Earlier this year ago a care home accommodating four young and
vulnerable mentally-ill residents was opened on Penny Lodge Lane, Loveclough,
in Rossendale, Lancashire. Mentally ill
people are more likely to be discriminated against, insulted, abused, spat on,
punched, kicked and robbed by the rest of the population than most other
people. Clearly, for this reason we
should be concerned that they are properly looked after and protected from such
dangers by caring and well-trained staff.
As it happens, the circumstances of the four residents were such that
they were provided with 24-hour care, so they should have been safe. But that didn’t stop the local populace from
having a go. After two months of a
torrent of abusive emails to the home (with references to ‘schizophrenics’ and ‘paedophiles’),
threatening messages left on staff cars, and staff being accosted
in the street, the owners of the home have had enough and are moving to a new
location (Rossendale Free Press,
6.6.14). The final kick in the groin
came from Nicola May, the Conservative candidate in the local council
elections, whose election leaflet stated, ‘I’m just not sure that placing this
facility in the middle of an estate full of family homes is the right thing to
do’. ‘We don’t know what kind of people
are going to be there’, she recently told the Free Press.
According to Mr Graeme Proctor, owner of Prospects Supported Living
which ran the home, ‘We specifically chose a property on Penny Lodge Lane...as
we felt it would have the right community spirit…’ Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Monday, 10 March 2014
Dyslexia
Professor Julian Elliott of Durham University’s School of Education and
Dr Elena Grigorenko, of the Yale School of Medicine have just had a book
published entitled ‘The Dyslexia Debate’:
Professor Elliott recently gave an interview on Radio 4 in which he summarised
the main findings in the book, which reviews evidence in the fields of education,
genetics, neuroscience and psychology.
As soon as Professor Elliott’s interview was over, I felt a sudden
urge to rush up to my attic, lock myself in, stick my fingers in my ears, and
remain in this position for the rest of the week. You see, I was anticipating a verbal
explosion from all sorts of quarters, either in agreement with or in protest
against what people believed to be Professor Elliott’s claims without having
properly listened to them.
The main thesis of the book is that a minority of children, for various
reasons that do not include lack of intelligence, experience great difficulty
learning to read and write; that these children should be given all the help necessary
to overcome or mitigate this problem; but that saying that these children are
‘suffering from dyslexia’ is of questionable scientific validity, as are the numerous
screening tests that purport to diagnosis this ‘condition’, and may not be
helpful for children as a whole who struggle with their literacy.
Cue for parents of children diagnosed with dyslexia to personally
abuse Professor Elliott in the media for saying that their offspring don’t have
genuine difficulties and for certain newspaper columnists to praise him for
saying likewise.
Having not yet read the ‘The Dyslexia Debate’ I shall reserve
judgement on it. However, I find that
there is nothing controversial in what the professor has said in his exposition
of the book’s contents and, though lacking the extent and depth of knowledge of
the authors, I myself made similar observations based on my own experience:
It is also worth visiting:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/is-it-time-to-rethink-dyslexia/2011751.article.
One observation I would like to add is that the more remedies there
are on the market for a diagnosed condition, the more our suspicions should be
aroused about the utility and authenticity of the diagnosis. There are indeed many treatments whose proponents
claim are capable of curing dyslexia.
Consider the example of a headache. There are many treatments or cures for a
headache, orthodox and otherwise, because a headache is a problem and not a
diagnosis. Once you have made the diagnosis – that the headache is due to,
say, a viral infection, high blood pressure, cerebrovascular disease, food
poisoning, or noisy kids – then the range of effective remedies narrows down
considerably, sometimes even to just one. Even in medicine, this distinction is
lost, and the urge to put impressive-sounding diagnostic labels on problems,
(labels that are usually just another way of describing the presenting
complaints) can be irresistible - see ‘Spurious syndromes: we create disease by
giving every illness a name’ at:
In psychiatry and clinical psychology this malaise is rampant.
One final comment: investigating whether the brains or the genes of ‘dyslexic’
children are different from those of the rest of us is of benefit only to the
careers of those doing the research. It is
of no help to the children concerned.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
A thought experiment on ‘personal identity'
To understand this thought experiment it is important to accept the
premise (temporarily, if you disagree with it) that conscious experience is solely
the outcome of activity of the brain.
There is nothing in addition
to this, such as a soul or spirit (though of course much of conscious
experience is derived from sensory input from the external world). The human brain and nervous system are
structured in such a way as to make possible this activity. When the brain cannot engage in this activity
we are no longer conscious. Therefore
when we die there is eternal oblivion.
Now imagine that right now you are participating in a laboratory
experiment in which a scientist has wired your brain up to a machine that is
precisely equivalent to your brain (maybe another physiological brain or maybe
a computer) and this machine is detecting and replicating exactly all the
activity of your brain.
Since we have assumed that conscious experience is the outcome of
activity of the brain and nothing in addition, then we can reasonably assume
that the machine is experiencing consciousness and that its conscious
experiences must be exactly the same as yours (what it sees, hears, feels,
thinks, remembers, etc.).
Now ask yourself these questions:
Am I --- (your name) or am I the machine?
Can the scientist
or anyone else help me answer this question?
When the scientist
announces that the machine is to be turned off, do I want this to happen?
When the scientist
announces that the machine has been
turned off, what will be my reaction, if any?
All answers and discussion are welcome, either in the ‘Comments’
section below or direct to me by email.
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
The Tyranny of the Professions
We
are all indebted to professionals. The
‘professionals’ that I have especially in mind are those people who work in
political, educational, healthcare, welfare, legal and other services. Through their knowledge, expertise and
commitment, they help us when we are in need, they make our lives easier, safer
and more fulfilling, and they smooth the way forward for us to achieve our
potentials and our goals in life. The
same may be said for managerial and administrative staff in private
organisations such as financial and commercial enterprises.
But
could it not also be this? That rather than assist us they can too often be a
hindrance? That without their
intervention we can sometimes make a better job of things by ourselves? That they may even at times undermine our own
ability and confidence to determine what is in our best interests and carry out
what is required (and if necessary learn how to)? That some may be no more ‘experts’ in what
they do than non-professionals or people simply possessed of reasonable
intelligence and common sense? Is it
possible that too often their own needs take precedence over those of the
people who are supposed to be benefitting from their attention? And could it not be that there are just too
many of them?
Is it
reasonable to speak of a modern ‘tyranny’, one that is having a malign effect
on our society, and which we may call ‘the tyranny of the professionals’? Indeed, my current pipedream is to have a
book published entitled The Tyranny of
the Professions. Another apposite
title would be Disabling Professions,
but a book of that name already exists, authored by Ivan Illich and others
(London: Marion Bowers, 1977; accessible online at:
I seriously invite anyone who feels
an immediate and strong affinity to this title to consider joining me in my
enterprise.
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