Enlighten Me: America's Unhealthy Codependency on Progress

America is obsessed with diversity. Apologizing for historic civil rights atrocities, we’ve replaced consistent developmental tools of academic success with pseudoscientific methods reflecting a nostalgia for the social activism of the 1960s. The scholastic fitness of these devices is diluted to promote homogeneity and inclusion of most ideas, theories, and beliefs. Although these programs have good intentions, such concessions don’t actually enhance, engage, or challenge cognition and academic performance. Scholastic excellence and improved test scores can’t be achieved by supplementing mental growth with internal transformation. Claiming such designs create an amorphous solidarity, or “global community”, only results in the formation of a quixotic curriculum, whose abstracts cannot nurture and strengthen the developmental processes children need to succeed in life. Changes in developmental education standards are now influenced by contrite politics, special interest ideologies, and societal priority shifts. Lesson subjectivity doesn’t just hedge a child’s acumen. It perverts vital parenting choices, involving breastfeeding, diet, environment, discipline, interaction, and family, that dictate a child’s capacity and concern for scholastic proficiency. As a free country, it’s unethical to mandate, supervise, or screen its citizens’ ethics. But social complacency has demagnetized our educational compass, allowing politicians carte blanche to translate our capricious fads into damaging policy. For America to correct its academic deficiency, we must understand some of the ways our crusade for altruism sacrifices academic achievement.

Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Mental Stamina

Orphism alone doesn’t account for the mass disinterest with cogent instruction; the adjustments made to implement such reform have withdrawn aids central to salient growth. Physical fitness (overall physical health including physical activity and diet) also has measurable effects on a student's capacity to learn, their cognition over time, and scholastic performance. Medical research shows how and which physical exercise promote academic learning, function, and optimizes educational output (Shephard & Trudeau, 2008). Yet an illumination of food lobbies and sedentary activities embraced by America’s public school’s unconsciously stifle scholastic achievement. Children’s diets are increasingly high in fat, sodium and sugar, low in fruits and vegetables, and low in essential nutrients, and the vending machine foods provided on campuses are partly to blame . As part of school curricula, students receive minimal exercise and enjoy sedentary activities, while being seduced at home to consume high calorie foods, be inactive, and obsess over a thin image (Shephard & Trudeau, 2008). The constant emphasis in school on the dangers of being overweight without the proper nutritive support of the school or family environment takes a tremendous toll on children’s health; kids now diet younger in order to be thin, stunting their growth in height and compromising health through intake restriction (Woodward-Lopez, 2000). The prevalence of eating disorders has only increased as obesity levels among children reach record highs. In all creeds, malnourishment and inactivity result in more than just childhood obesity frequency. The appearance of health problems previously prevalent in adults also is a disturbing trend among America’s youth; these problems include hypertension, type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hip and joint problems. But sub-optimal nutrient intakes affect overall development and performance. Malnourishment, inactivity, and hunger affect the brain’s ability to learn, making the child tired, apathetic, and unable to concentrate, thereby impairing cognition (Trost, 2007).

American physical education has been substantially reduced, and even eliminated to improve test scores and in response to budget constraints. Though the Surgeon General recommends children engage in 60 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week, studies show that only 3.8 percent of elementary schools provide daily physical education. Schools serve as an excellent venue to provide students with opportunity for daily physical gains because peer – reviewed research on the relationship between physical activity and academic performance among children and adolescents shows exchanging physical education for classroom instruction does not improve academic performance. Five controlled experi-mental studies in three major global powers evaluated the effects of added instructional time allocated from time shaved off P.E.. Students whose time in PE or school-based physical activity was conversely increased maintained or improved their grades and scores on standardized tests, even though they received less instructional time than students in the control groups. Additionally, activity breaks were also shown to improve cognitive performance and classroom behavior ( Scheuer & Mitchell, 2003).

