MGTutoring.com. A Rational Perspective on Education.

August 9, 2011

Fighting Autism, ADD/ADHD & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Filed under: Biology,Child Development,Education,Exercise, Health & Nutrition,Parenting,Psychology,Science — Administrator @ 2:46 pm

The book The Myth of Autism: How a Misunderstood Epidemic Is Destroying Our Children by Dr. Michael Goldberg sounds good. I have not read it and have not had it recommended to me, but it sounds like it is on the right track and full of good information. To find out more about him, read Dr. Goldberg’s bio on Facebook, watch the 8-minute video of his on YouTube, and read the interview of Dr. Goldberg on the Website The Autism Connection!.

On Amazon, the book is described as follows:

Experts agree that America is in the midst of a disturbing epidemic of what has thus far been diagnosed as autism. In just thirty years autism diagnoses have risen from 1 in 5,000 children to 1 in 110, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But in the history of our society there has never been an “epidemic” of any developmental or genetic disorder—it is scientifically impossible. So what is this mysterious affliction known as “autism,” and how can we stop it? Dr. Goldberg and his colleagues illustrate why autism cannot be genetic, but is a symptom of a treatable neurological disease that attacks the brain’s immune system. Readers will come to understand:

• Autism is not psychological or developmental, but a medical disease.
• Autism is caused by a dysfunction in the neuro-immune system and often by secondary neurotropic viruses that impact the neuro-immune system and brain.
• Illnesses such as autism, ADD/ADHD, and chronic fatigue syndrome all have different “labels” but are actually variations on the same thing: neuro-immune dysfunction syndromes (NIDS)

(more…)

July 25, 2011

A Student Speaks

Filed under: Education,Mathematics,MGTutoring,Philosophy — Administrator @ 9:13 am

” ‘Use logic in math’ is my motto.”  — Sophia S (October 31, 2010)

That, and persistent, hard work, are why she gets mostly As. I love that quote.

July 15, 2011

Food For Kids: Meals Around the World

Filed under: Biology,Child Development,Culture,Education,Exercise, Health & Nutrition,Parenting — Administrator @ 9:10 am

In Colorado daycare workers required to wear burqas, Monica Hughes, PhD, writes:

OK, I exaggerate slightly for the purpose of generating a few hits. But seriously, I can’t really summarize it better than the source itself.

…

But what really gets me worked up is food issues. There are simply few things more fundamental than the right to decide what goes into your body: whether it’s a pill or food or a doctor’s surgical implement.

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No one should need a doctor’s note to feed their kid in a healthy way — in a way that humans have done since the dawn of time. Period. The American Academy of Pediatrics lost all credibility when they said babies should get lowfat milk and approved statin drugs for 8 year olds. But then they were beyond redemption when they sanctioned female genital mutilation. I should require a pediatrician’s note to feed my kid healthily? If your pediatrician listens to the AAP then their advice is an impediment to health, not the other way around.

It seems that increasingly these days, only in America or the UK can you get away with proposing this type of garbage that regulates common sense out of existence. This is why I’m increasingly embarrassed to even call myself an American. This WAS the greatest country in the world. We have long ago lost that status and it is questionable whether we will ever regain it.

…

And we wonder why kids can’t focus in school. Perhaps this, this, and this lend a clue: it’s the food culture and the culture in general in this country that are the problems. Coupled with idiots in positions of government who have zero scientific background doling out farm subsidies that make seed oils, refined grains, and refined sugars cheap, and who listen to CSPI, and then craft rules about what your kids should be eating. No conflict of interest there: none at all. Move right along, nothing to see here.

Be sure to look at the links Mrs. Hughes has included in her post showing examples of food lunches around the world! Wow! America has sunk to the fetid bottom!

Here are some blog posts that will show you, again, how wrong is the “medical advice” regarding nutrition that you hear now-a-day:  “Nuts!” to the Nutty Diabetes “Expert”,  Stand Up And Say “Nuts!”,  Bad Science Receives Another Spanking. There are plenty more out there; those three I just took the time to read recently.

Oh, and Tom Naughton wrote an interesting post on vegetarianism:  Most Vegetarians Become Ex-Vegetarians?

July 8, 2011

Diet, Depression, Memory, and Mental Health

Filed under: Biology,Child Development,Education,Exercise, Health & Nutrition,Parenting,Psychology — Administrator @ 10:18 am

Episode 13 of Chris Kresser‘s podcast is a good interview of Dr. Emily Deans.

Mr. Kresser said:

Dr. Emily Deans’ Evolutionary Psychiatry blog has quickly become one of my favorites over the past year. It’s rare to find a psychiatrist that acknowledges the role of nutrition in mental and behavioral health at all, much less one that approaches these topics from an evolutionary perspective.

