Does GDP make sense?

Economists are keen to study data about countries - data and economists often go hand in hand that it's difficult to separate them at parties.

The fundamental data that we introduce to students involve looking at gross statistics (in the sense of 'big' rather than 'ugh') such as Gross Domestic Product, Inflation Rate, Unemployment Rate, Interest Rate, etc.

We present these as having some meaning.

And therein lies the problem that has beset economic thinking for the past century.

Data are representations of what we think is going on. Take that in a second time - a representation of a mental representation. Like Plato's artists whose pictures are representations of the phenomena we perceive which in turn are representations of the true Forms (which we cannot see), economic data are very removed from what actually may be the case. Notwithstanding this tertiary representation, the data are then used by governments to set policy targets or compare their performance with other countries - are our hand shadows doing better than theirs?

How can a nation's wealth or the value of its production be assessed?

Try doing this with your own time during the day. I'm currently writing an article - it will never appear in the GDP statistics of course, and if it happened incidentally through any advertising revenue the click through ads might add to my declarable income, it would not reflect in any way the time or value of that time I'm currently using to write it. What if the advertising revenues came a year later? How would we then assess the value of this article? Or what about the twenty minutes I spent ironing clothes for the family, or the half an hour's dinner and table conversation we all enjoyed earlier, or my wife's preparations and coordination in our business office for which she goes unpaid?

The idea that someone could create a figure representing the value of my productive day (only part of which involved monetary remuneration) suddenly becomes ludicrous.

The idea that someone - or a department of statisticians - could create a figure representing the value of a country's productive output is beyond ridiculous.

Yet politicians and economists (who should know better) and think thanks (or unthink tanks) throw such figures around as if they were entities.

It's like the word "economy." There is no such thing as "the economy." There are millions of people interacting and producing and consuming and not producing and not consuming and biding their time and holding on to things or throwing them away...billions of decisions committed daily which make up the millions of markets that generate price activity in their respective markets. There is no entity called "the economy" standing like some medieval troublesome beast casting spells and curses upon people's lives. (Nah, governments do that).

So to say "the economy's GDP grew by 5% last year" is basically a completely meaningless statement.

We can, nonetheless, generate some meaning from it, as we can from any metaphor.

Given that measuring GDP is an inaccurate science, we can admit that changes to the inaccurate measurements over time are comparable, so long as the same techniques are used by the statisticians of course. "Our estimates of what we think may have happened last year seem to show, as best as we can tell from our inaccurate assessments, that there seemingly was an addition to the resources of the fictitious entity called the economy..."

Would we give the politicians or central bankers any credence should they admit how inaccurate their techniques and concepts are?

Statistics developed from William Petty's seventeenth century analysis of exports and imports of England (his book was called Political Arithmetick). As a member of the Royal Society, we could imagine that he was curious about the wealth of England, but, like William the Conqueror's Domesday survey, the implication of Petty's attempt to record national data was gathered to assess what taxes could be garnered from foreign trade. Statistics is indeed derived from state. 

More importunely, Petty's philosophical zeal for data collection (much of which was useless) was part of the zeitgeist - an echo of Pythagorean philosophy that the entire universe was knowable through number. The latter day Pythagoreans of the Royal Society proceeded to mathematicize every aspect of the physical and human world producing the rationalist Eighteenth Century and the notion that the universe was like one giant clock - the clockwork universe presented measurability and predictability and underscored Newton's breakthroughs in physics. However, when applying numbers to human action, to psychology or to innate attributes or aesthetic sentiments, the entire endeavour collapses.

As Murray Rothbard notes:

The 17th-century enthusiasm for the sciences, building upon the quasiunderground age-old numerological mysticism of the hermetic and Kabbalah tradition, led to an arrogant frenzy of enthusiasm for quantitative and mathematical study of social life as well among the scientists and especially their cheering sections. (Austrian Perspective of Economic Thought)

 The passion for numbers clashed with other epistemic traditions that value is innately subjective or that a number cannot be put on many human transactions and assessments. "I love that view!" "That painting is priceless..." It reminds one of Oscar Wilde's quip that "he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Wilde was, perhaps unintentionally, echoing Jonathan Swift's satirical attack on the numerologists and statisticians in his famous A Modest Proposal, which Rothbard believes suitably demolished the fallacies of the statisticians.

Yet the love of number and the attempt to reduce human phenomena to quantities did not ebb. It indeed gained momentum. Today we witness text books presenting complex priest-like mathematical incantations about the state of the economy and (of course) government policy.

I mention priest-like because the ancient Egyptian priests were deemed to have kept knowledge of the seasons, the flooding of the Nile, the movement of the stars, etc, to themselves in order to empower their class over the rest of the people.

Economists do the same thing today.

