|
|
 |
mako |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 5:30 PM I love Loveline but I can't help wondering about all the snap judgments Drew and Adam always make. I don't think it does any harm on a radio show but out in the real world of institutions (schools and courtrooms especially) it has serious consequences. Too often a quick label obscures the real problem, allowing doctors, teachers, and psychologists to duck responsibility. Take for example the fashionable new diagnosis of "dyspraxia" as a catch-all term for anyone who falls behind in schoolwork. This vague and rather dubious term is a godsend to lazy, incompetent teachers who want to avoid the blame for producing all those illiterate, innumerate students. Just label your victims "dyspraxic" and fob them off on someone else, preferably an educational psychologist who can charge hefty fees for his services. Maybe, if you're lucky, you can even crush these kids' self-confidence and ruin their lives with your knee-jerk diagnosis. You can certainly cause their parents a lot of anxiety and cost them a heap of money.
—mako |
|
|
|
|
puck71 |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 6:53 PM They may make judgments but they very rarely make actual diagnoses over the radio. The vast majority of the time they say something like, "It sounds like you could have this, this, or this, but you should see your doctor to be sure." —puck71 |
|
|
|
|
sprewell |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 7:32 PM
Edited Monday, July 26, 2004 at 7:33 PM Your concern, which may be accurate for impatient social workers or teachers, is completely misplaced here. This is a national radio call-in show which has the dual burden of entertaining listeners and disseminating medical information. If the diagnosis cannot be made quickly- as it can for all the young women who cannot reach orgasm- they refer the caller to the appropriate authorities. I agree that they often do not listen to the callers properly (when I can clearly hear them) but I've heard this is because of bad equipment. (Why they don't replace equipment when it is so crucial I cannot fathom.) They help as many people as they can, as quickly as they can. Unless you have specific examples of negligence, I think you're criticizing the wrong people, Mako. —sprewell |
|
|
|
|
Nosuchsoul |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 9:34 PM I never heard of that and I worked for L.A.U.S.D. as a Special Ed teacher for two years. How often is that diagnosed? Sure, all kids involved with L.A. Unified are doomed, but that reason was never brought up. I did not see that in their I.E.P.'s. —Nosuchsoul |
|
|
|
|
Nosuchsoul |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 9:36 PM Oh yeah, I NEVER ran into a kid who did not belong in the class they were in. Whether Special Day Class, the Severley Emotionally Disturbed class, M.R. or L.D. —Nosuchsoul |
|
|
|
|
borkum |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 10:04 PM Never trust anyone who worked for the L.A. Unified School District. —borkum |
|
|
|
|
snuffy |
+ |
Monday, July 26, 2004 at 10:42 PM
Edited Monday, July 26, 2004 at 10:55 PM I think you're criticizing the wrong people, Mako To be fair, Mako did say, "I don't think it does any harm on a radio show...." I think s/he was just using LL as a launching pad for a broader discussion of lazy and self-serving diagnosis. I've heard the label "dyspraxia" bandied about in my school district. One of my neighbor's kids was diagnosed (after 20 minutes' examination) by some grade-school shrink as dyspraxic, even though the kid seems fine to me. Hell, more than half the school teachers in Massachusetts couldn't even pass their competency tests, so why wouldn't they try to shirk responsibility for their incompetence by blaming the kids. —snuffy |
|
|
|
|
piesore |
+ |
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 at 12:50 AM I think I know what Mako means...Drew and Adam can be very cocky. It's suprising how often they're right, but there's also a large minority of the time they're wrong, and they gloss over that a lot. They are usually very, very quick to make assumptions about the caller which I don't always get, and sometimes they pull the bogus card out too quickly. It's not a huge deal, and I think it's understandable considering how long they've been doing this, but it does seem annoying at times. —piesore |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MajandraFan |
+ |
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 at 3:38 AM Dyspraxia sounds like ADD and ADHD, and several other behavioural disorders. It's possible that dyslexia is a myth too, but that's a guess, dyslexia may be real.
