OK, answer this without consulting Google: Explain the principle of operation of the galvanometer.

That is part of the standard syllabus for our public exams in Physics for 12th standard students. I saw that question in a newspaper supplement, which provides sample question papers to prepare students for the all-important public exams.

I definitely should have studied this. In fact, I did well in the exam too. Except that I remember absolutely nothing. I could almost swear I had never heard of galvanometer, whatever it is, until I came across it in the sample question paper today. I am supposed to have an Electrical Engineering degree too, which makes it, well, more interesting.

Let's agree that the purpose of education is teaching students how to learn, rather than fill their heads with facts and figures. Especially in the post-Google era, filling the head with such facts and figures does one absolutely no good.

Let's also agree that the best way to learn how to learn is by actually learning something concrete. So that explains trying to teach galvanometer, which is a pretty concrete device. Except that it is impossible to explain a galvanometer (or object oriented programming or thermodynamics) in a high school setting well without really good faculty that understands these subjects, and such faculty is exceptionally rare. Galvanometer, which sounds like a fun device that I have to really learn about some day ,  becomes another water torture routine for kids as they face those dreaded exams. It would be a different matter if they were actually taught how to build such a device, use it to measure something, and so on. And it would help if they are not asked such dumb questions in exams, because then teachers would "teach to the test", and no one will actually focus on learning how to build or use that device.

We are better off teaching kids bicycle repair, because that is a subject that can be taught well, and it also teaches kids how to learn. At least a question like "Explain how you would repair a bicycle" in an exam would be more obviously idiotic than a question like "Explain how a galvanometer works", so at least it won't get asked.

The point is not that everyone needs to know bicycle repair, but that they won't remember anything about the galvanometer the way it is currently taught, while they will remember repairing a bicycle. And for those theoretically minded, bicycle repair can naturally lead to gear ratios and such. Of course the fastest way to kill any interest for kids in bicycles is to ask about gear ratios in exams.

Coming to the galvanometer, kids memorize something like (thanks Wikipedia!)

A galvanometer is an instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. It is an electromechanical transducer that produces a rotary deflection, through a limited arc, in response to electric current flowing through its coil. The name galvanometer has been applied to devices used in measuring, recording, and positioning equipment.

That is merely an empty collection of words, with no particular feeling or experience associated with it, to a kid in school who is facing that all important exam. All that the kids get tested on is how well they can memorize that definition. I must have memorized something like that, and that was promptly flushed out of the system when those exams were mercifully over.

And the tragedy of it is that based on how they do in such exams, important decisions like which college, and what branch of study and so on get decided, and that in turn, plays a crucial role in the kind of jobs that are open.

Millions of kids in India are memorizing the galvanometer as you read this. I feel sorry for them. It is not just a monumental waste of time, it is much worse than that - kids that don't do well in these exams are deemed unfit to hold any interesting job, because pretty much all such jobs will have stringent credential requirements.

A couple of weeks ago, Siddhu was raiding the kitchen, as he usually does when he gets bored. It has become his obsession to pour some flour, mix it with egg and oil, and attempt to make pancakes - he can almost fix a pancake for himself now, just doesn't dare light the stove because he knows that is hot and can hurt him.  This time around, I was in the backyard, and Pramila was working on her computer.  As he climbed the kitchen counter and was sifting through the cabinet, he dropped a box of cereal on the floor, with cereal pouring out.  Pramila heard the noise and came out, asked him in her exasperated tone "Siddhu, who did this?" expecting him to give his usual reply of "Clean up, why did you do it?" He has the habit of repeating or mimicking what the other person would say in that circumstance, rather than make up his own answer.
 
But he surprised her this time. Siddhu looked at her, with a mischevious smile, "Appa did it". Pramila could not believe it - she called me and asked me with an accusing tone "Did you really do this?" I said "No, I wasn't even here". She could still not trust that our son had figured out how to lie! She asked Siddhu "Who is going to clean it up now?" and he answered "Appa will clean it". She gave him a hug, and we celebrated his first lie that evening. In its own way, this feels like a major triumph for us - autistic kids are so literal-minded that lying is a major effort.

In the past couple of months, our son Siddhu has been going through hyperbaric oxygen therapy: one of us basically go with him into a high pressure chamber enriched with oxygen, this is supposed to let more oxygen flow into the brain. As an added bonus, my asthma gets better (I think, though I may be imagining that!) Other than the slightly elevated temperature, which on a hot day is not a mild inconvenience, you don't notice anything. Siddhu is so non-chalant, he just watches a DVD or colors his book inside the chamber.

