Animation and the non-epidemic of ADHD

I don’t normally post videos that already have five million hits, but this animated version of a talk by educator and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson underscores a point made by Sunni Brown in her TED talk about the merits of doodling. There is something about the combination of speech and visual note-taking that enhances comprehension, especially comprehension of irony and ideas in conflict.

Robinson’s talk is about education, but the animated nature of the talk the talk is as arresting as the content.

[Educators] are trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past, and along the way they are alienating millions of kids who don’t see any purpose in going to school.

When we went to school, we were kept there with a story, which was that of you worked hard and did wel and got a college degree, you would have a job. Our kids don’t believe that, and they’re right not to, by the way. You’re better having a degree than not, but it’s not a guarantee any more, and particularly not if the route to it marginalizes most of the things you think are important about yourself….

[ADHD] is not an epidemic. These kids are being medicated as routinely as we had our tonsils taken out, and on the same whimsical basis, and for the same reason: medical fashion.

Our children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of the Earth. They are being besieged with information and calls for their attention from every platform: Computers, from iPhones, from advertising hoardings, from hundreds of channels. And we’re penalizing them for getting distracted. From what? Boring stuff, at school, for the most part.

RSA Animate, produced by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, has a series of similar animated exhortational videos.

H/T: Doug MacKay