You don’t have to be mad to work here ….

June 20, 2012 by
Filed under: Social brain, The RSA 

As a panellist on Moral Maze tonight (Radio 4, 20.00) I will be discussing some of the implications of a recent LSE report on mental illness and treatment in the UK. I am looking forward to the programme, but with some trepidation, as I find myself ambivalent about both the report and the issue in general.

There is good evidence of high rates of untreated mental illness in the UK. The LSE report suggests six million adult sufferers from depression and anxiety conditions, plus 700,000 children with these conditions or other problem behaviours, but that only a quarter of each group is being treated. The links between mental illness and both physical impairment and low life satisfaction also seems strong. And the Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy (CBT) intervention promoted in the LSE report has three strong benefits: apparently impressive success rates, relatively low costs and (unlike drug therapies) few potential adverse side effects.

My interest in the science of brains and behaviour also inclines me to believe all of us need to be aware of our cognitive frailties and to recognise how easy it is to fall into ways of thinking and acting which are bad for us (and for those around us).

So, why the ambivalence? One concern is the flip side of the LSE’s evidence about prevalence. If getting on for one in five adults and one in ten children suffer from mental illness, what does this mean for the divide between normal and ill, and what does it tell us about wider society?

CBT is often combined with drug therapies and the view that a sustained feeling of sadness, anxiety, inadequacy or over-stimulation should be seen as a medical condition requiring treatment is one which has been pushed long, hard and very successfully by the pharmaceutical industry.  Yet, remarkably, the theory on which most drug treatments are based – that moderate mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – remains unproven. The drug industry uses the fact that some people get better after being given brain altering chemicals as evidence, but this is like saying a headache is caused by an absence of aspirin. Furthermore in relation to the major growth areas for diagnosis and treatment, there continues to be an absence of evidence for drug interventions being more successful than placebo with side-effects.

As the LSE report does not discuss drugs I don’t know its authors’ views about this kind of treatment. But its medical model suggests that if the chemicals did work, the authors would be reconciled to nearly one in five of us taking them.

On occasion, the LSE report seems closer to advocacy than objective research. A core argument is that mental illness is more curable than long term physical conditions. To an extent this depends on what we mean by curable and whether the aim of an intervention is to cure or to enable the patients to manage their illness, but the claims made in the report for CBT also rely on some hiden assumptions.

The summary (and press release) state:

‘…..the costs of psychological therapy are low and recovery rates are high. A half of all patients with anxiety conditions will recover, mostly permanently, after ten sessions of treatment on average. And a half of those with depression will recover, with a much diminished risk of relapse. Doctors normally measure the effectiveness of a treatment by the number of people who have to be treated in order to achieve one successful outcome. For depression and anxiety the Number Needed to Treat is under 3. In the government’s Improved Access to Psychological Therapy programme, outcomes are measured more carefully than in most of the NHS, and success rates are much higher than with very many physical conditions’

By definition chronic diseases cannot be cured so it hardly surprising that mental health interventions achieve a better rate or recovery. But when assessing the long term cure rate for CBT (about 30%) we have to include two factors which much less often apply to long term physical illness: over-diagnosis and the scope for recovery without treatment.

In relation to the former, while most chronic conditions are diagnosed through objective physiological or chemical tests, mental illness is based more on subjective reporting. Also, there are various work and benefit-related incentives for people to seek a medical diagnosis. Furthermore, while few people want an unnecessary physical treatment many people (whether or not they are ‘ill’) might welcome the structured advice offered by CBT.

In relation to recovery, one of the many continuing imponderables about mental illness – including quite acute problems – is the course of illness. Unlike chronic physical conditions, many people seem to get better naturally (or find an effective way of coping without treatment), and avoid future episodes.

If we were to assume that one in five diagnoses of mental illness was inaccurate and that, say, one in ten treated patients would have got better anyway (a conservative estimate), and if we assume that these two groups are likely to be over-represented in the 30% for whom CBT ‘works’, then the implied level of efficacy falls dramatically.

The slightly clumsy use of statistics in the report stirs my other concern. I am currently reading Robert and Edward Skidelsky’s book ‘How much is enough – the love of money and the case for the good life’ (I am chairing father and son here at the RSA tomorrow). As the book makes clear, millions of us work longer hours than we need to primarily to buy goods which we then consume in a compressed leisure time which is much less satisfying than it could be if we had a different outlook on life. Such behaviour could be portrayed as a form of collective madness (particularly when – notwithstanding the ‘lump of labour’ fallacy – a better distribution of work would be good for economy and society). How many of the six million adults and 700,000 children are ‘mentally ill’ directly or indirectly as a consequence of these dysfunctional social norms and patterns?

