A Technological Rant (A Reflection on American Studies Day)

Last week at American Studies Day, I, as well as my peers Gavin Taves, Annie Soler,and Parker Nixon, led a student panel on the topic of Technology. We struggled a lot during our limited preparation time with how we could present the widespread topic in only a 40-minute time slot, and ultimately we ended up deciding to present our students with a simple question. Since this is the way most of our time in American Studies is structured (and we all know we can talk for hours on a single prompt), we figured it would spark a good discussion and we would end up learning as much from our students' opinions as they did from our thrown-together presentation. Thankfully, it worked. The question that we presented them with was this:

At what point, if any, does technology stop being beneficial to society and start limiting us?

While at first, it seemed a hard question to answer, we ended up getting some really great opinions and new outlooks from students in our discussion. Ultimately, the conclusion that we came to as a group was that in the space of monetarily-driven America, technology has been too focused on moving forward and creating new, bigger, better products, rather than focusing on covering the tracks of detriment that technology leaves behind socially, and setting limits on technological advances.

One particular example that we discussed was communication via technology. While it may seem like a great idea to be able to keep in touch with friends and family 24/7 through devices like cell phones and the internet, it seems to have been forgotten that distance makes the heart grow fonder. An excess of technology in communications has superconnected Americans, often to the point of withdrawal. In a world where we're constantly bombarded with overwhelming amounts of technology, it's not difficult to sometimes want to retract back into the ways of the past. Connecting this back to my point of social communications, I believe that the accessibility of conversation has made Americans more socially withdrawn. Conversations that can exist at any time often lose their meaning as true conversation. This, in turn, limits the true social potential of Americans using technology to communicate.

I can see I've already gotten a little bit off-topic, but I'd like to take another tangent. Another topic that we covered in our discussion on AS Day was the idea of over-reliance on technology. This can be seen pretty clearly and pretty constantly, especially in the time and place we exist. Even just yesterday in class, the overwhelming ecstasy that emerged in class after we were told that we would not have to hand-write our final essays illustrates this reliance quite well. We all know how to hand-write an essay; we didn't spend so much time learning penmanship and cursive in elementary school for nothing. While typing surely provides an advantage, it's just an interesting thing to think about. Should it really make that big of a difference? Shouldn't the content of the essay be more important than the means by which it was composed? Could typing an essay be limiting to our writing skills in any way? Don't get me wrong; I'm as happy as the next student about the nature of our final exam. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove or solve at this point, but it's just something that's been on my mind.

Overall, American Studies Day, and especially my own student panel, was a great learning experience for me. It's sometimes difficult to relate class topics to the real world, but the day itself was an amazing look at the ways in which the topics we cover in American Studies can be applied to every day life. The way that all the topics connected was incredible, and when I was presenting I really felt like I was a part of something worthwhile and applicable IRL. Good feeling.

Separated, Not Segregated

Reading yesterday in class about the possible amendments to education of ethnic studies in Arizona, I was reminded of a documentary that I recently heard about on PBS. Based on an entirely African American school in Bordentown, NJ, "A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School" reminded me a lot of the experimental learning and ethnic studies that are being considered to take place in the state of Arizona. However, rather than eliminating ethnic studies entirely from the curriculum, and teaching students of all ethnicities that they are the same, the Bordentown School took drastic steps in the opposite direction.

The Bordentown School existed from 1886 to 1955, and provided a place for people of color to learn separate from the segregation and racism of normal schools. Just to clarify: a separate school was created for black students, to avoid segregation. So really, the school was the complete polar opposite of what the Arizona school administrations are proposing. Rather than trying to get rid of segregation in schools by simply not teaching it, the Bordentown School purposely separated African American students from white ones so that they could study their own ethnic backgrounds without the influence and awkwardness of whites in class. It was structured, voluntary segregation, and it actually worked pretty well.

However, the Bordentown School, which was technically referred to as The Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, was also institutionally racist in that its purpose laid in training African American students in low working-class occupations. When the school attempted to add more of a college preparatory curriculum, they were met with much resistance.

Referred to in a New York Times review as a "somewhat flawed experiment, " the Bordentown School certainly was a change from traditional racism, but it wasn't quite the ideal. Whether America will ever truly reach that ideal state of nonexistent racism is unknown and perhaps impossible. The cycle of racism in the United States reminds me a lot of a term that Mr. O'Connor used in class today: a cycle with accumulation. While racism in the United States will never truly return to the stages of enslavement, we do continue to cycle our beliefs about diversity and race. While the Bordentown School was a step away from racism in many ways, it also went to show that racism is an integral part of America's culture.

ADD/ADHD: Over and Under-diagnosed (JT#3)

After conducting my interview with psychiatrist Jonathan Bloomberg today, I was left pretty pleased with the entire thing. I feel as though it will help my Junior Theme a lot, considering he seems to share many similar views as I. One thing that I found shocking about his statements, however, was that he believes ADD in the United States to be vastly under-diagnosed. In a nation, and even a school where I can clearly see the over-diagnosis to be extreme, it's hard to believe that there's many people out there who don't have access to the same ADD medications that students at New Trier do.

From a personal standpoint, I know that about 50% of all of my friends are currently on medication for ADD, whether it be Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta. For a long time, I thought that this number was ridiculous; that they were just exaggerating attention-deficit and hyperactivity symptoms to receive extended time on tests and sympathy from teachers. While many people think this way, and this may seem to be an alarmingly large number of diagnosed and medicated children (it certainly was for me), it's actually quite the norm in the United States. While it's estimated that only 3-5% of the population have ADD or ADHD, the growing amount of diagnoses in recent years is remarkable (Koch). As of 2006, 4.5 million children aged 5-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. Among these diagnoses, the main prevalence seems to be among upper class, insured, white, English-speaking boys (CDC). From these statistics, the most logical explanation for the ADD diagnosis issue seems to be a misunderstanding of the disease itself.

Contrary to the belief of many, ADD is a serious disorder that does, in fact, exist. The problem lies not within the creation of an imaginary disease to get attention or special help; rather, it lies within the exploitation of the all-encompassing symptoms of ADD/ADHD. The three main symptoms of ADD/ADHD are hyperactivity, impulsiveness and inattention (Breggin). Obviously, these three behaviors can be applied, to whatever degree, to any child with half a creative mind. Like many other psycho-pathologies, ADD doesn't have symptoms that can be measured quantitatively. And this is what makes it so easy to over-diagnose. Parents in high-income brackets who want their children to excel in accelerated high schools (NEWTRIER WHAT!?) are more likely to look for easy outs like mental illness than parents who don't have the money or resources to be insured or to seek out professional help.

And this brings me back to the point that Dr. Bloomberg brought up in our interview. ADD and ADHD certainly are real disorders, and they have a huge impact on a child's life. However, the lack of child psychiatrists in the United States (there are now only about 6,000, including Dr. Bloomberg), combined with ADD's stigma of being a nonexistent disorder, combined with the accessibility of drugs, makes it vastly misunderstood and misdiagnosed.