Letter to the Editor (not published)

The story on the front page of today's Washington Post has me quite worried about the message that parents will take away. The major headline indicates that long-term use of ADHD medications has deleterious effects, and that these medicines only provide short term improvements. As a person who would today have this diagnosis (inattentive type, called "daydreaming" in the '60's and 70's), and as a parent of an ADHD (inattentive type) child, I have some problems with this reporting and the study:
1) The report and study look at broad groups, not at individual students who may or may not benefit from medication. It's not until paragraph 18 at the bottom of page A7 that psychiatrists are quoted having "emphasized the importance of individualizing treatment" which is, after all, the point of having treatment.
2) The "short term" improvements to which the study and reporting refer is two years, which is 25% of the life of an 8-year-old third grader. For a kid who can't sit still and focus in class, what are the implications of having two years of being able to do so? For the 14-year-old 9th-grader, what does it mean to be able to be intellectually present in class for half of high school? Two years of learning to cope and manage oneself in school is a large percentage of a child's life. It's not until the end of the story that it's noted that medication has "a valuable role: they buy parents and clinicians time to teach youngsters behavioral strategies to combat inattention and hyperactivity."
3) A psychologist is quoted as saying "If you want something for tomorrow, medication is the best, but if you want something three years from now, it does not matter." This is not a person who sees kids who can't otherwise manage themselves in a school setting, a student for whom getting through "tomorrow" successfully may be a huge triumph. Without those series of triumphant tomorrows where is that student in three years? Not terribly engaged in school is my guess.
Having taught for 30 years now, I know that medicine is not right for every child with a diagnosis of ADHD, but I've known too many students who would never have gotten through school without medicine. At The Nora School, every child is a study of "one," a study for which there is no broad brush. Some of our students have tried medication and have seen no benefit, others could not be in the classroom without it. The key is to know your child, be sensitive to their physical and emotional development, be willing to try a variety of strategies, and be conscious that no strategy will likely last forever. In our ADD society's never-ending quest for the black and white answer to cure whatever ails us, we once again are told a story where the shades of grey are between the lines.

So what to do?

Realizing that my last two posts are pretty depressing, I feel compelled to offer a thought or two about what can be done. I believe that the most important thing we must do is educate both our young women and our young men so that injustice can be challenged whenever and wherever they see it. Unless our young women are unwilling to settle and our young men are willing to support them, the world their grandaughters will grow up in is likely to continue to be unequal, though in ways we can't imagine. Since my daughter has so many more opportunities than my mother had, from going to college to playing sports to choosing a career, I am somewhat optimistic that cultural and societal improvement will continue and spread beyond our borders. Yet I'm also concerned that as a society we're reaping the benefits of the hard work done in the '50's and '60's, and that we take our progress for granted. Without attention and continued efforts by our generation we could too easily lose the gains made.

Girls, redux

The Mommy Blogger has some great articles, including one posted March 8 for International Women's Day. You can read the full blog here, but here are ten sobering facts about how far women have to go:

1. United States: Clearly, Not Ready For A Female President As soon as Hilary Clinton announced she was running for the United States Presidency in 2008, misogyny raised its very ugly head.

2. Western World: Women In Ads Are Still Heavily Objectified Sex sells, and in ads, women are almost always the ones to provide the sexual pleasure.

3. United States: The Scary Statistics Of Rape One out of every six American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Only 16% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police. Less than half of those arrested for rape are convicted. 21% of convicted rapists are never sentenced to jail or prison time, and 24% spend an average of less than 11 months behind bars.

4. Africa: Three Quarters Of Young Africans Who Are HIV-Positive Are Women Three-quarters of Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 who are HIV-positive are women.

5. United States: Income Gap Won’t Budge According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women make only 75.5 cents for every dollar men earn, even accounting for factors such as occupation, industry, race, marital status and job tenure.

6. Pakistan (and other places): No End In Sight To “Honor” Killings Every day, at least three Pakistani women are murdered by their families in the name of family “honor.” Honor killings are perpetrated for a wide range of offenses. Reported cases include marital infidelity, premarital sex, flirting, seeking a divorce, refusing an arranged marriage, and even failing to serve a meal on time. Being a rape victim can also lead to an honor killing.

7. United States: Women Are Paying More For The Same Health Care Coverage Women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage.

8. Kenya (and other places): Female Genital Mutilation Female Genital Mutilation is the removal of part, or all, of the female genitalia. It is practiced throughout the world... Female Genital Mutilation is done to control female sexuality. By reducing sexual desire through making the act painful or removing pleasure, society ensures that its women remain faithful to their partners.

9. United States: Women Athletes Are Ignored Unless They Are Used As Sex Objects Women athletes are underrepresented in all forms of media coverage of sports. Women athletes are presented by the media not as athletes, but as objects of heterosexual desire. The most blatant examples are the Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit issue and the media coverage of women’s beach volleyball.

10. Worldwide: The Feminization Of Poverty Despite the efforts of feminist movements, women still suffer disproportionately, including in Western countries, leading to what sociologist refer to as the “feminization of poverty,” where two out of every three poor adults are women.

Sorry Christina, we'll try to do better. Read the full MomGrind article here.

Girls

In the "Counting Your Blessings" department, I came across this video on girls' education in Taliban controlled Pakistan. In the Swat Valley, an 11-year-old girl is profiled on the last day before the Taliban closed down her school.

Juxtaposed with this sad and disturbing video is another one from the New York Times showing the use of Photoshop in retouching ads and editorial content. What does it mean for our students' self-images when even the models don't look like models?

I'm not sure exactly why I posted these two videos together, except, perhaps, to question whether we're all really living on the same planet. Tough world for women, rich or poor (but tougher if you're poor).

Interesting Articles from the Post

Interesting article in the Post yesterday about the stress on parents from having a child with ADHD. With the headline, however, I though the article would be about my long-suffering wife!

Married, With ADHD
Relationships Suffer Under Stress of Raising Child With Disorder, Study Finds

By Shankar Vedantam

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 3, 2009; Page HE01

For many years, scientists have explored how parental conflicts and other marital problems can affect the well-being of children. Far less attention has been paid to the opposite question: How do children, especially difficult children, influence the quality of married life?

Then there's the article about marriage after the kids are gone (yes, parents, this day WILL come). Some fascinating statistics: in 1880, researchers estimate that 75 percent of couples in the United States had children at home; in 1960 it was around 60 percent; today it's around 46 percent. It was a little sad to read about the 90 year old man who was divorcing his 89 year old wife of 19 years (second marriage for both) because he couldn't see spending the rest of his life with her. The good news is that few women now die in childbirth and few men head off to sea at age 25!

Random nonsense from the web

Optical illusions for a snowy Sunday afternoon.


No, they're not really moving!

AARP at 50

So what will life be like for today's student's when they're eligible to join AARP?
Neat video here with one person's idea.

Tougher College Admissions

From the Baltimore Sun: "Applications to some state universities are rising as budget-conscious families take a second look at public education. The effect is being seen in the acceptances and rejections: Schools are likely to turn away some students who might have qualified for admission when the economy was healthier.

Salisbury University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County are reporting increases in freshman applications of 5 percent or more.

At Towson University, in-state applications are up 3 percent while out-of-state applications are down, indicating that families are leaning toward their home-state universities to get in-state tuition breaks.

"Some folks who might otherwise be looking at higher-priced private colleges are saying, 'That looks out of our league. Let's look at some public options and see if it's a good fit,'" said Aaron Basko, admissions director at Salisbury, where the average score for the math and verbal portions of the SAT was 1,120 last year."

Best lines

On Keith Olberman tonight

"There's a word for people who only teach
their children about abstinence,
they're called 'grandparents'".

Bristol Palin: "Talking to mother about being pregnant was more painful than childbirth."

More (and hopefully the last) on bad uses of photography

I spent the Heads' Holiday/Presidents Day weekend on Cape Cod with my dad, and the big news in New England was the "sexting" that happened at a local middle school. Subsequent stories about other incidents in the New York Times and the Boston Globe have created the latest furor over "today's youth", but what's really different is the use of technology. It's not that boys and girls weren't curious about sex thirty (or three hundred) years ago, but now that moment of exploration can be spread around the school (and the world) in seconds. And the image may live in cyberspace forever (like when you apply for a job). Child-porn charges are pending against six Falmouth 12 year olds. Boys and girls together, it's a new world indeed!

Michael Phelps

There's been a great deal of commentary about the photo of Michael Phelps smoking pot, and while I think that 23 is a bit old for youthful indiscretion, I'm more interested in what I haven't read about... the photographer.

It's 2009, and nothing any of us do is private. We already know that everything we do online is tracked somewhere, and will only appear with our nomination at Secretary of State. Now, with the prevalence of phones that capture photos and videos, any of us at any moment can find ourselves in our least attractive moments entertaining the world on YouTube. Our permission is not needed, if, indeed, we could even identify the person who shot the unflattering picture or video. Teachers in the classroom, students at parties, parents attempting to get the bedrooms picked up, friends in their cars, there is no place that we can assume privacy.

