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SAS! Edip Yuksel ©2003 yuksel.org Just
a few years ago, psychologists couldn't say with certainty that kids were
even capable of suffering from depression the same way adults do. Now,
according to PhRMA, a pharmaceutical trade group,
up to 10% of all American kids may suffer from some mental illness. Perhaps
twice that many have exhibited some symptoms of depression. Up to a million others may suffer from the alternately
depressive and manic mood swings of bipolar disorder (BPD), one more
condition that was thought until recently to be an affliction of adults alone
ADHD rates are exploding too. According to a Mayo Clinic study, children
between 5 and 19 have at least a 7.5% chance of being found to have ADHD,
which amounts to nearly 5 million kids. Other children are receiving
diagnoses and medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder, social-anxiety
disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), pathological impulsiveness,
sleeplessness, phobias and more. Has the world-and
American society in particular-simply become a more destabilizing place in
which to raise children. Probably so. (Medicating Young Minds, Jeffrey Kluger,
Time, If there is an epidemic in American secondary schools, it is short attention span (let's call it SAS). It is one of the biggest impediments in their achieving a good education. Today's students are easily bored; they believe their teachers do not entertain them enough. With clowns and cartoons their role models, entertained by dumb and dumber comedy shows, guided by lyrics consisting screams, cusswords and botched syntax, today's students expect their teachers to act like a clown, talk like a rapper, teach like Bill Nye the Science Guy. If a teacher does not perform as good as a professional entertainer, students either turn to zombies or socialize with similarly bored friends. Well, I am a teacher known for his good sense of humor and robust energy, and occasionally I do outperform professional actors while trying to drill some bits of knowledge into the brains of my pupils. If Socrates confuses them too much, I snap to Nietzsche; if Mr. Rogers bore them I turn to Principal Skinner. But, I confess that I have some limitations, my moral upbringing does not allow me to emulate Bart and my intelligence cannot stand Homer in my classes. During more than a decade of teaching experience I tought almost every age group: from grades K to 12; from college students to adults older than my parents. (There were times, I tought all these levels in one single day!). I teach philosophy, religion, logic, rhetoric, algebra, law, and foreign language classes, and in my spare time I write books and promote several causes. Rather than finding a way to improve students' SAS and help them gain a habit of attentive listening to serious class lectures and discussions, teachers are tempted to accommodate and further increase the problem. Older teachers complain that the attention span of American kids is decreasing generation by generation. The most frequent phrase in the report cards of Middle School students where my son attends is the following: "if X pays more attention and participates in the class activities X will do better." You may replace X with Y. In fact, to a lesser extent, parents too suffer from SAS. If you compare classic movies of 1950's with more recent movies, you will see that in older movies the lengths of scenes were much longer and characters could carry lengthy conversations. Today's movie-makers feel more challenged by keeping the attention of easily distracted and bored clients. So, they change the scenes faster, smash cars to each other more often, use sound effects and sound bites consisting of few short words, blow up houses and bridges, throw in several handsome fists landing on ugly faces, pour in bottles of alcoholic beverages, shoot in various acts of violent murder, and if they think it is not enough to keep SAS victims awake, they blow up more cars and houses, kill more people and finally interject a few sexually explicit scenes and innuendos. Computer and video games too contribute to the epidemic of SAS: computer games turn the players to chickens with pea-size brains; like a chicken repeatedly picking grain with its beak, the players repeatedly hit their fingers to a few buttons. Neither complex and analytical assessment nor strategic planning is needed. Emotions are evoked, hormones are released, and the left side of brain is led to a slow but imminent death. Spot and pull the trigger without thinking! Perceive and push the button without reflecting! It is true that games improve motor skills and reflexes; but it wastes too much time on a minor skill compared to many other important skills needed to succeed in modern world. Besides, the world's best video player still will not be able to beat an average hamster in reflexive motor skills. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories; however, I am now tempted to concoct one of my own. But this one might be considered a good conspiracy: Can it be that entertainers are in collusion with U.S. Military and they are paid covertly to create human robots that will push buttons and pull triggers upon command? Well, our brave and visionary leaders are determined to bomb many more countries into liberation with our new doctrine of pre-emptive strike. As a result, our well-connected weapon and construction companies are going to make well-deserved and delicious profits from taxpayers' money for contributing to the destruction and re-construction of evil countries that broke their American axis. If our movies and video games teach our children how to push buttons at the right moment in right combinations to kill the virtual bad guys, then, when they grow up they could easily push buttons to bomb real countries and real people declared evil by our good leaders. Then they become all they can be! It is a vicious cycle. The SAS of youth leads the entertainers to produce movies and videos that accommodate this deficiency and this very accommodation reduces the attention span further. If we do not break this vicious cycle, our future generations will not be able to follow one long sentence, since they will forget the first word before they hear the last. They will not be able to take notes since their fingers holding pencils will by then be programmed to tap their desks. Thus, it is imperative for parents, especially overworked single parents, to restrict the access of their children to TV, computer and video games and require them every day to read at least a few pages from a good book, a book that would promote critical thinking, cooperation, global peace, empathy, justice, compassion, respect, patience and appreciation. |