Behind the diaphanous GDP fairy though sits a true beast: GDP measures the final output of the economy, which means it focuses on the final stage of economic processes, or what we normally call consumption. That seventy more apples were consumed this year compared to last suggests economic growth ... even though the seventy apples may have been taken from a tree destroyed in the wind or cut down for firewood. (So the following year would create a recession in our apple tree economy...ignoring the planting of five new trees to compensate for the recent loss).

The assumption made is that consumption drives changes in GDP, so it's not surprising that statist economists focus on the need for governments to spend more money to get the economy out of a recession. Spending increases G and C in the Keynesian paradigm of Y = C+I+G+(X-M) and so causes GDP to rise - sometimes through a magical multiplier, another alchemist assumption cast into the modern economist's brew!

Yet economic action is not at all about consumption (no wonder economists gain the ire of the rest of the academy from sociologists to theologians): action is about supplying services to oneself and more importantly to others, and many of those services are not part of the final consumption stage - they dissolve into the many stages of production, often with barely an accountable ripple.

E.g., if I teach someone to work more productively over a cup of coffee and they proceed to increase their output, it will neither enter the GDP statistics nor into the theorising of statist economists, who only see people consuming.

And we've not touched on the notion of what economic entity is supposedly being measured here. The modern world divides into nation states - so we measure the GDP of nation states: we are not interested in the GDP of London versus Paris, but the UK versus France. But what are these entities except transient political constructions?

Fairy tales are fun...except when they are used for policy!

The economics of flooding - why governments create tragedies.

If you're doing A-level economics, this article reviews how government failure can be said to be behind the current flooding in the UK. The opinion covers one side of the argument and it's up to you as a student to work out the other side - which you normally get in the text books and classroom: 'government should do this, government should do that, it's the government who should save us.' Here's a different view.

The Economics of Flooding: England, 2014.

Despite our technological arrogance, natural disasters do occur. Nature, as the Romanticists reminded us, is awesome and we are mere specks in both history and space.

We humans are not immune to the great powers of nature of spewing volcanoes, tempestuous hurricanes, torrential floods, and destructive movements of the earth's plates. When a disaster unfolds, we face the fear that humanity has always known - that we are vulnerable and always will be.

But a disaster becomes a tragedy when it could have been ameliorated or prevented by people: and this typically means government.

When we take a look at the current storms that have battered the southern coasts of Wales and England and the vast flooding in many areas of the south of England, several key issues arise that show how governments fail magnificently to provide for protection or the avoidance of harm.

A violent sea storm is not something people can do much about when it hits, except batten the hatches as they say and evacuate those homes more vulnerable. But preparation is the key to reducing the damage that can be done. When an event is incredibly rare, there is no incentive for people to prepare beyond the basics required by insurance and common sense. But when storms are more frequent, it certainly makes more sense to design and protect houses appropriately. Since it is in the interests of the house owner and stakeholders (bank, insurance company, neighbours) to ensure that the house is physically viable and able to withstand storms, the owners have a great incentive to protect their home from damage. However, local authority planning may reject designs to improve houses' ability to withstand storms or to install double-glazing (which happens in the UK because of 'grade-listing' - a regulation designed to maintain a random character of a house). Planners may reject alternative designs because they do not fit the current architectural styles of the town. One by one, such renovations or building that could have occurred are rejected according to political or whimsical fiats - and when the storms hit, the damage is greater than it need ever be.

The job of government is to protect people from aggression and it's excusable to encourage government to protect sea walls through collective funding (taxes) and other defences. But there the government's job should end. It should have no role in telling home owners and developers what their buildings should look like - any disagreements with neighbours can be worked out, if necessary, through civil courts. (There is a good argument that government should not be shoring up our sea defences either - let communities raise their own funds should they feel the need: the coastline will change and often the building of massive bulwarks and groynes only redistributes the power to other communities who are then hit).

It would not be surprising to find out that coastal towns are subject to the vagaries of the planning departments, whose remit should be to focus on communal defences rather than private construction and renovation. Planners do not like innovation.

Then we turn inland; the month of January, 2014, has seen an enormous rainfall across England causing dire flooding in many places. Again, government action and inaction can be seen to play a role here.

Historically, people have found villages and hamlets on dry land across the United Kingdom. The wisdom of the ages going back into pre-Roman times was not lost on where our ancestors sought to settle and build. It's instructive to see the aerial photographs of the ancient towns and villages, which stand like islands in the sea. As the population of the country increased, it's not surprising that more and more people moved beyond the safety of high ground to more marginal and hence risky ground.

People are free to take risks - some prefer to live far from the beautiful flowing rivers of this emerald isle, while others prefer to have the freedom to walk down to the water near their house. Naturally, those who live nearer to water would, in a truly free market system that has not been distorted by legal impediments and subsidies, pay less for the houses and more for the insurance and have a greater incentive to protect their homes.

