Article re Susan Greenfield's less than helpful comments
The article below from Guardian Unlimited Education from the UK notes some recent comments by Susan Greenfield. She advocates limiting use of drugs to treat adhd in children - a noble cause. But she also comments that adhd may be simply caused by overuse by kids of electronic media. From such a well educated woman this type of comment seems to ignore the significant amounts of research that indicate adhd as a neurochemical disorder with complex genetic and psycho-social origins. One would think that at this stage of our knowledge of adhd the prudent scientist would merely say that we know that this is a disorder with complex interplay of genetics and psycho-social factors and that further research into the impact of electronic media and computers is warranted before any definitive statements are made. But that's just me prudent Pru! Guardian Unlimited
The article follows below in full (sometimes the site delete old articles so I've reproduced it in full & attributed fully):
Greenfield: IT culture is changing children's brains
Donald MacLeod
Thursday April 20, 2006
She also warned of the dangers of "medicating the classroom" with drugs such as Ritalin.
The crossbench peer, who is director of Oxford University's Institute for the Future of the Mind, urged the government to investigate the effects of new developments in IT and mind-altering drugs rather than "stumbling" into new technologies.
She said a recent survey of eight to 18-year-olds claimed that children were now spending on average 6.5 hours a day using electronic media, and asked what impact this screen and multimedia culture would have on thinking and learning.
A recent study found that 92% of nine to 19-year-olds have accessed the internet from a computer at home or school. But 30% have received no lessons at all on using the internet and only 33% of regular internet users have been taught how to judge the reliability of online information.
"Perhaps the increase in the prevalence of hyperactivity might be explained by sustained exposure to an unsupervised IT environment, where only short attention spans were needed," said Baroness Greenfield.
She added: "I am not proposing that we become IT-Luddites, but rather that we could be stumbling into a powerful technology, the impact of which we understand poorly at the moment."
Baroness Greenfield said there was a "growing scandal developing under our very noses as technologies such as cognition-enhancing drugs, mind-changing software and electronic devices that interact with brain and mind are being applied to our children with insufficient thought and regulation.
"There is no doubt that with an understanding of how learning occurs, some wonderful technologies exist to help us to realize our full potential, but applying the technologies in inappropriate or thoughtless ways may be changing the very way in which our children think," she added.
She said there was an "appalling overuse" of Ritalin to drug school children diagnosed with alleged behavioural problems. "We should give more thought to changing the shape of our classrooms to fit our children, rather than trying to medicate our children to fit them," she said.
Baroness Greenfield also pointed out that the "much-discussed abuse of proscribed drugs, in particular cannabis ... might well change attention spans and cognitive abilities without ever becoming apparent as a medical problem."
She urged the government to involve the public in a widespread debate about what was needed in a 21st century education system.
"The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to any and every event: we cannot complacently take it as an article of faith that it will remain inviolate, and that consequently human nature and ways of learning and thinking will remain constant."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1757811,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment