As a college student, you see it everyday: half awake college students making their way to a class they may or may not care about after rolling out of bed, not combing their hair and throwing on clothes they may or may not have found on the floor. In college this is known as the overworked, sleep deprived teen but in elementary, middle and secondary education it is known as the non-motivated child with a disease.
Ken Robinson, a mentor of mine and an avid reformer of education talks about the effects of our public education system and how it kills the creativity of our younger generation. As a system, we totem pole the four ‘major’ areas of study: English, mathematics, science, and history, but we miss some crucial areas to engage our students. The bottom line is kids don’t give a crap about root words, how to multiply a derivative, identifying a rock or who discovered Alaska.
Children are a very diverse species that are arguably the largest liability to society. From the day they are born, society throws them into a group, and because you were born in the same year as other kids, you are expected to grow and learn at the same rate as the others. Having a tunneled vision initially sets students up for failure and prepares them for a very long road of scrutiny and disappointment. It seems crazy if you think about it, how the year that you are born defines who you are as a student. Something that you can’t control and that one could categorize with race, sexual preference and disability, but to add insult to injury, are the appreciators of fine arts and the treatment they undergo.
Going back to the mental totem pole of general education, you’ll notice that art, business, music, dance and home economics isn’t included. Creativity is being killed in our educative system because it can’t be graded, and it doesn’t produce ‘productive members of a global society’. These artistic students get the short end of the stick and are labeled with ADD, or ADHD now.
ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a mental disease that prevents a kid from caring about school and prevents them from sitting down and shutting up. According to WebMD “ADHD and ADD symptoms, such as hyperactivity, impulsiveness and inattentiveness, can cause problems at home, school, work, or in relationships.”
When I was a kid, I was encouraged to walk and talk, now I’m encouraged to shut up and sit down, that the cute kid era is over. Children are sensitive and very influential creatures. When the education system needs results, they will do whatever they can to keep kids interested and functioning. When we look at society and the standards we set for our kids to learn and understand, we must also look at the standards we set for our kids and the learning ability they have. When we look at the past we learn, when we look to the future we are informed, and when we look at the present we are prepared. This standard is also set for our education system.
Individualism and creativity are becoming a rarity in today's culture as arts and music get the short end of the stick in a world based around the money machine. It is this type of thinking that jeopardizes the uniqueness of children putting them in types of positions that they were never intended to be in. ADD, or attention deficit disorder, is not a disease of any stretch of the imagination. I do not argue its existence, but I argue its treatment as an illness. It should be categorized the same way as we categorize kids with blue eyes and kids with green eyes or kids with dark skin and kids with light skin. Don’t medicate your children to silence the beauty and individuality they express through creativity and imagination.
