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Canaries in the coal mine: the symptoms of children labeled ‘ADHD’ as biocultural feedback
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Armstrong, Thomas |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | Were the field of attentjon deficit hyperactivity disorder to have a 'poster b promote its cause (in the way that muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy nizations have a child with the disorder appearing on television during fund-r campaigns), it would surely have to be Calvin from the celebrated comic s Calvin and HobbesB by Bill Watterson.' In one of my favorite Calvin and Hob strips, Calvin is sitting at a school desk, utterly bored. Finally, he shouts out to teacher and all of his classmates: 'BO-RING!' In the last panel, we see Calvin be sent to the principal, saying: 'Yeh yeh . . . kill the messenger.' This particular comic strip symbolizes for me how children who have be labeled 'ADHD' are the messengers of today's frenetic stressed-out cultu Optimally, they should be characterized by educators and men sionals, not as intrinsically dysfunctional or biologically damaged organis rather as a kind of early warning signal for cultural instability. Canaries have traditionally used in British coal mines as an early warning system for detec potentially poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide. Miners would see canaries fall off their perches and know that they still had time to get o the mines safely. Similarly, I believe that children labeled ADHD in today's noxious cultural climate, and are responding in a na social conditions of the times by developing the symptoms of hyperac~vl tractibility, and impulsivity that are characteristic of ADHD. Instead of 'bl the victim,' that is, diagnosing ADHD 'within the child,' we ought instead, reading their behaviors as symptoms of a wider dysfunction and using information to make substantial reforms in our cultural institutions. In this ch I will make the case for how the so-called ADHD child's behaviors reveal more about the context in which we live than about the specific mechanisms reside within an individual brain. |
| Starting Page | 46 |
| Ending Page | 56 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780203008010-9 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.institute4learning.com/images/Articles/Canaries%20in%20the%20Coal%20Mine.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