Central planning however, has encouraged the building of estates and towns on ancient flood plains and they have suffered greatly. (Planners are finally rejecting developments on flood plains - for now). And governments have leaned on insurance companies to provide coverage where no coverage would otherwise be had or such that would be at a high premium.

But planners rarely plan properly. They can't. They are no part of the market process which assesses each action according to its costs and benefits as measured by prices. Planners disregard prices, which means in turn that they are subject to diverting fashions such as 'don't dredge the rivers' or permitting the building of 'new homes for the new century' so a government can look good either to environmentalists or to people struggling to get onto the housing ladder. Most of the folk who work for the Environment Agency no doubt are sincere in their belief and intention that they seek to minimise harm to people's lives and livelihoods - but they are often subject to being ignored by planners who are closer to political pressures.

Accordingly, economics elucidates that those would choose to live elsewhere than pay a higher insurance premium are subtly encouraged by false (distorted) price signals to live in areas of higher risk. When we look at Happisburgh on the north Norfolk coast, its houses are falling into the sea - they are the extreme illustration of risky living.

The price for such houses would be very cheap - cash buyers, no insurance coverage. But imagine if the government encouraged people to remain living there, despite the obvious erosion taking place?

The flooding of many parts of England reflects the less extreme: houses built where houses should not have been planned (government, not private parties plan house construction in the UK), and insurances distorted by government fiat rather than market assessment.

Nature has an indelible memory when it comes to old water ways - water will flow the quickest route to the seas or underground reservoirs and, like a badger on an old track, nothing will stop its flow. The flows can be diverted of course - but then someone else gets the water.

The flow of water across Britain is not subject to the natural flows that our ancient ancestors knew. They knew that the Somerset plains flooded - we recall stories of King Alfred in the marshes around the Glastobury region, and they did not build there except on the islands. Famed Mulcheney in Somerset means the increasing great isle - ie., the floods were receding during the Anglo-Saxon period of English history. Then there's Ely - called The Isle of Ely. The flows are now diverted and twisted - farming, a hugely subsidised industry, has diverted much of the flow and often into smaller streams or rivers. But the farmers do not own the rivers...the government does. And governments have shown no incentive to dredge the rivers properly in recent decades, an omission which has angered local people affected by the floods who have expected the government to keep up its end of the bargain.

The failure to dredge the rivers is now palpable to those suffering. Villagers in Somerset have demanded that the government dredge the rivers for many years, but each year a Minister enters the fray and talks about exceptional weather and how isolated such events are. Except they seem awfully frequent these days. Whether that's due to 'climate change' (which is always changing), government seeding the air (chemtrails in the US and UK: watch the video to blow your mind), or just freaky weather patterns, the lack of preparation and the costs of the unfolding disaster can be put fairly upon government shoulders.

Why do teenagers use fillers? Like, uh, dunno, like, y'know..

Like ... uh...you know...they kind of do.

Where does such behaviour come from?

Many language experts - who follow the use of language - explain that fillers are used by people (of all ages) to provide a pause while they are collecting their next thought. Such experts tend to be quite tolerant and egalitarian of teenagers' deployment of fillers in their speech. For them, it's all part of life's wonderful tapestry, and, implicitly or explicitly, we should not judge people for their use of fillers.

Others find the fillers annoying. To add in words such as 'like' and 'innit' into sentences grates on their aesthetic nerves: the use of ums and ahs by adults similarly demotes the speaker in the ears of the listener.

The egalitarian view - tolerant though it may be of people struggling to put a sentence together - is more indicative of linguistic nihilism, the belief that there no greater value can be put on sounding educated and sounding uneducated. A true nihilist denies that there can be value in anything, so I may be exaggerating the claim here, for a linguistic nihilist would surely reject an ungrammatical sentence such as 'the sat on the cat mat'?

Perhaps not.

The acceptance of fillers encourages a demeaning of education and of the greater conversation that the mind is capable. It is analogous to accepting scribbles for finished artwork or belches for humour.

We all struggle to find the most appropriate word for our ideas, but that struggle should be taking place in the higher reaches of our cultural-linguistic ability, not in the realm of the most basic.

"You know, I kinda like, um, this sort of music, y'know, like, uh, duh, like ..." Please!

Hesitation, mental preparation, forestalling, nervousness - there's a few excuses for um-ing and ah-ing and like-ing and y'know-ing, but they all come down to a mental laziness, a low vocabulary, and an acceptance of low values.

I've had pupils who used fillers. They have tended to be the ones who watch a lot of tv. So I keep a tally of their use and show them how many times they use the word like while speaking. They are often shocked! We then proceed - always with their permission - to see if they can reduce the number that they use. (I do point out that if they are in a job interview and their response is replete with fillers, they are not likely to get the position over someone who can speak fluently).