We don’t respond to obesity primarily by demanding mass liposuction but by focusing on the social and economic factors which seem most likely to be fostering over-eating. Although Richard Layard – the driving force behind the LSE report – has a distinguished record in promoting debate about the wider social conditions for happiness and wellbeing, the publicity attached to his report directs attention to an individual medical answer rather than a wider inquiry into why modern living makes so many people so sad and worried.

 

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18 Comments on You don’t have to be mad to work here ….

  1. Stuart on Wed, 20th Jun 2012 2:52 pm

    2. Hi Matthew

    One thing to consider when talking about people getting better anyway is that treatment is not always used to attain a cure. If I have a headache, I take paracetemol not as a cure but to lessen the symptoms and allow me to function “normally”.

  2. Andrew on Wed, 20th Jun 2012 3:46 pm

    3. I think the “how easy it is to fall into ways of thinking and acting which are bad for us” point is the key to the mental health debate. I am no expert on mental health, but as someone who has suffered from anxiety in the past – to a pretty serious degree – I would have no hesitation in saying I was ill. Furthermore once I was diagnosed and received treatment (regular counselling sessions, no drugs) I recovered quickly. I would suggest this is a cut-and-dried example of a genuine illness being diagnosed and treated.

    The big question, it seems to me, is where we draw the line between illness and ‘strange’ feelings/behaviours that do not necessarily feature in a ‘normal’ mind but are not sufficiently serious to cause the person to damage themselves in any meaningful way. In this model, someone who was suicidal would clearly fall into the former category, while (to borrow your example) someone who works long hours and is stressed (perhaps to the extent they often experience an interrupted night’s sleep) is not. Perhaps it would be easier to categorise the two groups into those who need active treatment (professional therapy, drugs) and those who would see major improvements through lifestyle changes (work fewer hours, turn off Blackberry at weekends). This separation might (and I appreciate it is a big might) allow researchers to examine the efficacy of drugs/counselling far better and perhaps avoid unnecessary recourse to drug prescription.

    The large proviso is that, as you rightly point out, large numbers of people with a genuine (sometimes life-threatening) mental illness go undiagnosed or do not seek out treatment (for a variety of reasons). Until mental illness is destigmatised we must tread very carefully with anything that might be seen to dismiss or belittle mental problems.

  3. Matthew Kalman Mezey on Wed, 20th Jun 2012 4:13 pm

    4. I remember Martin Seligman dropped into his most recent RSA lecture some incredibly concerning conclusions he’s drawn from the emerging findings about the long term effects of drug treatments. (Even though this wasn’t the topic of his lecture).

    I’m using ‘remember’ in a very loose sense, I just can’t remember what he said right now – I think referred to a couple of books on the topic too.

    I’m guessing they were more recent Peter Breggin-type books.

    Possibly: ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America’ by Robert Whitaker.

    I think it argues that the drugs are actually *causing* the epidemic.

    Here’s a review from ‘Booklist’ on Amazon:

    ‘When Whitaker (Mad in America, 2002) learned that between 1987 and 2007 the number of Americans disabled due to mental illness more than doubled despite a whopping $40 billion annual psychotropic drug tab, it gave him pause.

    Given their widespread use—greater than even that of cholesterol-lowering drugs—he had believed that psychopharmaceuticals were magic bullets, knocking mental illness out of the game, returning formerly disabled people to the ranks of productive citizens. But the deeper he probed into clinical studies in prestigious scientific journals, some dating back more than 50 years, the more he noticed a shocking anomaly.

    Psychiatric drugs have repeatedly been shown to worsen mental illness, to say nothing of the risks of liver damage, weight gain, elevated cholesterol and blood sugar, and reduced cognitive function they entail.

    The reality, he says, is that, because no one knows what causes mental illness, there’s no cure or palliation to be found in these pills. What with the conclusions Whitaker draws from his assembled literature and the accusations he levels at those who consciously deceive consumers eager for magical cures, his book will either blow the lid off a multibillion-dollar industry or cause him to be labeled a crackpot and, perhaps, medicated into obscurity. At the very least, it should prod those who take the drugs to question those who prescribe them. –Donna Chavez”

    Off at a complete tangent, I’m intrigued currently by the role that negligent, indulgent and narcissistic parenting may have in incubating mental illness in their offspring. This is based on one particular current experience of mine – and may be an utterly groundless hunch where no dots actually join up at all.

