Attention class
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/06/29/attention_cla...
Summary
This article from The Boston Globe explores the idea that children and adults can be taught how to pay more attention. Many children recently have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, more commonly known as ADD, and these children are simply being medicated in order to be able to pay more attention in class. Michael I. Posner from the University of Oregon began to conduct a study with his research partner on whether or not people, adults and children, could be taught to pay attention. By using a computer program designed to strain the brain into having to closely pay attention to different meticulously organized tasks, Posner studied how people reacted based on what was going on in their brain. What Posner concluded from his studies was that people can actually learn how to pay attention. By using the computer program people are able to follow along to complicated tasks that require a large amount of concentration. These tasks help to get the brain more focused on what is being completed and therefore help the person to learn how to pay more attention.
Personal Response
After reading this article I am very curious as to why this method has not been used more to try and prevent or reverse the cycle of so many young children being diagnosed with ADD. I find the amount of young children that are being medicated for ADD to be very unsettling because these are children as young as 6 years old that are being started on a daily medication regimen that could potentially last them for their entire school career. I do not see any reason why students should be given medication if there is an option for them to try to overcome the problems they have with paying attention in a safe way by simply training and teaching the brain to pay attention. The rate at which students are being drugged to avoid ADD is growing at such a rapid pace that I cannot imagine how many students will be medicated by the time our generation is teaching. I think that this method for strengthening attention should be explored more and used as a more common practice among both children and adults.
Connections
This connects very strongly to the field of education because as I mentioned there are so many students that are prescribed with drugs to help control ADD, and students are not able to try to overcome their attention deficit on their own. When a student is thought to have ADD they are almost instantly prescribed with medication after only a short series of tests are run to determine if they actually do have ADD. This makes me very worried because I personally do not want to be teaching in a world where the majority of the students are on ADD medication and not given the opportunity to teach themselves and teach their brains how to pay attention. I understand that there are many students who probably do need the ADD medication, however there are many students that do not need the drugs. Also, I think that this method of overcoming attention deficit disorder should be tried out more often in order to make the attempt at keeping as many children off these ADD drugs as possible.
Personal Opinion
I personally have never been affected by ADD, so I cannot fully say whether these drugs are necessary for students, however, I do not always agree with the over prescription of drugs, especially to young children and I think that is what has begun to happen with ADD medication. I think it is very important that educators, parents, and even doctors are aware that there are other options for students and adults that have ADD. The idea that the brain can be trained into paying more attention is something that seems very advanced to me, and I think this idea should be explored much more. In 50 years I would hope that not all students are being prescribed ADD medication but it seems like the trend is leading in that direction and for me, that is alarming. Educators should be aware that there is another option, and this option should be explored and studied more in order to lower the rate at which students are being prescribed ADD medication.