It has nothing to do with intelligence or academic ability either. It's all about whether the speaker accepts poor communication as being acceptable or not. Accepting poor communication is essentially saying that the speaker does not care about what he or she says.

Now the reasons as to why that may be the case could be many and deeply embedded, but the speaker  is in control of what he or she says. She can decided that the next utterance will not have any fillers. She can work on avoiding the fillers by just focusing a little on what she is saying and how she is saying it. I've turned pupils around very quickly with minor interventions. Adults who um and ah, can also change how they speak with a little training.

If we are truly stumbling for the words to express our thoughts, some suggest remaining silent until the word comes. Well, that doesn't help if you have an idea but no word for it in your vocabulary - far better to ask for help! Otherwise, try an alternative path of words to help communicate the idea. Pen and paper are often fantastic media for communicating ideas!

Egalitarianism - the idea that one person should count for one person and no more than one person - constitutes the political and legal underpinning of civilisation. However, that does not imply that all words are equal, that all deeds are equal, that all speeches are equal.

Would Lincoln have been remembered for this speech:

"Right, you know, um, it was sort of a long time ago, like, that our umm, fathers helped build, you know, this nation like. It was um made in liberty, like, y'know, and ah, dedicated, sort of, like, to the idea that, y'know, all men, like, are created like equal."

Or Winston Churchill:

"We will like you know um fight them on the beaches sort of..."

If you use fillers. Stop yourself. Just slap your hand or put a 5p in a pot every time you utter one. Think before you speak and remain silent if you've nothing to say. Then go and read some books and find something to say.

As Funk and Lewis say in 30 Days to a a New Powerful Vocabulary, "your boss has a bigger vocabulary than you." There's a lot in that. Lazy thinking doesn't lend itself to getting on in life. The philosopher Wittgenstein reminded us that our world is constrained by our vocabulary - so, the smaller our vocabulary, the smaller our world. Imagine that.

I love civilisation and as a philosopher, political thinker, writer, and educationalist, I'm sensitive to the intellectual trends that demean civilisation: when our minds cannot grasp higher thought, when we tolerate inconsistent thinking and blurred communication, we are looking at our demise: so stand up for the civil order, improve your mind and your child's - accept not lazy speech.

Our children and our children's children will be proud that we stood up for values rather than let them slide into a linguistic cesspit.

Recommended texts - if you want to think better and wider, Nagel's succinct introduction to philosophy is hard to beat. 

Dyslexia...stress and labelling

Some academics dismiss dyslexia.

That seems silly.

Of course some people struggle to read and to learn.

But then some people struggle to sing a note, throw a ball, lift a weight properly, run a mile, draw a tree, drive a car, do mental maths ...We all have weaknesses and strengths.

However, when the skill is a vital one for engaging in commercial and social intercourse, the weakness requires attention and support. What that support constitutes can only be individually oriented - what one person learns from, another may not. But that is true of all of us at different times of our life, or even at different times of day.

I've garnered some feedback from parents and clients on what dyslexia means to them and it is interesting to review some of the key features identified. Most focus on the decoding of text but others also focus on decoding the world around them.

As a label, the term dyslexia means a disorder involving a difficulty in reading or interpreting words or other symbols. That's all. A difficulty in reading and interpreting. How we view the world or how we learn about something (dates, people's names, theories, plots in stories) is not the subject of dyslexia, which just describes an inability to read. If a person learns or describes a situation differently from another, that is what we call a cognitive issue. Philosophers have been dealing with such issues for centuries and have generally recognised that how you see an event can differ from how I see it: although the event objectively happened - our interpretation or recollection of it can differ.

Accordingly, how we learn things may have a unique twist. Within the remit of attempting to learn is the attempt to decode words and symbols - the struggle that dyslexics face. For some this creates a lack of confidence in learning anything or a series of coping strategies to learn about other aspects of life, and so the dyslexia becomes holistically impeding. Others claim that the 'handicap' in decoding words encourages other skills and intelligences to come to the fore (recall Gardner's multiple intelligence theory) which then compensate for the relative weakness in reading and spelling.

The symptoms of poor reading or cognition can be broad from mild to strong. But as a tutor working on a one-to-one basis, I am keen to get to the root causes of people's weaknesses and to encourage an improvement in their reading/writing/spelling/comprehension skills. I do not believe that any symptom cannot be improved upon.