    Matthew Mezey
    (RSA Online Community Manager)

  4. Graham Rawlinson on Wed, 20th Jun 2012 4:37 pm

    5. There is no ‘number’ of depressed people in the same way as there is no ‘number’ of poor people, it depends where anyone chooses to draw the line, and when you are selling treatment you are likely to put the line to be more and more inclusive, it’s only natural. I remember reading how depression went up rapidly once peace came to Northern Island. When conditions were pretty bad people didn’t classify their state of mind as anything other than a reaction to the troubles, and this in one way was quite healthy.
    Of course you can always look at people way down one end and say,, surely these people are ‘poor’, depressed, obese, yes, true, but being able to count some things doesn’t mean you can know how to count them all. For humans John Adam Street is close to Charing Cross Station, but I will never know how far ‘far away’ will ever be defined. At one point on the line I would like to help people who are feeling depressed, but there is somewhere on that line where I think help is unhelpful.
    Trying to use reason to decide where that point of difference is does not ‘make sense’, there is no reason based point, it does not exist, it is like trying to hunt the Snark, with people believing if you say it three times it is true.

    If numbers are increasing despite increasing help then it does kind of suggest a change in game plan don’t you think?

  5. Jules Evans on Thu, 21st Jun 2012 9:32 am

    6. Dear Matthew

    With regard to your second point, you’re suggesting that perhaps we’re all slightly ‘ill’ in the sense that our society (and we ourselves) don’t intelligently pursue the good life in the way the Skidelskies think we should. Perhaps we’d all welcome a brief course on CBT to think about how best to pursue the good life….

    Well, quite. As I’ve written (ad infinitum, but most recently in my new book), CBT came from Greek philosophy, and uses Stoic and Socratic ideas and techniques originally designed for the pursuit of the ‘good life’ , for a more narrow goal of overcoming emotional disorders.

    As you know, Martin Seligman (inventor of Positive Psychology) then suggested we could all do with a bit of CBT to achieve ‘flourishing’. CBT for everyone, in other words. The risk of that – and I think Seligman’s resilience course for the US Army is an example of this – is that the teaching of flourishing becomes intrusive, over-rigid and indoctrinating, leaving no room for free thought or disagreement. If you disagree with the prescribed science of the good life, you are pathological (reminiscent of psychoanalysis).

    I think plenty of people, including me, are trying to find ways to fit CBT back into a more open, philosophical and ethical framework. Layard’s Action for Happiness, for example, is launching a network of ‘happiness clubs’, inspired by a Quaker reading group Layard attended for many years. I’m also developing a ‘course on the good life’ which undergraduates at Queen Mary will be able to take, for free.

    The challenge is to find a way to teach ‘the good life’ that balances wisdom with freedom. Both the Skidelskies and Richard Layard, in their different way, seem to feel they *know* what the good life is and its merely for the masses to follow their lead. How can we help people to learn about the good life, learn about the science and ethics of it, in an open-ended and pluralist way?

  6. Matthew Kalman Mezey on Thu, 21st Jun 2012 10:07 am

    7. Hi Jules,

    You wrote: “How can we help people to learn about the good life, learn about the science and ethics of it, in an open-ended and pluralist way?”

    Perhaps what you’re saying here is that the Skidelskies and Richard Layard haven’t yet made the leap to realising that there actually *are* plural rationalities?

    (Whether these are the plural rationalities described by Michael Thompson (Cultural Theory), Jonathan Haidt, Don Beck (Spiral Dynamics), Pat Dade (Values Modes), Bill Torbert (Action Logics), Ken Wilber, Michael Commons, Lawrence Kohlberg, Kurt Fischer, Patricia King/Karen Kitchener, Deanna Kuhn, Mark Williams et al.)

    My hypothesis du jour is that one can come to realise that that there are a number of rationalities (4, 5, 8 of them or however many you slice it into).

    This is the first ‘turning point’ that Jonathan Haidt tells us he experienced (in his great new book, The Righteous Mind).

    As the reality of these plural rationalities begins to truly hit home, one realises that they all play a valuable role.

    Haidt called this realisation his second turning point – and it was years after his first one, that turned out to be a merely conceptual acceptance of plural rationalities. (Though felt like a major awakening at the time).

    Haidt carried on as a fairly standard Obama-ite, Jewish, secular leftwinger for many year after his first turning point (if I remember his description correctly.)

