One of multiple exercises in a 1940s test of 'self-regulation' involved standing still. Children in 2001 don't obediently stand still as well. Separately, the article notes (without referencing source) that "good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ".
The custom headline going from 'standing' to 'school success' is tenuous extrapolation that, if the reporter had put it directly in their article, would not have survived editing and fact-checking.
Bad headlines waste readers' time and send discussion off in tangential directions based on skewed understandings.
OTOH, I love the article -- good info on how self-management, in individual children (or even groups) might be best encouraged, and how toys/things might be just the wrong thing. (What would that mean for the OLPC?)
That you thought the statement "good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ" was the most important part of the article is a valid opinion I can respect. That you found the standing-still experiments an interesting way to measure child self-regulation is also a valid opinion I respect.
It is the pairing of the two opinions into the unsupported statement "Standing Still Predicts School Success Better Than IQ", and then the promotion of that dubious statement to the key position of headline, that I find objectionable.
Alternate approaches I wouldn't have objected to:
* contribute article with original headline, but post a first comment with "I found it interesting that the article suggests ability to stand still for longer may predict executive function, and thus school success, better than IQ."
* contribute article with original headline plus appended pot-stirring question: "Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills (Does standing-still predict success better than IQ?)
Or, if HN were to someday allow a comment-with-submission or subhead-with-submission, that would be a great place for highlighting an opinionated takeaway from deep in the article, even though the article's main thrust is something else.
When the headlines begin presenting ideas that are too large a subset or superset of the actual contents of the article, it becomes difficult to judge what articles one actually want to reads.
One of the tests they do in diagnosis and progress assessment is a basic "standing still" test, performed on a platform with computer-monitored sensors, and several of the exercises involve simply standing as still as possible for a few minutes.
They find that over the 12-24 months the candidate participates in the program, as their ability to stand still increases, the extent to which they suffer from these conditions diminishes.
As I'm sure many here would attest, people with ADHD, AS and Dyslexia often have above-average IQ scores, but struggle with school performance or endeavors that require similar strengths, like conventional office jobs.
After a few months I visited him again, and he said, again in everyone's presence, that I was "much better." I was actually not yet mature enough to care or comprehend what it was all about, but I am thankful for having had those lessons.
I also daresay that the benefits of taking such lessons would have comparable or perhaps superior effects to these lab-controlled exercises, at least when there is still uncertainty.
However, as per the article, the goal, I believe, is self regulation, so at least in my case, the neural changes probably were not focused in the cerebellum.
Most of the rest seemed to consist of saying that lack of obedience in modern children indicates something is wrong with them. And finding things to blame this on, like toys.
I don't think the issue was self-discipline because the example of how they studied it was about whether the children would stand still when someone else told them to.
"Essentially, because children's play is so focused on lessons and leagues, and because kids' toys increasingly inhibit imaginative play, kids aren't getting a chance to practice policing themselves. When they have that opportunity, says Berk, the results are clear: Self-regulation improves."
in my case, my james bondian self-discipline, my exceptional always-in-flow-like concentration (nevermind when i'm actually in flow,) and my einsteinian think-in-nature cognition did nothing for school because i didn't care for it to begin with
does standing still indicate self-discipline? maybe, if the particular subject cares enough about the situation they're in. who's to say that test in the 1940's didn't result that way because of the children's obedience, making the test a poor determinant of self-discipline?
if a child is more likely to obey, they're more likely to be labeled "good executive functioning" by testers regardless of their relative self-discipline, and more likely to do good in school by that metric. hence, obedience may have just as much or more to do with school performance than actual self-discipline
i bet many children today don't even know the concept of "obedience." they obey, but it doesn't have a cultural significance for them. which would consequently mean the study done recently is freer of the effects of obedience and therefore more likely (but by how much?) to be measuring self-discipline by its lonesome. but in any case, the proposition that the difference is due to toys or playstyle doesn't seem likely to me. not as likely as obedience does :)
another sad thing in all this is that ADD often corresponds to particular personality types. i'm introverted and my mind always speeds along like it's on crack. if i was extroverted, that energy would force external motion and i would basically be some sort of technical spongebob. i'm guessing the MBTI types most often marked with ADD are ENFP and ENTP (which happens to be the prototypical entrepreneur)
why is that a problem? because personality types don't change. they're what people are. well, with chemicals they can change temporarily, which is the sad thing
I strongly disagree with your assessment of the rest of the article, it seems like you're trying hard to fit it in to a particular world view. Concentration is not obedience, its vastly more important, and I don't think the lack of concentration shown was simply as a result of the childrens new aversion to obedience (if such a thing exists).
It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning says, the results were very different.
"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."
I believe that children must mix "raw" play where they can imagine their surroundings. The good old empty box comes to mind... it can be a race car, a castle, a rocket ship and so on and so forth.
On the other hand I think the commentary undervalues the importance of regulated play. The learning of rules will come in handy when one enters school and the work world where there are many formal rules to follow.
The hacker community has an advantage here, since we are so used to using our minds. Games like nethack are entirely dependent upon the user being logical and having a good imagination.
Especially as they talk about young children, any faults lie with their parents--the same generations who think they were tougher when they were kids, are creating problems by never saying no to their own offspring. And, schools don't ever want to keep students back, so the curriculum is designed so that anybody who shows up to class can pass. Required daily homework and classwork that might represent 50% of one's grade, instead of a couple of tests that define 80% of one's grade, teaches kids to focus on submitting paperwork instead of actually putting in thought nor allowing them to figure out how to do the learning they might need to do.
This process works to ignore incompetency in basic abilities year after year in students, as long as they have good grades, the fact which allows educators to say that college opportunities their kids have available to them are also good, and therefore, that they did their job. Not to mention that schooling our students one month longer, and for 2 years longer, than other countries do, in the same "conditions" described, furthers work towards decreasing independent thought and leaves many kids unprepared for real life.
Sometimes I wonder if that when people think our education system does our kids justice because our students are better at sports (that are mostly only played in the US), have more options of after-school activities, and have the chance (based on parent income) to utilize many different types of expensive private educational tools, tutors, "theories", consultants, certifications, and textbooks, if they're not missing that...
...the huge factor that explains why our students end up being more entrepreneurial or have the potential to get paid a lot of money when they finally do grow up, is that the US is incredibly wealthy--and at the same time cannot keep track of money any better than its average citizen--than that we're good at educating our students remotely close to what we should be given the money the government budgets for education.
I don't think we would hinder our country's strength in either entrepreneurship or Football, Baseball, Lacrosse, and Softball programs if we were to increase our understanding of math and science in this country; nor would it hurt to have a law that would require mandatory monthly teacher to parent education on what is expected of their student and ways the parent can help the student actually succeed at learning the material rather than submitting enough homework assignments to pass. Of course, having more educated people instead of "consumers" could affect our economy "negatively" as well as positively, but there are already many ways our economy is being pulled in both directions, so I don't think that teaching arithmetic and the scientific method to everyone would be a crazy thing to do.
