Stigmatization: What can be done?

This week I chose to respond to mental illness and stigmatism. According to many sociologists, like D.L. Rosenhan (picture on the left) and Thomas Szazs, mental illness is social construction. Mental illness does not exist until society labels and defines it. Prior to becoming a mental illness, those characteristics were defined as deviant. It was through medicalization that mental illness was coined and made profitable. Two interesting blogs discussing this topic are Stamping out the Stigma, written by psychologist Dr. Deborah Serani, and Reversing the Stigmatization of Mental Illness. Stamping out the Stigma provides a great list of myths and fact about mental illness as well as a brief article about stigmatization and mental illness. Reversing Stigma asks if and how stigmatization of mental illness can be reversed and dispersed. I included in this response the research of Peter Conrad (pictured on the right), a professor of social sciences, to support my ideas

Response: Stamping out the stigma of mental illness

Mental illness can fall into two types of stigma: discredited and discreditable. Discredited means that stigma is not easily hidden. For example, it is not easy to hide the stigma of being homeless, therefore homelessness is discredited. But, discreditable means that stigma is hidden and not noticed. An example of this is eating disorders because it is not usually visible. Mental illness falls under the former if someone with an illness is not treated or the treatment does not work. But on the other hand being diagnosed and given a treatment can hide the fact that someone has a mental illness. True, taking medication provides another stigma, but this also can be discreditable. A child is stigmatized at school when he is socially awkward, but if he is medicated and acts normally he is no longer stigmatized as crazy. Therefore I agree that “Knowledge of mental illness appears by itself insufficient to dispel stigma”. However, research and use of medication can reverse it.

Response: Reversing the stigmatization of mental illness?

I wanted to point out the similarities between what you call institutionalization and the American term medicalization. This is when the medical profession takes custody over certain issues, like mental illness. In the past, in America, people showing symptoms of mental illness were regarded as deviant. There was a stigma attached to being deviant, but the medicalization of mental illness took away that stigma. You argue that stigma is a main concern when dealing with mental illness and I agree with Paul Garfinkle that working to improve treatment will help reverse stigma. For example, if a child has a mental illness that causes social awkwardness he acquires a stigma. But put that child on medication where he can function normally and that stigma disappears. However, it is important to consider that mental illness is a social construction. A great example of this is from Peter Conrad and his study on hyperkinesias, or ADHD. He shows through his study that the disease was not diagnosed until after Ritalin was discovered. Prior to the cure, hyperkinesias defined children who were deviant, not displaying characteristics of a mental illness. But when push comes to shove, I think more research on treatments would be beneficial.

Problem Children: Every Generation Has Them

An article from The Canadian Press claims that there are more problem children today than there were fifty years ago. Children are “disruptive, aggressive or delinquent”. This following quote seems like it would fit seamlessly into this argument. “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” But this quote was written by Socrates who lived from 469 BC to 399 BC.

Every generation thinks they were angels as children but their children are little devils. According to the sociology of childhood and Dr. Sternheimer, when adults look back at their childhood they remember through children’s eyes, not adults. How can it be claimed that chidlren are worse today than they were fifty years ago? Well what was going on in the 1950s? Elvis. Music is a big part of generation gaps. Parents, for the most part, considered Elvis Presley as symbol of deviance. The sexual movement of his hips was unacceptable. Parents did not understand why their children liked this rock and roll. A common connection to adolescent music is some sort of deviant behavior. Parents feared that if children listen to this music they will do drugs, commit crimes, become more sexual, and so forth. But to understand why children today seem so much worse than fifty years ago, the definition of child and its connection to innocence must be closely monitored.

When adults think of children they think of innocence. In my sociology class we were asked to write down synonyms to the word child. Words like immature, innocent, hopeful, cute, carefree, and others came up. But when asked to do the same for adults we found that most words were the opposite we put for child. It is in the definition of the term child that causes the problem. Society expects children to act in a certain manner even if children have never acted in that way before.

These claims could easily manifest into a moral panic. A moral panic is when the moral, ethics, and interests of a society are threatened. The fear is much bigger than the actual panic and there is always a group that will benefit. Childhood behavior could easily fall under a moral panic. Adults are scared and threatened of children and adolescents. An actual threat does exist, but the fear is disproportional to that threat. An example would be the school shootings in the 1990s. It would seem, because of new coverage, that there was an outburst of school shootings and violence in the 1990s when in fact there was a decline in number of children killed in schools. Statistically a child is twice more likely to be killed by lightning than killed at school. Media and news coverage add to the panic because they provide constant footage and information. The reason there seemed to be an increase in school violence was because there was more media coverage than there was in the past.

Forensic psychologist Marta Weber states that parents spend less and less time with their children because of work. She believes that lack of parent involvement has helped create these behavioral issues. Over 200 years ago in the colonial period children worked starting at the age of seven. There was even less parent involvement then. During the Industrial Revolution in the 1850s children were sent away to school or work and had very limited parent involvement. Throughout history there have been times where there has been no parental involvement and no behavioral problems. The correlation Weber is trying to make between parental involvement and child behavior is weak.