    But once his experience of plural rationalities deepened enough to lead to his second turning point, he grew into something else – something more complex.

    I’m not sure he quite knows what, yet. But definitely more of a moderate, a post-partisan mentalitiy that doesn’t buy into the usual dichotomies of politics. Ken Wilber might call this an ‘integral politics’, the contours of which as yet seem little more than a mirage. (Despite the interest of Clinton, Gore, Mulgan, Richard Chartres, Charles Taylor, Jeb Bush et al).

    Anyway… I suspect that we all (as RSA Fellows, and like minds) need to grow in ourselves a mentality that integrates the plural rationalities that are running our world. I prefer ‘integral’ to ‘clumsy’ as a label! ;-)

    This (ie going through Jonathan Haidt’s two turning points) is the sine quan non for solving the conflicts around ‘wicked problems’, I would argue – for really reaching novel, integrative and enduring solutions.

    But maybe I’m starting to sound like I think I *know*, which is exactly what you criticised about the Skidelskies and Richard Layard! ;-)

    It’s all just a hypothesis, honest…

    I’m not seeking to pathologise people’s unreflexive identification with mono-rationalities. (Uh oh, come to think of it – maybe I kind of am!).

    Cheers,

    Matthew M

    PS Do drop by the RSA again for a chat :-)

    PPS My more in-depth thoughts about Jonathan Haidt’s book are here: http://bit.ly/haidtreview

    —

    Matthew Kalman Mezey
    Online Community Manager

    RSA
    Tel 020 7451 6825

    http://www.thersa.org
    A live dashboard webpage showing RSA online activity is here: http://bit.ly/onlineRSA
    twitter.com/MatthewMezey
    twitter.com/thersaorg
    rsafellowship.com (online community)

  7. Jules Evans on Thu, 21st Jun 2012 10:28 am

    8. Yes, there are a plurality of reasonable definitions of the good. However, they may overlap in interesting ways. And they may also agree on the means, if not the end – CBT tests out some of these means (how to steer the self ) without necessarily telling us where to steer the self.

    It also lacks the cultural and political aspect of the ancient philosophy from which it evolved, and thereby ends up at a narrowly atomistic and individualistic view of the self and of emotional problems. The Greeks (or at least Aristotle) understood that our values are also connected to our culture and economy, so to change the self you also need to engage with, and try to change, society.

    Perhaps we need a balance of the Skideldskies’ political reform project with CBT’s inner work – teaching us the means to become aware of and change our own beliefs and habits, while also showing the connection between our beliefs and habits and the values and structures of our society. Both inner work and outer work.

    Otherwise you end up with a Mandarin top-down reform project that has no sense of the psychology of the good life (ie the Skidelskies’ project), or a very inward-focused project that has no sense of the broader cultural and political picture (ie CBT).

  8. Livy on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 9:55 am

    9. Basically you’re all wrong.

    This should clear things up.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNU5FnxOxLY

    Happy Friday everyone.

    Livy

  9. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 12:25 pm

    10. Stanhope is expressing one truth, much more effectively, perhaps, than any of us expressed a set of different truths above. As none of us are right in every sense of the truth, we are, as you say Livy, all wrong. What is also wrong, at the level of a basic paradigm, is that there is a right! The choices we make, or at least, our brains are making for us, as individuals and as members of dispersed and diverse communities of mind, are occasional singularities, each one never more than a quantum capture of the uncertainty of the traffic in our heads. What concerns me about messages to young people, from the experts, celebrities, the media, is that there is some kind of self that they are supposed to be finding, an understandable search in adolescence which should then develop into a deeper sense of belonging in a healthy community, but now seems to be pushed into a self which continues through middle age. It feels like the medical profession is only just moving out of a period from the 60′s which was a social adolescence from which we have taken a long time to grow up. The true progress will in in solutions within the community, not within individuals minds. For very few people are drugs truly needed or even helpful in the long term.

  10. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 12:27 pm

    11. Perhaps I could add that the RSA in support of Whole Person Recovery aligns itself with Whole Community Recovery, that is, it is not just that the Person needs the Community to help Recovery, it is the Community needs each of us as Persons to help Recovery of our Communities.