This week Dr. Deans joins us on the podcast to discuss the role of Paleo nutrition in mental health. Topics covered include:

  • The link between diet and Alzheimer’s
  • Can nutritional changes effect depression?
  • Does gastric bypass surgery lead to mental health issues?
  • Can gluten intolerance induce mental disorders?
  • What role does the “modern lifestyle” play in the increasing prevalence of mental health problems?
  • How does an individual’s mental state influence his/her biology?
  • Does iron deficiency anemia contribute to mental health problems?

Copyright © 2011 The Healthy Skeptic

Recommended interview!! There is a lot to learn from it!! A lot that will help you and your children have better neurologic and mental health.

July 7, 2011

Cheating on Standardized Tests in Public Schools

Filed under: Culture,Education — Administrator @ 10:58 am

In “America’s biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta” (Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Jul 5, 2011), Patrik Jonsson writes:

Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what’s likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history.

This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country. The allegations point an ongoing problem for US education, which has developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized tests.

The report on the Atlanta Public Schools, released Tuesday, indicates a “widespread” conspiracy by teachers, principals and administrators to fix answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), punish whistle-blowers, and hide improprieties.
…
The Atlanta cheating scandal also offers the first most comprehensive view yet into a growing number of teacher-cheating allegations across the US, reports of which reached a rate of two to three a week in June, says Robert Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which advocates against high-stakes testing.
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“I think the broadest issue in the [Atlanta scandal] raises is why many school districts and states continue to have high-stakes testing without rigorous auditing or security procedures,” says Brian Jacob, director of the Center on Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan. “In some sense, this is one of the least worrisome problems in public education, because it’s fairly easy to fix. The more difficult and troubling behavior would be teaching to the test, which we think of as a lesser form of test manipulation, but which is much harder to detect, and could warp the education process in ways that we wouldn’t like.”

© The Christian Science Monitor

Copyright © 2011 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Update (7-11-11, 11:45 AM): In  “2009 Report Identified Dozens of Pa. Schools for Possible Cheating” (Education Week, 7-11-11), Benjamin Herold and Dale Mezzacappa say:

Dozens of schools across [Philadelphia and Pennsylvania] were flagged in a study of 2009 state standardized test scores that sought to use statistical analysis to ferret out possible examples of cheating on the PSSA exam.

The analysis, prepared for the Pennsylvania Department of Education in July 2009, highlights roughly 60 schools with suspicious results due to multiple statistical irregularities, including 22 Philadelphia district schools and seven Philadelphia charters.

Among the Philadelphia district schools referenced in the report is Roosevelt Middle School, which has been at the center of a controversy this year involving alleged cheating on the PSSA. In 2009, the analysis reveals, results of both the reading and math PSSA exams taken by Roosevelt’s 7th and 8th graders showed a highly unlikely number of wrong answers that were erased and changed to the correct answer. The results also showed highly improbable increases over the previous year in the percentage of students who scored proficient or advanced.

…

Porter stressed that that statistical analysis alone, without witnesses or confessions, cannot definitively prove that there was cheating. But he added that the report “describes a reasonable approach to identifying schools where there may have been cheating.”

Nevertheless, it appears that the state never followed up with any further investigations.

© 2011 Editorial Projects in Education

July 3, 2011

Mental Math

Filed under: Education,Mathematics — Administrator @ 8:28 am

On YouTube, Total Breeze has some good videos on mental math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square rooting. Worth watching.

June 25, 2011

Dealing With Autism

Filed under: Biology,Child Development,Education,Parenting,Psychology — Administrator @ 10:30 am

Brandi Milloy has an interesting report, on YouTube and on PJTV, on how ABA (ABA on Wikipedia) and the iPad helped an autistic child, Gage Gilbert.

June 24, 2011

Diet For Health & Learning: A Simple View

Filed under: Biology,Child Development,Education,Exercise, Health & Nutrition,Parenting,Science — Administrator @ 3:17 pm

Paleo Based Diet/Lifestyle Houston, Tx has a nice, simple, basic presentation of paleo. Check it out. Good for your body, good for your brain.

You might also want to check out their post Starving Cancer — and, in that vein, check out the Primal Parent‘s blog post Intermittent Fasting — Is It Safe For Children?. An excerpt:

Intermittent fasting is almost like a silver bullet against disease and aging. Without any alteration to the types of foods one eats, intermittent fasting has the power to increase longevity and quality of life by reducing brain insulin signaling, lowering triglycerides, fighting cancer cell rejuvenation, stimulating the production of growth hormone, and kick starting cell repair and waste elimination. (Note that calorie restriction produces many of the same affects but is widely shunned. Read more about this in my article about the science behind calorie restriction.)