The person who took the photo of Michael Phelps assualted him as surely as if he (or she) had taken a swing at him. The hit to his reputation will never be entirely recovered. This, alas, is now true of all of us. We're all public figures today.

Being a White House Photographer

Thanks to the NY Times there's a pretty interesting video clip here... 8 hours of sitting around for 30 seconds of shooting!

Snow Days

So, what does the school principal do on a snow day? Puts out his back! I imagine this is different in a large school, as my friend Norman is finding out. I don't think that this is how Bruce Stewart spent his day. Back in the WEHS days, when we rented, it was someone else's responsibility to clear the walkways, and when I had several teenagers under my roof I could always count on cheap labor. But no longer, though I shouldn't complain, as the extra hours of sleep were welcome. Though sometimes it would be nice to spend the whole day on the sofa reading!

What a country!

Has there ever in history been a country capable of self-correction like America? Last Tuesday's inauguration was truly an amazing experience, one I thought I'd never see. True, it took a disastrous eight years to open the more conservative parts of the country to see the value of having a smart capable leader (that's the cynic in me), but nonetheless America has a black president. How remarkable!

The day was inspiring as well, despite the hassles of getting through security to get to the mall. Metro did a fantastic job getting the four of us (including my wife, my son, and his friend who's a girl, but not a girlfriend), along with a million others, into and out of the city with relatively little difficulty. The less said about the ridiculous level of security fences and barriers the better... no reason to spoil a nice memory, but I sure am glad we didn't take the whole school!

Now, of course, the hard work starts. It's good to see Obama treating our current crisis for the opportunity it is. We have the chance to create some long overdue changes amidst the crisis, and I think our president has the vision and discipline to do it. Will our attention challenged culture allow the necessary time for change to take place? Stay tuned.

Photo essays

There's a nice new photo essay series beginning in the NY Times today (page A21) which can be seen at nytimes.com/onein8. Also a nice "portrait a day" series about the people of Hamilton Ontario at hamilton365.com.

Life goes on

Our second First Friday Reunion was, as it was last year, a delightful evening for me. It's great to see old, er, former students who've gone on to create interesting lives for themselves. Keith and Johanna, both WEHS alums from the late '90's, returned married and with a brand new baby! To my knowledge this is a first (though Eberhard folks may wish to correct me). One of our former students has even started a Facebook group of former WEHS students, with 22 new members in the first day. Thanks Alexis!

Happy New Year?

Well, it's got to be better than the old year for some of us. Between our personal retirement losses and the at-large economic anxiety, 2008 is best left behind. The new year promises great opportunity with what promises to be an historic presidency and a renewed emphasis on timeless virtues. Whether our attention deficit society can sustain living within our means and without high drama is a question for another day.

The new years traditionally brings with it a renewed attention to personal growth in the form of the ubiquitous "New Years' Resolutions"... and as always, I'm game. Once again I'll try to lose the 50 pounds I've put on since my headship began and my marathoning career ended (not coincidentally at the same time). As with so many things, self-discipline is the key. I've begun a personal photo-a-day project which will hopefully appear from time to time here, another exercise in self-discipline. Is there a theme here?

My first photo of the year is posted here. It captures for me the essence of 2008 for my family, the loss of my mother to a heart attack and my daughter to college. This was taken New Year's Day evening, after we took Christina back to Dickinson, where the women's basketball team was beginning practice again. We checked in with her later that night via Skype, which allows us to videoconference with her from her dorm room. Here, my father, alone for his first holiday season in 52 years, is chatting with her from our family room. What a world we live in! Like fish surrounded by water, we are largely oblivious to the change we are living through. Dad's father was born 24 years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. What will world be like when Christina is 82 and tells her grandchildren that her father was born 12 years after World War II? Will it seem like as much of a throwback? And by what means will she tell them?

Restarting

Chris Conlon, the man to whom I turn to see what part of the technology universe has entered the mainstream, recently started a blog, A Certain Slant of Light. Having introduced blogging to Nora two years ago with this Headlines series, it ocurred to me that I'd let this thing languish a bit, not feeling that I had anything terribly interesting to share with the world. And for me, as for many of our students, writing does not come that easily. I quite enjoy reading blogs, and follow some photography blogs quite closely, but in all the day to day activity I just never got around to revisiting this blog. Inspired by Chris' example, however, I'm going to restart this fellow in the hope of discipling myself to put pen to paper (so to speak) a couple of times a week with thoughts that may be of interest to the world at large. Feel free to comment and/or suggest topics as, unlike Chris, my writing tends to be more reactive to the world than proactive upon it.
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