of interest. Just because it's ADA recognized doesn't suddenly make it universally accepted.

brnaftr361 3y ago

It's ADHD when it affects the individual's ability to achieve their goals, otherwise, yes, it is just a normal state of being. However this classification schema is not necessarily well abided. And so diagnostics can become an expedient. What we end up with is a rather confusing dreck that is more consistent with art than it is a science - rightly so. However, scientific justification seems to be increasingly necessitous in academia and is permeating more and more into the commons. The consequence of this is a whole field of people who may well be great artists posing as rigid empiricists and this retards both the development of the art while complicating the science by shear bulk, and jointly discrediting it. The healthy thing to do, I think, is just pointing out that everyone is peculiar, strange, twisted, traumatized and that's simply the human condition. There really isn't a great deal of normal when we consider the multidimensional nature of a person, and existence in even a single tail in some distribution can drastically alter one's inclinations and abilities or cast them deeply into stigma. In turn I think we would then necessarily have to accept the cold hard fact that a society fit for the human can't be engineered with mechanical expectations, which is a great deal of where these disorders stem from in the first place, the abstraction of man into a mechanical unit, for the sake of expedience. Blah blah, rambling. Sorry.

mikecoles 3y ago

The normal classroom was designed for the teacher rather than the student.