Links and an observation

[stef_tm]

Links
The Broken Plate Pendant Shop - pendants made from...you guessed it, broken plates. Immediately thought of yaaresse shopping for place settings. :-)

Are we thinking ourselves into illnesses (read: syndromes) New Scientist article.

I went to private junior-high & high school on scholarships and my grandmother's SSI:
A conservative view on choice-based education and a recent congressional vote here.

Observation
I met two local high school English teachers this week. They desperately want for students to have to test out of each grade for promotion beginning with first grade. Social promotion is killing them; the California high school graduation exam is written at an eighth grade level. Every teacher I've met during my 14 years in California (~30 people) has said the same. The other instructors at the University where I teach have said so also. Who is keeping this from happening? More importantly, why. What is the gain for preventing this from happening?

I'm not being rhetorical or argumentative; I'm asking. Discuss, babies.

Comments

[whatwouldruthdo.livejournal.com]

I'm eager to dive into that New Scientist article. The premise gets by blood boiling, but I also know that our minds and bodies are completely interconnected.

[stef-tm.livejournal.com]

It think it's written to be provocative and draw in readers; also, he does mention glandular fever as a trigger.

(I thought I'd be much more pissed.)

Completely off topic - icon LOVE.

[yaaresse.livejournal.com]

There's a type of mosaic that uses broken plates rather than tiles. I've always wanted to try it, but I don't think I could bring myself to bust up plates with a hammer. Maybe if I had access to a bunch of dinged, cracked, chipped plates. :)

ITA with the New Science blurb, although I think they run the risk of seeming flippant by not going more in-depth. Maybe "think ourselves sick" isn't the right term because "think" implies (to some people) an intentional decision and, by extension, blame, but there is a powerful mind/body connection that can work for or against our wellbeing. What I'd like to see them address is how sickness in our society has social currency It's become trendy to have some chronic thing wrong with us; it has become expected. People literally bond over shared illness. "Oh, wow, You have (fill in blank)? So do I!" *instant camaraderie* The drug companies now market to the end consumer because they've found it's a very powerful selling tool to create a sense that there IS something WRONG with you if only you had the information to recognize it. Watch TV and there are a half dozen ads ending in "ask your doctor" per hour. Tell someone something often enough, and they will start to believe it. The drug companies count on it. These people then go to their doctor and demand specific prescriptions because they saw an ad and "just know" they have such-and-such illness. Nevermind there is no evidence and the symptoms given in the ad are often not only broad and vague, but that the power of repeated suggestion might actually have caused the person to think they have the symptom.

I'm too far out of the loop to comment on the education one. When I was in college, our prof, once head of the National Middle School Association, said the same thing about grade-level competency testing. He also said, "We've known for years how to fix education, but no one wants to pay for it and no one wants to be the bad guy who says 'no, not everyone deserves an A and not everyone deserves to pass'. Most schools are run on fear of litigation." That was in the 80s. I imagine it's gotten worse.

[stef-tm.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly done with a book called Our Daily Meds by Melody Petersen and you've nailed the thesis of the book on the head. At this point, big Pharma is identifying "syndromes" strictly for business.

I recently attended an MS thesis defense and while *I* know the student is more than capable, his work did not demonstrate it (poor writing and presentation skills.) They promoted him straight out of the program as his advisor was tired of iterating draft after draft.

It took everything in my power not to turn in a resignation as, in all candor, I simply need the money. Sad but true :-/

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

I'm cynical on social promotion. My parents refused to promote me within my school, because (they later said) they were afraid it would stunt my social development and lead to me having no friends. But they also refused to let me go to a school for the gifted that would have better catered to my needs, because they would have had to deal with getting me there and back on their own -- a sacrifice that doesn't seem that outrageous, given two parents with flexible work schedules, a school that was 15 miles away from home but on the way to their workplaces, and a quiet kid that could entertain herself for many hours with a few paperback books. Given that and how little help they were when my lack of maturity and tact about being smarter than most of the people in my grade brought inevitable social problems, I've always chalked their choices up to parental laziness. It's amazing how much you can get the schools to parent your children for you... if you make sure the kids stay in standard social situations that the schools are expected to deal with.

However, I'm not convinced that's the universal reason, as my parents were clearly less committed to parenting than average. Perhaps a few lazy parents (like mine) convince a lot of very committed parents that it's the Right Thing to Do for their child.

One of the things I've been thinking a lot about lately is how many different idea-sets are persistent in culture despite there being little factual information to recommend them, and few people who benefit. Strong cultural thought patterns appear to come from weak forces, and I don't know why. The examples I've been thinking of: the kidnapping scare of the 80s, and the possibly resulting idea that kids are much less safe now than they were in our parents' and grandparents' generations so need to be safeguarded more; the idea that SUVs are significantly safer than smaller cars; the theory that biology supports the idea that women want monogamy and men want polygamy; the fallacious link between homosexuality and pedophilia. The idea that it's better for children to stay in their age-defined grade probably belongs with these. (Is the fact that all of these involve children in some way significant, or just my own selection bias?)

[peters67.livejournal.com]

When I grew up in the 70's in Thailand, in 1st through 4th grade we were taught in classes of 80+ students. There were no grades. We were simply ranked against each other by tests and homework, 1 through 80+. So we always know who's the smartest & hardest working. It sucks pretty hard if you're in the lower ranks (I was ranked in the 20's in thai studies and 50's-60's in chinese studies) I thought I survived okay until I failed an exam to get into a private middle school. So to my family's shame I had to go to public middle school. That's where I learned about highschool, universities, and the studying it took to get into each, and how kids committed suicides all the time when they failed to get into higher education and ruined the rest of their lives. Education as I knew it was a priviledge that was earned from the earliest years.