This is a relatively new treatment for autism, and one other parent is doing it with us. There is significant positive change for their son, and Siddhu also has been calmer and more focused recently.

There were two articles in NY Times in the last 2 days that caught my attention. The first is an Op-Ed To All the Girls I've Rejected by Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the Dean of Admissions in Kenyon College. The basic thrust is that there is now a disproportionate number of female applicants who are more qualified. If colleges strictly admitted students based on objective criteria like grades, SAT scores and recommendations, they would end up admitting many more women than men. Here is quote (emphasis mine):

The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

And here is a story on the psychotic effects of drugs like Ritalin, widely prescribed for treating attention deficit disorder & hyperactivity in young kids, disproportionately boys. The news story Panel Advises Disclosure of Drugs' Psychotic Effects is not really about AD/HD or boys at all, but it tangentially reports that (emphasis mine):

The panel members said they hoped the warning would prevent physicians from prescribing a second drug to treat the hallucinations caused by the stimulants [like Ritalin], which one expert estimated affect 2 to 5 of every 100 children taking them.
...
Since Ritalin was first approved in the 1950's, stimulants to treat attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity have become among the most widely prescribed medicines in the world. In the United States alone, about 2.5 million children and 1.5 million adults take them; as many as 10 percent of boys ages 10 to 12 do

In addition to Ritalin, two other stimulants, Adderall and Concerta, are popular.

So we need to medicate 10% of boys aged 10-12 so they can attend school normally. I am pretty sure there a connection would be dismissed, but could it be possible that the college admission numbers reported could have something to do with such extensive medication needed in boys at an earlier age?

It is worth drawing the connection to the fact that boys suffer from autism at rates 4 or 5 times greater than girls. I don't know the ratio of boys to girls in AD-HD but I wouldn't be surprised if it is at least 2 to 1. Now, here are my questions.

1. Clearly the number of children diagnosed with AD-HD, prescribed stimulants like Ritalin, has increased massively in the last few decades. Could all this increase be pegged to "better diagnosis"? Kids with AD-HD are very difficult to teach in school, because they are disruptive. Did teachers put up with disruptive kids before, and now they don't? Particularly in an age when "discipline" in kids was more valued than it is now?

2. Could the rise in AD-HD have anything do with the decline in qualified male applicants to colleges?

3. What could cause the increase in AD-HD in boys?

Let me offer some speculation [no claim to originality made]: there are some things that have changed in the last 25 years. One is that the rising levels and the rising number of vaccinations given to kids. Yes, I know, quack theory, fed by frustrated parents. I just took a look at the vaccination schedules for my new-born niece in India, and there were no less than 14 separate shots in the chart, starting on day 1 of her life. 30 years ago, kids were probably given 3 or 4 shots in total, starting much later.

The hypothesis [to many of us parents of kids with autism, it is getting closer to being proved] that many of us are working under is that there is a connection between the dramatic increase in vaccinations, the associated overall rising levels of toxic exposure in children, and disorders like autism and AD-HD. It is by now clear that boys are the weaker sex - they are disproportionately affected by environmental assaults.

The medical establishment insists that vaccinations are perfectly safe. But are there any long term behavioral consequences? I am sure they will dismiss any such connections like the ones drawn above. I am not against vaccination per se. I was lucky to survive Diphtheria as a kid, which has killed millions and millions around the world, and still kills. I know many people in my age group in India afflicted with polio. But it is still worth asking Are we going too far? Are we being too aggressive with vaccinations?

I hope the medical establishment would at least start to investigate these connections. The numbers are staggering.

My son turned 7 today. He went through a 2-week round of intravenous chelation, which was finished about a month ago. The chelating agents were DMPS and Calcium-EDTA, both of which have a fairly well-understood safety record in toxic metal removal. The medical establishment doesn't yet accept this as a valid treatment for autism [because they don't accept that heavy metals, particularly mercury, have any role to play in autism], but my own personal experience with the academic research establishment during my PhD taught me to question authority, and keep an open mind. I am glad I did.

Urine tests done after the rounds of chelation showed high levels of cadmium and lead; we didn't see much mercury, but I believe mercury, if present, won't come out until lead does. At the very least, the urine tests show there is something unusual going on in terms of toxicity, which suggests a biochemical basis for autism. Clearly genes also play a role, but even the statement "Smoking causes cancer" needs to be qualified with "in the set of people that are genetically predisposed to it", because it is obvious that the majority of people who smoke don't and won't get cancer.