We assume more education and more study time in the classroom is needed to combat rising American ignorance, but with competent supervision and instruction, physical activity can be added to school curriculum by scraping minutes from other subjects without compromising student academic achievement. Conversely, adding time to "academic" or "curricular" subjects by taking time from physical education programs does not enhance learning or improve grades/ test scores/ GPA in these academic subjects. The reduced opportunity for physical activity in schools also correlates with a reduction in basic motor skill development to enhance academic cognition and output. Children’s executive processes such as mental and physical timing - not just rhythm - were also significantly affected, particularly in mathematics and reading achievement. Girls especially benefit from physical activity intensity and duration increases, demonstrating higher academic achievement than boys, yet cross-sectional observation reveals significant improvements in academic performance across racial/ethnic, income, and gender lines. Costly multi-cultural sensitivity programs, field trip/specialty interesting programming, and curricula and textbook revisions have shown no conclusive increases in literacy scores, math scores, or graduation rates ( California Department of Education, 2002).

Not only do physical education cuts and lesson augmentation negatively affect children’s output, malnourishment in youth can permanently or semi-permanently damage cognitive and physical development. In one study, a reduction of 240 minutes in classroom instructional time per week coupled with increased physical activity time and intensity led to higher mathematics scores. The relationship between academic achievement and fitness was even greater in mathematics than in reading, and intensity remains congruent with scores. Eating breakfast increases focus, but there is little the law can do to force parents to feed their children a nutritious meal before school in a nation of indulgences promising to be quick and economical. Providing nutritious meals guards against anemia and other nutrition issues limiting student achievement and focus, which behooves politicians to appropriate (and tax-payers to demand) funds for compulsory breakfast programs instead of dubiously beneficial material revisions and academic opportunity programs.

Whole-Language, Mixed Signals, and Drugs

In 2001 the Society for Neuroscience Conference suggested that regular exercise improves cognitive function and increases levels of brain substances responsible for neuron health maintenance. Brain function may also benefit from physical activity with increased energy generation translated into refined focus and better studying. Increased energy levels and time outside of classroom also relieve boredom, resulting in higher attention levels during classroom instruction. Could this be the true cure for ADD/ADHD issues? Attention deficits are treated with highly volatile psychiatric drugs, whose perpetual use in children causes their adjusting brains to require higher doses or stronger prescriptions just to continue at the same rate. Once off these medications, adults and teens find it impossible to cope without it, while small children seem to be a little more resilient (Crosnoe, 2002, p. 334). It’s no wonder that ADD/ADHD patients, particularly those on Ritalin, are also diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorders in adulthood. But quick-fix junk meal plans make the working mother’s job easier, despite their effects on development, so perhaps Junior doesn’t have an attention deficit, but a comprehension deficit. His struggling grades should be the window to parents and therapists into Junior’s frustrated mind and body, instead of a door to the pharmaceutical lobby. The worse a child is at something, the more brain cells are needed to execute certain tasks. Years of conclusive research has proven people with attention deficits specifically do not have an inability to pay attention, but rather that learning failure inhibits ability to attend (McGuinness, 1997, p. 164).

If there are no organic deficits in attention that may be labeled diseases of learning, then we must examine how we learn, to combat our scholastic trans-gressions. Attention requires fuel, and large amounts of glucose are burned when we reinforce bad learning habits, squandering mental energy and interfering with concen-tration. If a child exhibits his bad learning while writing about something interesting he witnessed earlier, his recall will be negatively affected. While he may have paid special attention to this one thing, his orthographic knowledge determines his ability to focus, in speech and critical thought. How can he integrate complex information and form representations without proper grammatical education? How we write determines how we depict and perceive data; internalized data is remembered. We’re presuming categorical knowledge precedes basic learning, but written language is not instinctual like speech. Therefore, diet and ignorant programs like Whole-Language may actually be initiating this attention break-down. This program is aimed at creating an environment of facilitation of children’s natural cognitive processes, except that cognitive development imitates speech, not phonics. It’s known fact (except to parents who don’t do it) that children read to at home tend to pick up reading and phonics better and sooner, but that is largely because of exposure to heard language or interaction, providing the child larger vocabulary. A larger vocabulary gives a child a larger point of reference to communicate and comprehend more effectively. If kids aren’t required to actually learn to read words, but taught simply to learn the picture, the words are only memorized without intent (mimicry). Faking their way through reading isn’t the same as learning the rules to make one self-sufficient enough to actually read (imitation). Whole language is trying to teach people to read the way we learn to speak, but written communication - as evident with the many civilizations that did not possess one - is not inherent to cognitive human development. The Whole-Language approach is a major factor in the rise of ADD/ADHD diagnoses in young children, as developing minds cannot perceive or understand how they’re expected to read suddenly when they’ve only mimicked vocabulary, rather than internalize and store it ( Cohen, 2001, p. 357).

