ADHD minds are expert minds!
Over the weekend I watched a TEDx talk by a lady name Rebecca Hession, about children with ADHD, how they think, learn, and how they are being FAILED by the education system.
What’s interesting is that Rebecca Hession is American. I live now in Australia, and I’m from the UK. And all these education systems are failing our children in the same way.
Rebecca Hession, in her speech, talks about the education assembly line. Her explanation of this actually horrified me. Because she’s right. Education IS a one size fits all operation. Where every child gets passed through each part of the assembly line and at the end either gets the stamp of approval OR gets thrown out as a reject.
Statistics
When it comes to kids with ADHD, 35% drop out before they even reach the end. And according to statistics by Russell Berkeley, 21% skip school repeatedly, 30% fail subjects or have to repeat a year, and 35% will get suspended.
This is horrifying. Especially because children with ADHD can be truly brilliant, when allowed to flourish.
A child with ADHD will have 2 main states of focus. Hypo-focus and hyper-focus. We tend to hear often about when children with ADHD hypo-focus, where they have so much information going round in their minds they struggle to focus on one particular thing. This makes them easily distracted and forgetful. And of course, this makes education very difficult for them.
When a child with ADHD hyper-focuses they will get almost transfixed on one particular thing. They will explore this one thing so deeply they could potentially become an expert. This hyper-focus means that they will be unable to tear themselves away from something.
The problem is, that on the education assembly line, they have to move along the conveyor belt with their peers and so when this occasional thing comes along that they do have the potential to excel in. This one occasional thing they are able to hyper-focus on. They are dragged away from it and on to something else that they simply can’t pay attention to.
It is estimated that over 10% of children suffer with ADHD. And yet our education system is ignoring their needs completely. 1 in 10 children are being completely failed by the education assembly line. This horrifies me.
Statistics show that 86% of people in prison have ADHD. Well, it’s no wonder when they are so frequently rejected from education and left feeling like a failure.
But people with ADHD are not failure’s, they’re not wrong, they are – when allowed to be – brilliant.
Richard Branson has ADHD. Jamie Oliver has ADHD, Michael Phelps has ADHD and Jim Carrey has ADHD. So do lots of other phenomenally successful people. But, what these great achievers demonstrate, is that when an ADHD mind is allowed to hyper-focus, the results can be truly remarkable.
We must stop trying to tear them away from the things that do hold their attention. We must allow them to hyper-focus (even if it does send us a little crazy).
But, most importantly of all, it’s time our education system caught up to the needs of today’s children.
An assembly line education is no longer acceptable. And it is failing our children. If a child has ADHD their education needs to be built to reflect this, so that they can excel, graduate and achieve future success. Not end up in prison, or end up with a drug or alcohol problem (which they are currently 300% more likely to have).
The education system expects our children to change. It expects our children to adapt to suit the requirements of it’s assembly line.
What if we’d changed Richard Branson. Or Jamie Oliver. Or any other successful ADHD mind. They are where they are because they’ve been allowed to hyper-focus, allowed to push and excel at one thing.
We won’t change the education system over night, but if we all fight hard enough we can make a difference.