From: gisle@ifi.uio.no (Gisle Hannemyr)
Subject: Re: Drugs in the Classroom  (Was - Re: Re: Creed.)
Organization: gisle@ifi.uio.no
	<1992Sep30.202327.678@balrog.dseg.ti.com>
	<1ad5j0INNjl7@network.ucsd.edu>
	<1992Oct1.140122.5963@balrog.dseg.ti.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 12:37:04 GMT
Originator: gisle@gyda.ifi.uio.no

In article <1992Oct1.140122.5963@balrog.dseg.ti.com> keith@balrog.dseg.ti.com (Keith A. Schauer) writes:
>>>In article <1992Sep26.131245.3402@memstvx1.memst.edu> isds11990012@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>>>> Little Joey is a bright young third grader who is bored and frustrated
>>>> with what laughably passes for education in grade schools controlled by 
>>>> Psychologists.  
>>>>
>>>> He is noisey, disrupts class, and is generally to active
>>>> for the teacher who likes the class room nice and quiet.  The teacher
>>>> knows he should be quiet because she learned about it in school in a
>>>> class called "The Psychology of Pre-Adolescent Human Learning".   

> If a child can't remain seated, can't stop taking, and disrupts the
> classroom, you call this CREATIVE?  Wow!  Life would be pretty easy
> wouldn't it.  Stand up, walk around, talk loudly and don't listen to a
> teacher means being INDIVIDUAL.  Well, if 29 out of 30 students don't
> have this problem in a class why is the teacher failing?  Or is it the
> child?  I would love to see this situation taking place in your
> children's class.  Daddy, I didn't learn anything today becase Joey
> wouldn't sit down or keep quiet.  The teacher had to chase him around
> the room a couple of times.  We missed an hour of math and now our
> class is behind the rest of the school.  But thats OK, Joey is just
> being creative and individual.

Keith, this is silly!  It is _their_ story, and if they want half the
class to riot, little Joey to be a little Picasso or Einstein, his
teacher to be incompetent and the psychologists to be something out of
a Stephen King novel, it is their right!  You can't really discuss the
premises for a piece of fiction with its author.

Now, if they started to insist that "little Joey" and his unfortunate
mother. the teacher and the psychologist were all real people, then the
discussion could get a bit more interesting, but they've carefully
avoided to assert that.

But in case someone should think that this was anything more than an
emotional piece of fiction, here is some answers to possible questions
about the realism of this particular short story:

Q: Do the story of "little Joey" an accurate description on how
   the disorder diagnosed as "hyperactivity" manifests itself
   in the child's behaviour?
A: No

Q: Do the story give an accurate description of the procedures used
   to diagnose hyperactivity?
A: No.

Q: Do the story give an accurate description of the therapy used
   for treating hyperactivity?
A: No

and so on...

Now, I happen to think that the diagnosis "hyperactivity" has become a
bit too fashionable when explaining aberrant child behaviour these
days, and I recently attended a symposium where (among other things)
conventional psychologists presented a study that showed that children
from underprivileged homes was much more likely to be diagnosed as
"hyperactive" that children from middle and upper class homes.  If
that is case, it follows that this diagnosis probably is misused in
some instances.

Which goes to show that just because the Scientologists is against X,
it does not follow that X is kosher.  However -- emotional and totally
untrue fiction like the "little Joey" story presented as "science" (or
whatever it was intended to be presnted as) can easily lead people
like me to believe that anything the Scientologists oppose must be
something pretty good.  I sometimes need to remind myself that that
is not the case.

--
Disclaimer: THESE ARE MY OPINIONS!  MINE!  MINE!  ALL MINE!
 
- gisle hannemyr  (Norsk Regnesentral)
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