One person reads capably when a coloured film is placed over the text, another when the line they are reading is singled out, another when they use their finger or pen to follow the words. There are similarities in the struggle, but are they sufficiently different because they demand different interventions? Some with dyslexic symptoms see their abilities improve when they engage in robust physical activity or actions requiring the use of increasingly fine motor skills, which then help train the eye muscles to work better. Others learn how to circumnavigate the difficulty with personally evolved coping strategies. Others fare better when they read out loud and then engage aural as well as visual skills... Many strategies may evolve to cope and to improve.

But then again, that's what 'normal readers' do when reading.

'Normal' readers (i.e., those showing no apparent difficulty in reading - and I would emphasise the word apparent there) have to train their eyes to follow the text, have to decipher the codes - the words and their associated meanings, and train themselves to focus on what is front of them. Some are better than others: I can read most passages swiftly and pull out the salient points and associations...until I read Kant, then I struggle, and Hegel, well, I weep. For others, their limit may be literarily lower of course. Our inability to decode may be relative across literature: one person struggles with Dickens while another struggles with a children's book. And again, such weaknesses are relative across subjects: someone else who struggles to read a literary passage and retain its meaning may easily understand and replicate a passage of music better than I, or to recall a speech better than I ever could without copious note taking.

As a relative or absolute weakness in the ability to proceed confidently, we should be keen to help.  Most difficulties can be surmounted to some extent or less - I can learn to swim faster, but I may not make the British team. We all have limits and some people's limits are different from others; what I am also concerned about is when the term is used a label that implicitly means not just a relative weakness but an inability to improve. 

As a label  dyslexia can be very powerful psychologically if it implies an absolute inability.

We all have limits and some people's limits are different from others. But when a label is cast into the learning pot, troublesome consequences may ensure, most notably the belief that there can be no improvement, that the label implies a comparison with others and thereby creates stress. All may result in a lack of motivation to improve.

The Brain is Plastic

Firstly, the brain is plastic. Neuroscientists are realising that our understanding of the brain as a fixed hardware is outdated - the brain shows immense plasticity and when exercised in tasks it 'grows' in the appropriate areas. That means that someone who is cognitively weak in an area can improve. They are not condemned to a life of relative or absolute inability. Cerebral nerves do regenerate and new indirect pathways can be formed where there has been damage even.

This implies that a relative weakness can be improved upon and not be allowed to remain at a low level. The overriding condition, I would add, is that there needs to be a motivation to improve. Now that is an awkward one: if there's no motivation to improve on reading and writing skills, why should the child exercise that area of his or her cognition? If I see no reason to play golf, I have no incentive to pop outside to hit a few balls. Some may see the analogy as frivolous but it's not: a child may see reading as frivolous and a chore or something they "just don't get." Their dyslexia reflects not a cognitive issue dependent on the right neurone firing as it were but a complete lack of a desire to improve or exercise their mind in that direction.

In my practice, I have often found this to be the major cause in students' relative inability in this area: they tell me - 'oh, I can just write it on the computer and it'll correct it for me' (i.e., no desire to improve as the machine will do it); 'I'm just not interested in why which is spelled w-h-i-c-h and witch is spelled w-i-t-c-h. How does it relate to my goals and life?' Or 'I find this completely boring. Why do I need to read a book when I can watch the DVD.'

Where there is no will to learn, there cannot be any improvement. We may cajole and insist on how important the skill is for their future development, job prospects and being a member of an advanced civilisation, but until the need hits home why exercise the faculty? One of my old pupils expressed his frustration in a recent employment test that left him feeling a 'prat': it was the first time his dyslexia had hit him. He's at university so he's no academic right off but it was an interesting comment - until that day (last week), he'd not really been bothered by it. So why work on it...is the implied thought.

The lack of motivation is not to be underestimated.

As adults, we don't rush into things we're not interested in. Why would we? The key for our younger members of society is to dig deeper and find out why they may not be interested.

While the reasons can be legion, think of the distractions that young people grow up with today.

How does reading relate to the child? It's a chore, it's boring. I hear that a lot. I translate the word boring to difficult and try to find out why it is difficult.

Oh, I'm dyslexic. How often do you practice? Not often. Well, there you go. If you practised more, do you think you'd improve. I guess so.

Now how we should practise is another issue.

But again, I've been to many people's houses when I used to do home visits to help young people struggling to read/write/spell and the environment is instructive. You walk in and are confronted with a wide screen tv, a games console next to it...no books, a tv in the kid's bedroom you hear, no books...mum and dad come home from work and invest several hours an evening in passive screen time. And little Rob's 'dyslexic' and gets extra help at school... Not surprised. Is he really suffering from a cognitive distortion here, or merely has not environmental support at home? Think about it - what's the first thing your kids see when they come home and then consider that people generally are keen on the path of least resistance. Reading is a skill that requires effort, patience, perseverance, and continued effort. If we remove the environmental impediments of easy tv, Sky subscription, a DVD collection at hand, games consoles and electronic doodads all around, and then replace them with books of all levels and subjects, we may create a more fertile environment for our children's reading abilities to thrive.