We went in to the treatment with our eyes open, not expecting anything dramatic. In the event, we have been pleasantly surprised. Our son has shown measurable step-change in a few critical areas, enough to suggest that the treatment had effect. Nothing miraculous or dramatic, but definitely a positive, noticeable change. His ABA therapists and school teachers also noticed the changes, and they are at best neutral towards these biomedical interventions.

Here is a quick list of changes we have observed in the last 3-4 weeks after chelation. These changes did not happen all at once, but there was a progression.

1. His response time when we ask him a question has improved fairly significantly. The answers come quickly now. Previously, we would often end up repeating the question.
2. For the first time, I spoke to my son on the phone. Before this round of treatments, someone would have to prompt him on the other side to say hello and respond to questions. This time he responded spontaneoulsy to simple questions like "What did you eat?" and "What do you want me to bring for you?" To that last question, his response was "Bring Dell" - meaning my laptop computer. At least he has his priorities right!
3. His speech seems more spontaneous and natural.

He still has a long way to go to attain normal speech. Sometimes we feel we are in a thousand mile journey and only on the hundredth mile, but before he was at the seventieth mile, so that is a welcome change. And he is still showing improvements.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with chelation. We met numerous other parents, many of whom doing a second or third round of chelation, and they all reported seeing very positive results for their kids.

As for the medical establishment, I hope they would pay attention to parents like us, who see clear results from these treatments. Somehow, I am not hopeful they will.

Richard Cohen of Washington Post wrote an interesting, semi-serious rant on requiring a course in Algebra to graduate from high school. Here is an excerpt:

I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo.

Last year, she dropped out of the 12th grade at Birmingham High School in Los Angeles after failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it. So, according to the Los Angeles Times, she "gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School."
...
I confess to be one of those people who hate math. I can do my basic arithmetic all right (although not percentages) but I flunked algebra (once), barely passed it the second time -- the only proof I've ever seen of divine intervention -- somehow passed geometry and resolved, with a grateful exhale of breath, that I would never go near math again. I let others go on to intermediate algebra and trigonometry while I busied myself learning how to type. In due course, this came to be the way I made my living. Typing: Best class I ever took.

Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it.

While I personally loved math, I sympathize with him and Gabriela. But there is a deep problem here that Cohen doesn't address. Schools and universities in the US are evolving to be "diploma mills" - something very familiar in India. Standardized testing is inexorably leading towards this. If you can't pass the test, tough luck, you can't "progress" in your education, even if the subject in question is not at all related to other subjects in which you may have flair.

And all of this in the name of enhancing the competitiveness, so employers can get "qualified" [by which people mostly mean "credentialed"] candidates. I disagree with this approach fundamentally. Credential-driven education is ultimately incompatible with capitalism and freedom [see Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman]. Its goal is to offer "standardized" norms to evaluate people, ignoring the infinite variety in people.

When such a system reaches its advanced terminal state, as it has reached in India, the end result is that credentials themselves start to carry little meaning, because the whole aim of schooling [as distinct from education] becomes getting that stamp of approval, so people learn to game the system towards that goal. In religious terms, God has left the temple.

Over the years, we at AdventNet have learnt to completely ignore credentials in our hiring, and go by our own subjective assessment instead. I say "subjective" because I don't believe there can be any "objective" standards in evaluating human beings, because ultimately these are value judgements. For example, if we are hiring a sales person, a pleasant outgoing personality, good communication skills and a drive to succeed are important, and assessing all of these is an imprecise art. Why would the fact that the person flunked algebra in school be important?

American education is going in the wrong direction, but I would argue that it is precisely because of increasing government involvement, especially by federal and state governments. What was once a purely local affair has become increasingly federalized. This is inevitable - governments are not great at performing subjective value judgements, and if they tried, corruption would be the result. So to avoid that, they have to standardize, thereby robbing the system of flexibility to fit individual needs.

Gabriela, in that story above, may make an excellent saleswoman or an excellent doctor [most doctors I know are very poor at math!]. By flunking her out, the system is basically telling her "You are worthless". And yet, the solution is not some self-esteem enhancement program favored by the left, effectively telling Gabriela "You are good at math" when she is not. The real solution is to get rid of credentialism, and leave the problem to the marketplace, which is perfectly capable of solving it. Milton Friedman outlines how this would work in Capitalism and Freedom, so I will spare the details.