Despite its many benefits, however, people often dismiss it, thinking they can’t handle the gnawing hunger. Without a doubt, fasting can be challenging for people eating an average modern diet, but it’s actually pretty easy once you’re already benefiting from the metabolic advantage of a reduced carb diet. When our bodies are efficient fat burners we don’t experience the “blood sugar blues” and barely notice the temporary caloric deprivation at all.

Intermittent fasting actually gives me an energy boost. Skipping a meal makes me sharper and more alert. It seems counter-intuitive but ghrelin, the hormone that makes us feel hungry, “enhances learning and memory” while at the same time makes us ready for action. J. Stanton reveals the brighter side of ghrelin in this short article.

As parents, we inevitably wonder if we could offer the amazing benefits of intermittent fasting to our children without harming them in the process. The answer is, yes, actually, we can.

© 2011 The Primal Parent. All Rights Reserved.

June 23, 2011

Memory: Theory and Practice

Filed under: Education,Psychology,Recommended Books — Administrator @ 4:56 pm

I have heard that Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer is a good book. Here are some reviews from Amazon:

Moonwalking with Einstein follows Joshua Foer’s compelling journey as a participant in the U.S. Memory Championship. As a science journalist covering the competition, Foer became captivated by the secrets of the competitors, like how the current world memory champion, Ben Pridmore, could memorize the exact order of 1,528 digits in an hour. He met with individuals whose memories are truly unique—from one man whose memory only extends back to his most recent thought, to another who can memorize complex mathematical formulas without knowing any math. Brains remember visual imagery but have a harder time with other information, like lists, and so with the help of experts, Foer learned how to transform the kinds of memories he forgot into the kind his brain remembered naturally. The techniques he mastered made it easier to remember information, and Foer’s story demonstrates that the tricks of the masters are accessible to anyone.
–Miriam Landis

This review is from: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Hardcover)
After reading the first chapter of this book online, I went out and picked up a copy and read it. I was under the impression from reading that first chapter that this book would be about Joshua’s year of training his memory. There is a large gap between knowing about a memory technique and how to actually use that technique. I was interested in reading about the author’s efforts, problems, and his solutions to those problems. Unfortunately for me, only a small part of this book actually was about the author’s actual training. He does cover a good deal of academic ground on memory. If you have a undergarduate degree in psychology, most of this material will be familiar. The author is correct when he said that this book isn’t a self-help book, but there are a few pearls within its cover. My expectations for this book resulted in my being disappointed with it. That’s my problem. I do consider the book to be a good read and would recommend it to friends and associates.
–Tony R. Vaughan

© 1996-2011, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

June 20, 2011

Advice For Writing — and Math. And All Other Subjects.

Filed under: Education,Language,Logic,Philosophy,SAT, ACT, ETC. — Administrator @ 12:39 pm

In “Can You Drop It on Your Foot?” (National Association of Scholars, June 02, 2011), John Maguire says:

Student papers are often unreadable not only because their grammar is bad, and sentences incomplete, but also because they are way, way too abstract. Abstractions really trap students. Assigned to write about some idea, students get caught in the sphere of abstract words and stay there. Abstract words multiply on the page in unpleasant clusters. If you ask freshmen to write about, say, The relationship between wealth and productivity in a market society, watch out. Few will notice that the four abstract terms relationship, wealth, productivity and market society need definition or examples. They will just move those abstract terms around like checkers on a board, repeating them, and hoping through repetition that something will be said. The resulting paper will be mush.
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An alternate approach might be to start the course with physical objects, training students to write with objects, and to understand that every abstract idea summarizes a set of physical facts. I do in fact take that approach. “If you are writing about markets, recognize that market is an abstract idea, and find a bunch of objects that relate to it,” I say. “Give me concrete nouns. Show me a wooden roadside stand with corn and green peppers on it, if you want. Show me a supermarket displaying six kinds of oranges under halogen lights. Show me a stock exchange floor where bids are shouted and answered.”
…
Students led into writing this way at the start of a course…find it strange at first, but…they will learn after six or eight weeks of practice that it does work; about that time they start to smile because their thinking on paper is clearer, they can see what they are talking about, and their writing has become vivid.

© 2011 National Association of Scholars. All rights reserved.

All subjects, from math to physics to chemistry to history to philosophy, should be taught in the same way. Concepts are classifications of real, individual things, and if a student does not know what real things the concepts refer to, he does not know what he is thinking, writing, or talking about; the students mind is then being destroyed and divorced from reality. Not healthy!! Don’t do it, please! In education, as in all else, please be objective: follow a human method (logic) in knowing the facts.

Mr. Maguire’s advice is good advice for the SAT and ACT, too.

 

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