If you poison the spring, you'll poison the body.

The Role of Stress

Secondly, comparing children's performance is greatly injurious to their confidence, and if self-confidence collapses or is harmed, the resulting stress impairs cognitive function. Psychologists have known this for decades and continue to find the same results when they test people under stressful conditions.

A serious source of comparing is school targets and parental comparisons. Which came first does not matter. Both are destructive.

School can be emotionally painful on many levels for pupils and then they are expected to be performing in tasks not of their choosing or liking - a stressful environment at school is not conducive to learning at all. It need not be like that but for many it is - a subtle comparison with other pupils is made or, usually, an explicit comparison that 'you child is not doing as well as he/she should...'

Schools often insist on meeting certain targets...why? Because they are funded and must be accountable to either the government or to parents. Targets are not inevitable and do keep our schools somewhat accountable, but they are rarely related to the individual. I've met many students who 'don't like reading or writing,' who, when asked a series of questions, refer back to the pain of early years education - of having to read or having to write. The early pain holds them back later: too much, too soon has long lasting consequences for many who are turned off literacy. If they come to reading of their own accord, much of the stress can be avoided. If no comparisons are made, then the stress can be avoided too - does it matter that Johnny read quicker than Lizzie? Do we make such comparison when a pupil learns musical scales or draws a portrait? No. Imagine if we did. 'Now, Mrs Jones, you're William is not keeping up in portrait class. He's scoring a D and this will seriously impede his academic future...' If we wait for William's enthusiasm to spark, there may be no stopping the lad when he starts, but if we try to force it, we are creating problems.

But, you say, they need to be able to read and write, and as a champion of the civilised peaceful order of modern society I wholeheartedly agree. But when do they need to gain this skill? Does it matter if Sarah reads at six while David becomes fluent at ten? (Or that Eliza passes grade five piano at fourteen, but Edward passed it when he was eight?) What's the rush?

When a child is motivated, he or she will improve. Their brain is exercised just as a muscle is exercised. (We know that London taxi drivers learning The Knowledge experience an increase in the size of their hippocampus.) When motivation is lacking, we have a problem deeper than the shallowness of dyslexic symptoms.

Comparing creates stress: it makes us feel that we're not up to it. And children naturally magnify their emotions ... they may repress them creating other cognitive distortions. Becoming fearful, the very act of exercising their mind is stressful and under stress it becomes harder to think.

STRESS CAUSES THE CEREBRAL PARTS OF THE BRAIN TO SHUT DOWN.

Loud enough?

When we're stressed (and not trained to deal with it), our cognitive functions are impaired. This is, in my opinion, another great part of the issue surrounding dyslexic symptoms: a fear of not attaining some reading level according to some scheme...a pressure to get things right...a pressure of peers or siblings or parental desires...I see much damage done by 'times table' knock outs that primary school children do - they have to stand up in front of their peers, and if they get one wrong, they sit back down, humiliated. Guess what? Most of these kids suffer from maths stress later on that some call dyscalculia.

Stress in turn demotivates. We then take the path of least resistance and avoid the pain involved. Not surprising really. Listen to any adult as to why they don't exercise, improve language or art skills, business acumen, and you get an insight into why many children don't see a need to learn X or to practise it regularly. We then force them for their own good...we tell them...yet we avoid doing the things that we find a chore. Kids smell hypocrisy quite quickly.

Many parents with dyslexic symptoms I have spoken to express their sheer fear of reading and cast in the term dyslexia to explain their inability, an inability that often went unnoticed and therefore caused more pain and stress in their youth.

Fear creates stress.

Take the stress away and funnily enough, we think better. We calm our cerebral cortex down so it stops listening to the primordial response of flight/fight/freeze ... and allows us to learn. When we are relaxed or having fun, we learn quicker.

When we are trying to perform against others - unless we are trained to do so like a performer or athlete - stress is inevitable and a decline in mental functioning is thus inevitable. Then out comes the label and the poor child or adult is saddled with the assumption that they can never improve.

An adult teacher or parent complains that a child is poor at mental math - I quickly throw in: ok, ten seconds, what is six times seven, divide your answer by two and take three and a quarter. It's instructive to see the reaction. Their brain goes into panic mode. Panic closes the free learning required to solve the problem. Panic is primordial and does not need the luxury of higher level of thinking.

Is all dyslexia related to stress? After removing the distractions of the paths of least resistance and the lack of motivation to improve (an ideal situation perhaps), personally, I think much of it is. We can never know how someone else's mind actually works internally - what pathways they create to read or calculate or remember facts or learn new ideas. But we can certainly see the effects of stress on children's performance:  Moira and I see it when children are playing the piano and have 'to perform' for mum/dad/sibling...if they're not ready and not trained in performing, the stress is palpable. The performance is stiff and they often give up piano.