Children today are no worse than children fifty years ago. Children have changed, this is true, and so have their behaviors. But their behaviors are not worse, just different. Some are even the same. “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” This has been and most likely will always be how adults feel about children in general.

Problems in Math Education: Who’s to blame, instructors or textbooks?

This is a short message to inform you, the readers, that this week’s blog will be slightly different from the past two. Instead of consisting of a blog entry responding to current events in the educational/sociological field, it will respond to two recent blog entries. The two entries, Math education: An Inconvenient Truth and In Search of Constructivist Teachers, relate to the first blog, Decline in American Math Levels: Myth or Fact? The former blog explains that some math textbooks are missing important information, for example the mathematical symbol pi, and since the information is not in the textbook that information is not taught. The later examines the concept of constructivist theory and why it is not found in a mathematical context. The two entries are connected because each asserts blame of problems in math education on different sources. Below are the responses to the two entries. Perhaps both poor math textbooks and lack of new educational methods produce the problems in math education.

Comment on Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

Wanting to be a math teacher in the near future, I find this extremely disturbing. It is unfortunate that children miss out on important information because textbooks lack the needed curriculum. Like you said, this is not uncommon. Here is a table, slightly outdated, but still relevant, that shows the quality of math textbooks. Most of the textbooks are shown to be of poor quality. It is so distressing that such an important subject as mathematics lacks adequate textbooks. Also, as one response to your blog said, many times outside sources are looked down upon by head masters and department heads. In all the math classes I have taken, in both high school and college, I could have easily never have gone to class because the lecture was straight from the book. I was not aware of any missing information because it was not pointed out or included by the teacher. Better textbooks are greatly needed to bridge the gap in math education.

Comment on In Search of Constructivist Teachers

I am a student at the University of California and for the first two and a half years of college I was a math major. Every single class I took was taught in the exact same way. They were all traditional math classes; sitting at desks, facing the chalkboard, while the professor goes through the textbook, word for word. As long as I can remember all the math classes I have taken from first grade up have been in the same format. For me this way of teaching works, but for other students it does not. With limited time, space, and finances there really does not seem to be a better way. I cannot begin to imagine how constructivist theory can be applied to math education because the traditional format is so engrained in mind. But it is important to figure out different ways of teaching because not every child learns the same way. I hope that in the near future there will be some ways to change the format of math education so that more students will succeed and enjoy what they are learning.

Private Schools: Dual Curriculums and Religion

Growing up in a private Jewish day school I always wondered what it would be like in a public school. What would it be like to only have to take half the amount of classes and not have to go to prayers every day? Let me paint a picture in your mind of the typical day in my elementary school: classes would begin at 8am in the English home room. Until lunch I would have English, history, math, and science as well as morning prayers. After lunch I would go to my Hebrew home room where I would have Hebrew, Jewish history, Torah (the Old Testament) and Rabbinics. But public schools were not the only schools that interested me, I was also curious about how other religious schools ran. Catholic schools are run similarly to Jewish day schools; there are bible, Latin, and religious history classes as well as prayers. I wondered if students like me, in religious day schools, were being prepared when we only got half the math, science, English and history education that children in public schools got.

The issue is do students of private schools receive an adequate education when they spend significantly less time on secular subjects? Although religious private schools spend less time on subjects they need less time. The reason is because the class sizes are smaller and the student teacher ration is significantly lower than that of public schools. The size of the class made up for the shorter class period because there was more student teacher interaction and the students were able to grasp the information quicker. I researched two Los Angeles Jewish day schools, Kadima Hebrew Academy and Heschel West, two Los Angeles Christian private schools, West Angeles Christian Academy and Chaminade High School, and two Los Angeles public schools, Hale middle school and Pomelo Drive Elementary. The average teacher student ratio at the Jewish day schools are seven, the ratio at the private Christian schools are sixteen and the ratio at the public schools are thirty six. As shown on the left, many private school classrooms have teacher assistants or teacher aids so that there is more one on one interaction with the students. The size of the classroom makes a tremendous difference in education because no student falls behind. They are all provided sufficient time and help on an individual basis.

But education does not just include classes in school. What about education outside of the classroom, extra curricular activities? Do private school children have time for extra curricular activities when they have double the work load of those children in public school? The answer is yes. I concluded that private school children still have time for extra curricular activities by researching the after school opportunities at private schools. This picture shows one of Kadima Hebrew Academy’s after school sport programs, soccer. But sports are not the only activities available. The Chaminade website shows a plentiful amount of activities available to students ; art club, band, drama club, just to name a few. These private schools offer similar after school activities. However, the private schools cannot offer as many programs as the public schools due to shear numbers. But these programs are still available to private school children through other private organizations.

When parents decide whether to send their child to a private religious school or a public school the main issue is not money; it is the quality of the education. This is why it is important to note that the education at private schools and the opportunities at private schools are very similar if to that of public schools. Children will not miss out on important events in their life for going to private school, they will just experience them in a different atmosphere.