The theory of using Ritalin in schools goes like this:
- Grades measure learning.
- Sitting still and listening is an important part of learning
- ADHD prevents kids from sitting still and listening.
- Ritalin allows ADHD kids to sit still and listen.
Therefore:
- Ritalin will help ADHD kids get good grades.
The problem is that the conclusion is false. Recently, scientists figured out that Ritalin is not actually effective at improving grades.
Why is this? Ritalin supports the standard schooling model very well. If students can’t sit still and listen, what should we do? Ritalin is a very simple answer: Give them a drug that allows them to sit still and listen.
What can explain then, the failure of Ritalin to improve the grades of the students? There are several explanations available, but few of them look especially good for the standard learning model, and none of them look good for the use of Ritalin.
If we have a syllogism with 4 premises and a conclusion, and the conclusion turns out to be false, then so too must one of the premises be false.
For the purposes of this discussion, I think that we don’t need to worry much about premise one’s truth. It is also pretty well established that ADHD prevents kids from sitting still and listening, and that Ritalin allows ADHD kids to sit still and listen. That leaves only one premise to address*, which is almost certainly wrong:
- Sitting still and listening is an important part of learning
But, someone might object, this is a foundation of our entire school system, and most of our training in the corporate world. Indeed it is. And that’s a pretty big problem.
Let us suggest instead a different model of learning.
There are three domains which we interact with in our learning process:
- The Territory — The real world
- The Map — Our mental representation of the real world — usually not in words
- The Words — What we use to communicate about the world.
Or, because I’m suggesting that the listening/reading thing isn’t good enough, let’s get a picture:
The original tree is the territory.** What someone sees looking at the world. That is translated via some process into some sort of mental map of a tree for the original observer. Then, the original observer communicates something about what he’s understood to a listener “Tree”. Then, if all the stars are aligned, the listener builds his or her own mental map of what was communicated.
The problem is that this system is designed to communicate mostly old stuff. It kinda sucks for communicating novelty. And the learning process is about the communication of information and methods that are new to the listener. Somewhere between the business of translating from the map into words and the business of translating from words back into a map, there is usually a failure.
While this in itself would be sufficient to explain the failure of Ritalin, we can take it further.
An awful lot of the time, this is not a picture of what’s happened. It’s more like this:
There’s usually an intermediary between the discoverer and the listener. Oftentimes the intermediary doesn’t even do the real translation from map to words. Rather, they encode the words. And that’s where we get real problems.
Human beings have the capability to encode words. They also have the ability to build maps. But basically people can’t build good maps from words. And you can’t do anything with your words except repeat them until you have a map. Unfortunately, 20 years in teaching, and nearly that many more in school says that the business of going from words to map is effectively non-existent.
Ticking upwards to close: What can we do about it? As educators, we can focus heavily on what a student can do rather than what words they can say. As Agilists, we can keep our meetings small and participatory. Anyone not talking is out if it’s more than 10 minutes. And as learners, we can focus on our ability to really understand by doing, rather than keeping a set of words in our heads.
* It could also be true that Ritalin prevents learning another fashion, independent of sitting still and listening.
** Yes, the whole diagram constitutes something sitting somewhere between words and map. It’s clearly not words, but it’s an attempt to communicate my map to you.