No big deal, you may say...piano's a luxury. Hmm, but children will similarly give up reading, numeracy, history, art...if there's stress involved.

The pain for people showing dyslexic symptoms is certainly real and not to be dismissed. When we are stressed, we do not perform well until our actions have been internalised and we can perform under any conditions. That's what basic drill in the army is all about - drill until you can do the task without thought; that's what happens when we learn to drive - we internalise the skill. That's what we want when it comes to reading ... but if a child is caught up in stress and cannot think, a vicious cycle is created that requires a lot of patience and love and care to help them through it. Stress kills motivation and creates mental blocks. Mental blocks create frustration and stress and so it goes on until the cycle is broken.

Where there is a struggle, there is a struggle: and that, when appropriate and harnessed to a motivation to succeed or to improve, needs our attention (and relevant professional intervention) whatever the subject or skill.

If your child isn't reading as much - ask, according to what scale, or what social comparisons are being made...but also look carefully at what is attracting your child's attention: tv, games console, iPhone, iPad...

Read to them instead of worrying that they're not doing their three pages a night. (A bit like asking us to fill in a tax return nightly...stressful! Unless you're an accountant trained and motivated and passionate about it...)

Don't compare. Don't let others compare. Don't use any labels. See a relative weakness as an opportunity to work harder and learn more. Every weakness is an opportunity.

It can take several years to master a skill. Does it matter if some children take longer? If you think so, why do you think so? On what grounds and standards are we measuring performance?

There are some excellent resources for helping dyslexic symptoms which I have used in my practice, but really the best we can do is be patient, encourage a reading culture around us by pulling the plug on all screen time stuff, leave books about, be patient even more, don't compare, and oh, and keep the kids off sugar!

Let's finish with Einstein: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Resources I use that have been incredibly helpful with pupils of all ages:

Selective Attention - when we look do we really see what is there?

As a philosopher and a tutor engaged in working with forty students or so of differing abilities, I am interested in how we look at things as well as how we may help people.

Close your eyes and think of the colour blue.

When you open them, psychologists tell us - and you can test this on yourself - you will see many incidences of blue in your environment. It is as if the blue things suddenly leap up for our attention, waving little flags to our consciousness.

You can try this for yourself with varying objects. You buy a green sports car - and then you spot them all over the place. You are interested in an empty shop for your business, and when your attention turns to do a reccy, there they are. All waiting for you - been there all along.

But it's not just physical entities we see more of when we turn our attention their way: it's also qualitative aspects - red is a quality, so too is anger or frustration. In the 1930s, American psychiatrists began exploring schizophrenia and to their delight (perhaps...), the numbers of schizophrenics found in their institutions jumped over the next two decades. However, UK institutions reported a similar percentage of patients displaying the symptoms, which leads to a debate (our A-level psychology students have to note) about what was going on: did more Americans become schizophrenic over the following twenty years, or were the doctors becoming selectively attentive and therefore found it in more people? At the same time, incidentally, the Yanks were hunting commies in all areas of life, and, tragically for the victims, finding them.

The problem.

Is it the case that when we're looking, we begin to fit more individuals into the category we're using, because we now know what we are looking for?

Or is it the case that we are squashing them in to our worldview as it were - seeing things that are not 'really' there but which fit out criteria?

(One of my teachers says, regarding stock market investments, if you do not see the set up for the trade in the first few seconds, then it isn't there - if you keep looking, you will see things that are not there, and you'll lose money. Yep, been there!)

This is what psychologists call selective attention: we can point to X and say, X! and you'll look, then look harder, and say, ah, that's what you mean by X! I really do see it!

I can show you a series of random dots and say, do you see the fox therein? And suddenly, you see the fox! Just as we see the plough in ursa major, or the face of the man in the moon. We find patterns...we make patterns. Illusions are a great way of examining our ability to perceive one thing and then another - or just be thoroughly bemused by what we see (as in the work of Escher).

If we look hard enough we begin to see. Or we look hard enough and we miss other things.

But then again, we often miss other things - if you've not seen this and related videos, check it out.

The provocation?

But that doesn't mean to say that what we are 'seeing' does exist.

Let that sink in.

Humans have often mistaken the world around them because of their thinking (think of ideological or religious crusades).

That's what the psychology of selective analysis about. It's not just about focusing on what exists, it's about seeing things that don't exist and about not seeing things that do exist (or change).

The misuse of knowledge has created witch hunts in our history (Cf: Monty Python's "She's a witch sketch!") and condemned millions to racial or gender or national stereotyping. And where has that got us but war and tension?