  11. Sam Earle on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 2:24 pm

    12. I think that the author of the report was trying to make the point that, alongside societal impacts on mental health/well-being in general, depression is part of the human condition – the struggle against meaninglessness. I’m inclined to agree: it is certainly how I experienced my own chronic depression. And what about people like Virginia Woolf?
    As for drugs – well, perhaps their relative efficacy is open to debate – but frankly, if I thought depression was coming on again, I would make sure I got necessary medication ASAP. The risk involved in not doing so may be absolute. CBT may work – but I suspect I would feel it far too intrusive, and more than I felt equal too.
    I imagine that everyone’s experience of mental illness is different, and to different degrees. Clearly no one approach, prescription or policy is sufficient to deal with all possibilities. I think the best thing is to encourage support and broader public understanding.

  12. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 2:47 pm

    13. For a long time I have thought that such incidences of chronic depression may have similarities to allergic reactions which can build up over time, for some people even to minor things. So it is a fault in the brain programming linked to brain chemistry and for that certainly taking something to kick it into other reaction modes is a good idea. How good it is long term of course is not easy to say.

    If treatment isn’t removing/reducing future ‘allergic reactions’ then the effectiveness of the drugs may wear off and things get more difficult. So it makes sense to try to identify if there is a reactive element or if it is progressive based on a personal difficulty in coping with normal stuff or simply, as Stanhope suggest, a healthy reaction to being in a bad place!

  13. Livy on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 3:27 pm

    14. All sarcasm aside, I’m genuinely fascinated by what you all say, and I wish I could think about this a bit more and comment properly but I’m shooting off in five seconds so have to make this quick.

    (Incidentally – Graham, I know there’s a 90% chance you already caught this but just in case, my previous ‘Basically you’re all wrong.’ line was meant in jest)

    I really don’t mean to sound flippant about this as there are clearly people in bad situations living lives of inner torment. For example, the twitchy mumbling fella who gets on my bus every day and tries to pay the driver with a ham sandwich, and then talks to strangers about string theory or supersymmetry. It’s possible he isn’t really mentally ill. He’s probably a fairly mediocre intellect. But he’s also a hundred times more savvy than all of us on that bus put together. And that’s the terrifying thing about the human race. Most of us still behave like monkeys with a language while guys like Beethoven, Nietzsche or John Nash, who contribute the most to the development of our species and the cannon of human knowledge, had to live unpleasant lives in exchange for being able to operate on a completely different level. And be known as nutcases.

    With respect to the genuinely afflicted at the genetic level, and not some pashmina wearing Chelsea girl who throws a hissy fit once she realises she doesn’t look like the front cover of Grazia magazine, we could be dealing with the next phase of human evolution. Or something….

    Anyway. That’s why the whole raising awareness of mental illness thing is so utterly cringeworthy to hear. The explicit assumption is often that we can ‘de-stigmatise’ it, but then we’re making it an issue of equality. And it’s not. There’s nothing equal about it. We can’t treat this like gender or race, even if we’re encouraged by the incredible progress made on those grounds in a relatively short space of time.

    Gender and race is, “Even though I look different to you on the outside, I’m actually the same as you on the inside.”. Mental illness is, “Even though I look the same as you on the outside, I’m actually different to you on the inside.”

    “….and therefore I deserve to be treated differently because of it.”

    Regardless of whether it’s true, most people don’t want to hear it. The furthest they’ll go is to buy a ticket to see Doug Stanhope perform, because they can’t actually tolerate people like Doug Stanhope in their lives.

    If they could, half the bus wouldn’t clear out as soon as the string theory fella jumps on.

    Have a good weekend ma’luvlies

    Livy

  14. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 3:59 pm

    15. Not to worry Livy, my rule is assume positive intent and your points are well made and worth exploring. Your ham sandwich guy is always professionally puzzling. It is so much easier to think of people as intelligent or not intelligent, sane or not sane, and some people wander between those worlds in ways which cannot be resolved in those old paradigms. I remember in my early training meeting a teenage girl who had a condition where she could repeat back anything you said, including the accent with all its nuances, and she often said other things which sounded totally ‘clever’. Was she really intelligent? I think the question cannot be answered. She couldn’t look after herself in any way, so she was treated as someone with severe mental handicap/low intelligence. Add in cases like Nadia the autistic girl who could draw wonderful pictures aged 6, and we are still far from true insight.
    I also think the equality issue is fudged, so not so different to the ill or not, intelligent or not, I am not sure anyone can know what it might be to fulfill one’s potential, sounds a good strapline but does it mean anything really?