Through writing, we test our abilities of recollection (orthography and morphology), attention, digestion of previous stimuli (morphology), and phonological memory. Conscious awareness is useless without the ability to capture and detail its object. Without memory significance, it can’t be stored and retrieved. Understanding how to navigate written language assigns each word significance as the brain focuses on the parts of a word to decipher its sound and context, qualities which are essential to orthographical meaning. But the current language programs in most schools involves unnaturally trying to retrieve memories as unimportant as wiping one’s butt in order to drive a car. The actions are unrelated, so children can only guess at the meaning. This isn’t competence. Competence is defined by categorical thinking through linguistic codes. Piaget found categorical language extremely slow to develop, and that language acquisition is a matter of categorizing words at different levels. One’s exposure to certain stimuli is logged if the stimuli is new or compelling. If children can’t separate and categorise new information into retrievable and conveyable terms, the intended representation will always fail. Conveyed relationships must be perfect, and elaborations must mutually imply each-other; this is known as mapping. The Whole-Word method we love so much cannot map language. Rather than cancel a successful method that didn’t fail our parents, tax-payers should have demanded training for teachers to competently teach phonics.

Divided Education: Drugs, Money, and Failure

George W. Bush, Sr.’s reconvention in 1990 of the National Governors Association came in response to stagnant educational output resulting from too many reform measures, whereupon he provided six educational criteria to be met by 2000. Clinton resumed these criteria for his administration’s responsibility in 1992, and added some qualifying goals to be met with regard to parent-teacher involvement, teacher education, and professional development emphasis. The Educate America Act established basal national education goals and assessments, their development, and officiated a federal co-op to take up the tasks of this new education reform paradigm. One source of this project’s edification was the dyer demand in the job market for teachers, as enrollment skyrocketed. However, it failed to create a Federal Department of Education ( Webb, 2010, p. 174 – 178 ). The decision meant America’s public schools were without substantial revenue. Logic and desperation - and Executive and Legislative motions to leave education standards to the individual states (out of laziness) - gave the states only one tempting solution. The pimping of America’s schools to junk corporations brings billions of dollars in school revenue without providing any valuable criteria for education quality. Academic quality criteria creates distinct expectations for students, educators, and administrators, and per population allow schools to map out a prospectus for goals, securities, risks, costs, and curriculum. No state would appropriate significantly to much or too little. A system of checks and balances would also be created informally for state legislators and tax-payers to identify the cost-efficiency of programs by how their state’s test scores measured up to others. But pimping our kids brings so much more dinero and veils the bearers of responsibility when they apply tax revenue to an unnecessary, unscientific program. Besides, kids love high fructose corn syrup, caffeine, mono-sodium glutamate, and saturated fats. If these beautiful poisons inhibit academic performance, retard cognition, and help invent new diseases that can be temporarily treated with submission meds, then they’re obviously worth the poor focus and health of our kids. Of course, American tax-payers and politicians shot down our one viable alternative to pedagogical prostitution: the student’s right to access competitive education, via vouchers, and let the public schools feel the pinch, or step up their service if they want to continue being federally and state-funded.