Then we moved over to the states and I was inserted into the 5th grade here. Lo and behold I became an instant prodigy! I was a middle / underachiever growing up and was fortunate enough to be put into an education environment that was at the same time more enriching and more lax about its standards.

We are fast approaching the day when the education standards will be globalized, not just nationalized, due to the global nature of the workforce. And the US may well fall off everyone else's map because of its low-level stupid squabbling about who control the text books. Personally I think that day is already here.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

I don't believe in social promotion, either. I think it's appalling. I don't believe in age-divisions, either. Children who are powerful learners enrich each other. Children who need action to learn stimulate each other. And so on. Schools also need to value performance, and not just academic performance. But, let's be honest? Does anyone believe that the school system is being used for anything but storage and indoctrination? The teachers are being wasted there as well.

Oh, and I agree in some part with the doctor there; but we are not THINKING ourselves into illness. In part, I think the medical system is shaming and ignoring and discounting and tormenting us into illness. Something being exacerbated or perpetuated by emotional state and a person's belief system is not something to discount. I believe that the two are very related. I can't tell you the PTSD symptoms and OCD symptoms I suffer now that my pain is under control most of the time. It has been such a horrifying and crushing experience that I have considered quitting the medication for the pain.

I think more people need their physical symptoms managed and taken seriously in order to expose what else is going on. The idea of "it's ONLY in your head" is the biggest load of bullshit in the world. Where are most of your controlling glands?

My pain doctor says that people who say they're in pain should have their pain treated and then everything humanly possible should be done to understand the source of the pain, not the other way around. He thinks the present behaviour of doctors to people with CFS and fibro and other chronic pain -- blowing them off, sending them to therapy, prescribing SSRIs, telling them to lose weight -- is unethical and cruel and cowardly.

I once saw a very elderly pediatrician, head of pediatrics at a medical school, who said that in his opinion, the very fevers/viral infections that triggered fibro and CFS also permanently damaged the brain chemistry; he was counseling me regarding my 7 months of mono. He said also that young people were being done a great disservice by treating them like adults, that the young adult brain and body needed such careful attention in illness that he was seeing his patients again when they were in their 30s, bringing him their children, and their health had collapsed due to being treated by 'adult' doctors who didn't treat their mono and other viruses as serious ailments that required immediate and ongoing treatment both physically and psychiatrically.

This guy also correctly diagnosed and treated my chronic strep that no one had been able to diagnose. Turns out I had a fast-dying strain so there was nothing on the swab to test by the time it got there. He looked at me, smelled my breath, and diagnosed me right down to the strain of strep, right there. Then he took a swab and sent it by taxi to the lab with a message that it had to be tested within the hour. He was right.

As a caveat, I have only taken on 'labels' in order to communicate better with people. I think people should be discouraged from identifying with their syndrome. I took one look at fibro support groups and ran. I even had to stop being friends with people I knew who had fibro; they were so desperately psychologically unhealthy. Like a downward cheering squad. Like Eeyoritis. I know how hard and devastating this is. I've lost a whole decade. But I still think we should fight it. I've since met people with fibro who are like-minded, and that's been great.

Second caveat, My doctor and my pain doctor don't think I have fibro, it turns out, nor do I have somatoform disorder. Presently, the diagnosis is atypical depression; everyone else in my family suffers from some form of depression. I have this. They are NOT treating it with SSRIs or therapy. I've been advised to be happy when I can be, do what I can, and not to feel guilty when I can't do things; quality of life is the goal. I have pain medication to manage my symptoms. I believe that in five years, I'll be off the pain medication and probably not better but definitely functioning.

[crm17.livejournal.com]

You have far more data from actual teachers and I am glad to hear they were unanimous. I have no actual data but when I think back to grades 1-12, I would be pleasantly surprised if they were majority in opposition to social promotion.

I am not sure what teachers should do with the third of my fellow 1-12 students who really had no interest whatsoever in actually learning. Then I don't know what you do with Johnny and Sally's parents who come in and pound on the table because there is no way their little darling could be failing.

I guess that is the bottom line. We, society, can only have quality if we are willing to accept and even enforce failure. We need to give every tool and hopefully some who are borderline will step up under enlarged expectations. But some won't. And that means they have to fail. And nobody likes that.

[hippiedork.livejournal.com]

Love the pendant shop link, Etsy has the coolest artists, no?

Illnesses/syndromes - what a complicated subject. No one answer, I imagine. So many different influences - actual physical illnesses, big Pharma & advertising, the pollution of our food/water/air, the fact that society as a whole is ill, is it any wonder that we're all sick too? What kills me is all the children I know who are on 346 different meds simply because they don't want to sit still 8 hours a day. One thing I do know is this - whenever I am employed, I am ill much more than when unemployed. Is this simply because I am in closer proximity to more people on a daily basis and exposed to colds/germs more often, or is it due to the fact that I find workplaces unpleasant and this wears down my resistance, or maybe I *want* to catch a cold so I can stay home for a day or two? Probably both.

I'm not a big fan of our education system. I probably should have been promoted faster as a child, but nobody was paying attention, and from what my friends' children experience at school now, it has gotten even worse. I'm not a big fan of blanket testing, as it's not necessarily a reflection of intelligence. I always tested well, scored in the 99th percentile of the nation when I took the GED test, but that means jack squat to my non-career unemployed ass. What do we do with the children who are intelligent but are bad test-takers, or those who have test anxiety (I live with one such person). I think we need to retool the entire system, but with what?