  15. Matthew Mezey on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 4:18 pm

    16. Hi Livy,

    You write:

    “Gender and race is, ‘Even though I look different to you on the outside, I’m actually the same as you on the inside.’ ”

    I find it intriguing that one RSA speaker after another after another (from amongst the scientists/researchers) tells us that biology-averse ‘blank slate’-style views are being proved more and more wrong, every year.

    Jonathan Haidt says that “the blank slate is wrong and every decade we find out 20 new ways that it was wrong”.

    But the centre of gravity of thinking (especially amongst non-scientists?) still seems to remain around the blank slate/plasticity/flexibility view – that seems much more optimistic, as it views humans as much more malleable, responding to changes we can make in society.

    I’m still trying to work out what I think about this, but can’t help thinking that Simon Baron-Cohen (another RSA speaker) may be right when he says that the view that gender is all environment and no biology was an important position politically in the 60s, in order to change society – but now it’s time to distinguish politics from science, and “just look at the evidence”.

    Matthew Mezey

  16. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 4:35 pm

    17. Hi Matthew, your comments made me think of Roger Bannister, a figure from earlier times. He did the 4 minute mile, which can be broken by so many athletes that it is not much of a target now. Why? Not because of genetics, or even diet. Almost everyone lives way below ‘their potential’ so far that the expression hardly has meaning. I had the potential to learn any language in the world, even when I was 5, I only learned one language well, two others not so bad and now I am trying a 4th. I am so far below my potential it is scary.
    But it is also true, as you suggest, that people are born with something which looks like different potential. There is, in my view, so little that is meaningful in the expression potential that it should not be used by scientists, not as it currently is used, and certainly not by politicians, whose general level of scientific thinking as applied is way below their potential to use it well, or maybe they are the ones who never had much? Sorry slipped in too easily that. I just remember one Tory education minister saying he wanted more people to be above average in ability!

  17. Matthew Mezey on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 4:53 pm

    18. Hi Graham,

    Thinking of making more people ‘above average’…, that was precisely the criticism made by the rightwing US libertarian heavyweight Charles Murray against ‘No Child Left Behind’.

    First thing I find on Google:

    Murray: “Don’t get me started on No Child Left Behind–the first time in history, I believe, that a government passed a law saying that all the children must be above average. I mean that literally.

    The standards of “proficient” that all children are to meet by 2014 require test scores on math and reading that only those in the top thirty-odd percentiles meet. All children in 2014 are to be where the 70th percentile was when the law was passed. It’s an idiotic goal that refuses to accept that many children just aren’t smart enough to become proficient in reading and math.

    NCLB has demoralized teachers who want to teach, not teach to a test. It has focused resources on those who are on the cusp of passing the dreaded test that is used to assess “Adequate Yearly Progress,” ignoring those who don’t have a prayer of passing and those who would pass it anyway. It has induced school systems to engage in all sorts of chicanery to try to meet the law’s requirements.”

    I’d love to see a debate between Murray and Guy Claxton, a strong proponent of the ‘expandability’ of intelligence:

    http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6059604

  18. Graham Rawlinson on Fri, 22nd Jun 2012 8:19 pm

    19. A long time ago in one of the ‘progressive’ education authorities in the South we had a support programme for children who were failing in learning to read. The system was simple, a maximum one page application from teachers for children to get half an hour a day one to one assistance on a teacher generated programme for the individual child. Very very few children failed to make less than ‘average’ progress, so in six months almost all made more than 6 months progress in reading (don’t forget these were children who had made no progress before). Some children made progress above 4 years in Reading Age in 6 months! I,.e they went from bottom to at least average. The children who failed to make average progress (maybe 2 % of those who were at the bottom?) really had language levels which needed remediation and would then be on major support programmes. The system was stopped because central government wanted a ‘fair’ allocation of resources based on ‘free school meals’, I kid you not.

    At the other end I have offered to support a group of A level students with an objective of everyone getting A grade, yes, everyone. No takers yet. For most subjects there is no reason why everyone on a course can’t get A grades. I am sure Guy Claxton could prove it to be true.

    The paradigms we have for education, health, employment, crime, are all too far from any scientific foundation to allow us to make sensible progress in achieving reasonable aims. The paradigms are designed to ensure we have failure, that is how people’s jobs are justified. A healthy community which is self supporting in its education, policing and health programmes hardly needs anything else. Would a healthy community say, let’s bring back O levels? I doubt it. How in the Big Society Agenda does return to O levels fit? It does not, nor police commissioners, nor, as it stands, NICE. NICE should be informative not dictatorial.

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