Abstract Academia: The Big Picture Isn’t Art

Standardized testing can prove a useful tool for educators to evaluate students’ absorption Of course material and isolate areas of instruction requiring greater focus; unfortunately, with regards to literacy, the standard for testing the skills of our children was established by measuring the adult functional literacy rate, or the abilities to read text, locate information, and perform operations (McGuiness, 1997, pp. 7 - 10), of which only 22 % registered at first - level skill. Based on one example test item which was a fact sheet outlining jury procedures showed , sadly, that only 3 % of jurors can read and digest the processes of jury duty and selection. When scores were held against other nations’ such as Canada and Sweden, American children and adults were projected as six times as likely to be illiterate (McGuiness, 1997, p. 10). While some education professionals may argue proficiency is dependent on the amount of years spent under classroom instruction, there is no statistical evidence to support this. In fact, only a sobering 10 % of college graduates and 16 % of graduate school students could read at levels four or five, a stark contrast to the 30 % of those testing in these categories who were educated between 1955 and 1965. Cognitive - Developmental Psychologist and Professor at the University of South Florida, Diane McGuinness postulates that with only 17 % of the American population testing at adequate functionally - literate proficiency, “… we are dooming the vast majority of Americans to be second - class citizens”. One possible conclusion drawn from the results of some states’ tests based on their larger population samples is that individual state training of teachers is a factor. Another determining factor of student literacy could be the dramatic discrepancies between states’ populations of children qualified as IEP (remedial) or LD; before properly isolating potential problems with literacy among our nation’s children it would be beneficial - even imperative - to first nationally standardize what qualifies a child as IEP or LD, and also define who exactly can diagnose such labels. Parochial schools - projected as having similar outcomes due to their large population of Spanish-speaking children, actually reported having as many as 17 % more students at or exceeding basic - level reading skills (McGuinness, 1997, p. 10). Other possible factors analyzed were teaching expenditures, including salaries, which also proved inconsequential, as Parochial schools actually spent less on teacher education programs and salaries per year on average than public administrations.

“… [Instead of suspending] the curriculum so that critical thinking skills can be taught , we should be looking for ways to give students more exposure to a curriculum that, when taught with rigor, provides them with richer opportunities to think critically (Gallagher, 2004, p. 168)”. Testing itself is under fire, as the Education Department fields an increasing amount of cases questioning the use of standardized tests, including the SATs and ACTs, and outlining possible abuse of such systems (Messerve, 1999). Because ethnic minorities and female students often score lowest on the tests, some people are bringing suit against the testing that it’s exclusive and a limiting factor to determine institutional outcomes. Robert Schaffer of advocacy group Fair Test reminds administrators that professional guidance advises against using standardized test scores as the sole criteria for gauging an individual’s literacy levels, but that regrettably, most education professionals dismiss this guidance ( Boyd, 2006, p. 29).

Paradigm Bust: The Beating of Breastfeeding

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), no vitamin or mineral supplements can replace a healthy diet; this includes all supplemental nutrition at any age, including formula. FIRST 5 program of California recognizes the breast-or-bust campaign as the critical determination for the health of the rest of baby’s life (p. 19), not simply for biological consideration, but also for the sake of preventing or lessening the effects of post-partum depression / psychosis by creating a bond between mother and child and releasing certain endorphins in the brain, stimulating serotonin synapses to promote feelings of well-being and peace during nursing (Kalat, 1992, p. 272). Though nursing is making a slow comeback, many states provide supplemental assistance and vouchers for unemployed, even undocumented mothers to receive free formula, at the tax-payers’ expense (W.I.C.). While food shouldn’t be denied an infant or child, even a monkey can see that positive reinforcement enables consistency. These programs take detailed LES (Leave-Earning Statement) information from all applicants, so the states know everyone’s employment status. These programs are starting to advertise the many benefits of breastfeeding, but our federal government has failed to interject the way it has with Surgeon General warnings on sin products. Formulas with iron attempt to mimic the absorbable combination of nutrients and iron and come very close, according to the California Childcare Resource Network, but they lack antibodies and other necessary, fully usable nutrition found only in breast-milk which accommodates baby’s requirements through every exigent stage of development. But the psychological role of breastfeeding also contributes to cognitive function. Bonding between mother and infant is designed to occur with the first kiss, embrace, or meaningful contact, much like the idealized romance obsession of the 20th and 21st centuries. Unfortunately, unrestricted physical contact between mother and infant is discouraged in the West. A baby’s cry is biologically created to halt the mother and capture attention, and the breast is designed to be a pacifier, though Americans view it primarily as an inconvenient feeding method. Infant abuse and neglect most often occurs when parents become anxious when they’re unable to quiet their baby’s crying. Despite occasional colic that distresses even nursed babies, there are no known cases in the U.S. of infant cruelty and neglect by the parent with exclusively breast-fed babies (Palmer, 1993, p. 82).