Stupid kids don't learn to read or count, ever. That's one of the reasons governments (privately, of course) use to justify the under-funding of public schools and subsidising of private schools. The idea is that peasants will always be peasants so may as well focus on the smart kids. The problem with that logic is both that the people allocating funding always have their kids first in line (do horse riding lessons really get the most out of smart kids?) and genetics don't give smart children to smart people or stupid children to stupid people. If that was the case, the simplified genetics, it would be easier to just nuke the ghettos of the world and be done with it. —MajandraFan |
|
|
|
|
piesore |
+ |
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 at 1:26 PM From what I understand envirnoment plays a larger part in affecting you than genetics. Most people aren't born smart or stupid, it's learned. Asians aren't more genetically gifted intellectually, it's their extremely rigid educational and family system which pushes them to suceed on that level. I think we assume because different cultures have different attributes, these are engrained in their DNA, but it's really the environment that culture creates. When Adam sarcastically replies "You CAN'T judge, we are EXACTLY the same", I understand what he's ranting about, but the whole idea that we're the same is something that's basically true which has gotten twisted around in a very PC way. There are profound differences between cultures, but people very elastic in their behaviors, studies of children of immigrants have shown not only different behaviors, but even different physical attributes. The climate can shape us physically.
Many things we attribute to race, like intelligence for the Asians, or athletic ability for the blacks again, is based on their culture. If it was genetics, we would have to be able to go X Y and Z makes them this way, and genetic studies were done for the better part of the 20th century and couldn't define concrete barriers between races.
Even stuff like sickle cell anemia, often associated with being black, has to do with having ancestors from an environment with lots of malaria, because those with sickle cells were immune to the disease.
That was definitely a tanget, but the point was, genes are definitely a factor, but the culture and family in which one is raised affects them much more profoundly. Did Drew or Adam actually mention dsypraxia? I missed the last few shows, or was that just an example of people making snap judgements? —piesore |
|
|
|
|
MajandraFan |
+ |
Wednesday, July 28, 2004 at 2:48 AM You're kind of on a good bent there. You must have things kinda wrong though, else you wouldn't think that intelligence is learned.
Environment affects "you" and so too does genetics. The idea of Adam's that you refute, that the difference in cultures reflects an ingrained difference in people, is wrong but not because genetics are irrelevant. It is wrong because the genetics affecting height and skeletal structure and pigmentation are not bound to the genetics affecting intelligence and temperament. People are born stupid or smart, clumsy or athletic, ugly or handsome, short or tall. Yet these attributes are not divided among any lines of pigmentation ("race"), gender or nationality. Examples of this are two migrants' sons that have grown up in my country of Australia. Both the men have parents from poor areas of South America and both sets of parents are short (between 4'10 and 5'4). Yet one man has grown to 6' and the other (and his brother) are only around 5'6. Clearly the 6' man's parents would have been taller had they been exposed to the richer and more nutritious diet that most people have in Australia, yet the other man's parents would not have been much taller. There are also many Asian heritage men of my age that grew up in Australia. Some of them, much like one of the South American guys, have dwarfed their parents (particularly their fathers) by 12 inches or more. Yet others are like the shorter South American, much the same height as their short parents.
When I was younger and still venturing out amongst people, I would visit a local shopping mall. As a newly formed adult I would notice how my newly gained height compared with the throngs I passed through. I constantly found men and sometimes women who were taller than I was and this displeased me; later I realised that I was unhappy with my height and as such was focusing on the minority of people taller than I, all the while ignoring the 90% of people walking past me under my 6'1 of height. In the same way you are noticing only the Asians who perform as you would like to academically and the Blacks (Africans I presume) who outperform you athletically. You filter out all the Asians who are stupid and the Blacks who are clumsy. As I said just now, there are many Asians in my city. Of the twenty or so Asian kids in my school grade of 200 kids, only 2 were in the top classes. The rest were just as dumb as the white kids. There are far fewer Africans around here, but of course none of them are muscular giants of athletic prowess, they're just normal guys.
So while you are correct about the elasticity of peoples and their behaviour, you are wrong about some of the generalisations that you bother to provide explanations for.
The bottom line is that the categorisation of the world that one's mind tries to create in order to deal with the masses of knowledge accumulatd during life, especially as pertaining to humans, is void because of the same sentient mind that creates the categorisation. Adam says that you can't improve your calves? Have a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger's calves when he was 16. Oh, but the Austrians are renound for their massive bulging leg muscles. That reminds me, bodybuilding is ample proof that genetic traits are chaotic: there is no country or "race" of people that has not produced a competitive bodybuilder. Hawaiian (with the calves) or Italian (Adam is part-Italian yes?), they both have great calves if they only do calf exercises. Franco Columbu is Italian. Adam could have calves like grape fruit if he worked them correctly. It's easy to rant instead of work, particularly when you're paid to rant so ranting is working.
I have to write a book, someday. Get some money. —MajandraFan |
|