I have a personal stake in this. I have a son with autism, and my wife and I recognize that he will need a highly individualized education. He has some strengths in areas like visual memory and pattern recognition, and major areas of weaknesses, like language. We believe his areas of strength could lead him to a fulfilling life, but only if we don't inflict standardized education on him.

Every quack is not a scientist, but a lot of established science was once considered quackery. I am reminded of this when we deal with emerging therapies for treating my son's autism.

Take the hypothesis that mercury (in the form of preservative Thimerosal in vaccines), combined with a certain genetic pre-disposition that makes some kids detoxify poorly, had a major role in autism. In this hypothesis, such impaired detoxification, combined with other opportunistic environmental triggers, caused it. The government establishment has dismissed it, and the mainstream press has accepted that and moved on, all based primarily on statistical evidence. What even the government establishment would not dispute is that mercury could have caused it - it has a ring of plausibility to it. That is an important point: the hypothesis that mercury caused it is not in the same league as the hypothesis that an unfavorable constellation of planets caused it. Yet, when you read the most of the media descriptions, it is dismissed with just such derisive certainty.

To add insult to that injury, doctors who proceed under that hypothesis are considered absolute quacks, and parents who try those treatments are deluded or duped by these doctors. Let me say this: myself and my wife are far from deluded and we are not easily duped. We considered all the literature calmly, we read both sides of this debate. In the end, we came to the conclusion that there is at least a case to be made against mercury. And facing the difficult choice of how to treat our son, we decided the risk of proceeding with the treatment is far less than the risk of waiting till the science is fully established. Time is an important element here - we don't have the luxury of waiting indefinitely.

In every sense, we are no different than volunteers in a clinical trial for expeirmental medication. We know of the pros and cons, and we have consciously considered everything, but have decided to proceed. Except, of course, the government does not put its official seal of approval on this experiment, but since when is the federal government the authority on all matters scientific? If we cede that role to the federal government, in what way is that different from the middle ages when the Church had the same role?

What does liberty amount to if not the liberty to conciously proceed with such experiments, accepting the consequences of our decisions? Of course, another set of parents, exactly in the same situation, could come to the conclusion they are not persuaded by the evidence. That is as it should be. Yet, if at least a few parents like us don't try, progress comes to a stop. After all, enrolling in a clinical trial is an act of faith too.

This brings up the broader issue: all science proceeds by hunches and trial and error. It is not a sure thing until firm evidence is at hand. Often, it is not a sure thing even after people declare it to be a sure thing (as the government has declared about mercury's non-connection to autism) - how often do we hear controversies about established scientific truth? Subsequent discoveries often cast a new light on old accepted truths.

Yet, non-scientists, especially journalists, pretend to more certainty in these matters than there actually is. They don't understand this process of trial and error at all.

Do I have absolute confidence to say that "Yes, mercury is it?" No, I only have enough confidence to try it, but not enough to go and persuade or evangelize anyone else, other than alerting them to read all the literature and come to their own conclusions. But I will certainly have far more confidence, if the treatments we are proceeding with yield positive results for our son. And I applaud parents who have gone down this path and reported on the outcome, almost all of them positive for their kids. They are brave pioneers.

I can understand an attitude of scepticism - a healthy scepticism is very useful in science as in life itself, but what I don't understand is the outright contempt.

Here is a beautiful one: Autism and my son by a mother.

Jambav is a kids site, with a special focus on special needs kids. It is backed by AdventNet.

Today my son achieved a breakthrough. Usually I get him ready for school in the morning. After I seat him in the school bus, I come out and wave. He would just stare at me through the window. Today, he smiled and waved back - something that he hasn't done before.

Recovering from autism is a series of these successes. What appears so natural that we overlook it in a normal child is herculean effort for these kids. I am happy he made this breakthrough today.

Dealing with autism has brought a different perspective in life: almost everything looks like a small challenge compared to this. Having him speak fluently is the equivalent of winning the Nobel Prize for me and my wife.

More drawings by my six year old son who [we hope] is recovering from autism. The first one "Man" [titles are given by me, because he still doesn't have enough language to give it a title], was drawn when I requested him to draw my father, and the drawing does give the feel of an older person. The second one, "The Couple" was his own spontaneous effort; that looks better, don't you think? Unsurprisingly, he is at his best when he grabs the magna-doodle and draws something to occupy himself; he would usually erase it just as quick as he draws it, so we have to grab it out of his hand and photograph it.

His previous drawing "Indian Lady" is at my post here.