American society is very confused about its liberalism toward everything. While few American policy-makers, nurses, and nutritionists seek the redemption of nursing, most of America is transfixed on genitally-focused sexuality in relationships, possibly due to an abandonment of religious influence under threat of being labeled unconstitutional. Because of this, nursing mothers in the U.S. are still the minority, as stigmas - particularly among the lower classes - associate physical maternal bonding and closeness with sexual intimacy and arousal. The cognitive benefit of physical bonding while nursing is that mothers who nurse typically stroke and talk to their babies, from birth into toddlerhood. The speech may be unintelligible cooing, playful high-pitched voices, soft melodic sounds, or actual conversation. But research shows that nursing communication begins earlier than bottle-fed communication between mother and child, ceases fussiness faster, and breast-fed babies show an earlier propensity for language and self-confidence Palmer, 1993, p. 133). Another significant developmental advantage of breastfeeding over formula is the increase in intelligence quotient. Special fats, hormones, and growth factors found only in actual human milk enhanced I.Q. in infants and toddlers in one test, while serious long-term effects of formula containing kidney-complicating high proteins and low-chloride were exposed.

Feminist and civil rights propaganda has destroyed the American child by killing the family; seduced by sex appeal and infatuated with recognition, they’ve convinced children in textbooks and adults through policy that mothering is housework, skill-less, sexist, and primitive. We champion the poor while mocking their resources, claiming that motherhood - not mothering - projects the mother’s academic and occupational success onto the child. Breast-milk, however, is not designed to be an industry, while the formula lobby is a multi-billion-dollar economy. Need more proof our misguided enlightenment affects cognition? Cow milk-based formulas are 10 -20 times higher in aluminum than breast-milk and legally don’t yet need to post aluminum content on warning labels. Aluminum causes brain and kidney damage, and kills brain cells. Iodine levels are also 10 times higher in formula than in breast milk, which negatively affects thyroid function, leading to weight gain, fatigue, and poor immune system, which all affect children’s ability to focus. The most common problems of formula are chloride deficiencies, which are known to cause mental retardation at many levels, and even autism ( Palmer, 1993, p. 313).

As Americans, we mean well. But we’re unequipped to tackle the realities of worlds not glorified or poignant on film. Our policies, programs, and whimsies are making our children some of the dumbest, most self-indulgent existentialists in the world. Our children are out-performed by the poor and hungry in developing nations, while we claim to be the authority on what’s best for the world. Our humanitarian knowledge is based on media-inflated emotion , which we quickly appease through guilt-absolving meaningless feel-good institutions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. Santa Barbara Country, First 5 of California. (2009). Advice for new parents: Your choices shape their chances. California Childcare Resource Network.

2. Messerve, J. (1999). Standardized Tests Under Fire: Guidelines Could Lead to Lawsuits. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from www.CNN.com. Website:http://www.cnn.com/US/9906/15/standardized.

3. Palmer, G. (1993). The Politics of Breastfeeding. Northampton: Pandora Press.

4. Kalat, J. W. (1992). Biological Psychology. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

5. McGuinness, D. (1997). Why Our Children Can’t Read, And What We Can Do About It. New York: Touchstone.

6. McGuinness, D. (2004). Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Teaches Us About How to Teach Reading. Cambridge: MIT Press.

7. Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.

8. François Trudeau , & and Roy J Shephard. (2008). Physical education, school physical activity, school sports, and academic performance. The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5 (10), doi: 10.1186/1479-5868-5-10.

Retrieved Sept 23, 2009, from www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2329661

9. Gail Woodward-Lopez MPH, RD, Joanne Ikeda MA, RD, & Patricia Crawford, DrPH, RD. (2000). Improving Children’s Academic Performance, Health and Quality of Life: A Top Policy Commitment in Response To Children's Obesity and Health Crisis in California. The Center for Weight and Health College of Natural Resources, University Of California, Berkeley, California Elected Women’s Association for Education and Research, 1 (1), 1331. Retrieved September 23, 2009, from
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