Turning to educational matters...

If I am told to look for patterns in children's academic behaviour, I will find them. If I am paid to find patterns in children's academic behaviour, I will be sure to justify my salary and find more instances...

I meet plenty of students who have been labelled as suffering from some form of dys-function, but
I prefer not to read teachers' reports unless there is something 'big' going on that we can help the student with. I prefer to withhold labelling until I balance the evidence and start looking for clues. Doctors - perhaps some should be reminded - are first and foremost teachers: that is what 'doctor' means - and that the first rule of medicine is first do nothing. Do not rush in with a label, that is. Hippocrates knew what harm it could cause.

This does not mean that we do not search, or avoid trying to guide our thinking and observations. For instance, currently, I'm clocking the use of printed writing and the correlation with poor spelling.

My interest comes from a theory that using cursive writing helps iron out many spelling issues. I like the theory, so I have a disposition to find what I'm looking for, which means that I am likely to reject the contradictions - no, he doesn't fit the bill, but this one! Ahah! Poor spelling and a printer of letters - gotcha!

Knowing the human disposition to see things that are not there, I am aware that I may be ignoring cases of pupils who can spell perfectly well but who struggle to join up their letters. So I have to maintain a sceptical vigilance and look for the outliers as well as those who 'fit' the thesis. Ultimately, though, I'm keen to help students improve their spelling - to take note of their errors and to make corrections.

But this informal research I'm conducting is motivated by a deeper and more controversial issue: what is the nature o f dyslexia? I could transplant other syndromes the modern educational world has cast our way to focus our concerns - ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, etc. The phenomena differ, but how we look at the issue can to some extent be predetermined by the patterns we're looking for, by what we're told to look for. And we need to guard ourselves against taking the easy path - symptom, diagnose, prescription...but if the symptom creates a debilitating label that assumes the mind is incapable of change, we may be causing harm.

I'm gathering more thoughts on dyslexia for the next article - any comments very welcome!

Meanwhile, here are some excellent resources to help those struggling with spelling and reading issues:

List, plan, goal and other four letter words.

If we are to succeed we need a PLAN. Uh, four letter word - I see the reaction on pupils' faces as soon as the word plan is mentioned!

You must plan this essay, make a plan, where's your plan...comments we've all heard, but so often they remain disconnected from what we're doing or from the apparent mystery of writing and living that we ignore them.

And then we wonder why things did not turn out as they did.

A plan is a vital important of civilised life. The emphasis is on the word vital. Without a plan we are rudderless and adrift a sea of temptations and then we wonder, after ten years have passed, what have we actually got done?

But what is a plan?

A plan begins with a goal. A goal is what you want to achieve.

I'm getting a few pupils and young adults I work with to write out what they want to do in life. Some of my younger clients are at a loss as to what they want to do, so we begin with the basics - where do you want to go, what things do you want to have, where do you want to live, what kind of car do you want to drive, what kind of partner do you want, how much money do you want in your bank account by the age of 30?

A list is then forthcoming - sometimes there are repetitions which are interesting to the client: one twenty year old repeated five times the desire to start a family! Something on his mind indeed. Another, a 16 year old, struggled to identify anything to aim for ... until we lighted upon a Mini Classic. Great! It's a start.

Then we look at the items on the list and go through each one at a time and analysing them according to SMART targets - are they SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ATTAINABLE, RELEVANT, and TIME CONSTRAINED?

For instance, when do you want the Mini by? Let's put a date on it - 18 years of age, so February 2017 let's say. Is it measurable and attainable? Let's look at the price - £12,000. Hmm, can you save that by 2017? Current earnings...zero. Ah, may be unattainable until you start earning. Okay, we may have to put the date back by a year or until we get some idea of how much money you can put aside for it. Otherwise, you could trade cheaper cars, flipping them for a profit until you make enough to buy the dream! Relevant - sure, he wants to be a mechanic.

So with some adjustments, the plan's now set but to get it going requires ACTION.

Once we have a method - say, saving £300 a month from savings for the holiday we want next year, then we must do as much as we can to automate the plan. In the case of putting money aside, you just need to set up a standing order from a checking account to pay into a savings account. Job done.

But if it's a more protracted goal requiring CONCERTED EFFORT and DISCIPLINE as well as ACTION then we need another four letter word. LIST

List what you need to do to achieve you goal. Break it down into monthly, weekly, and daily targets. Print of a sheet that you leave by your phone or computer so you can tick off what you need to do daily. That's how I get to write three blogs a week and work on a novel too.

And what's amazing about ticking off the list, daily, is that you feel better, you feel as if you're on track and ... the secret ... you get everything done much quicker! As I mentioned in a previous post, you can time yourself and see if you can beat your daily averages just to spur you on!

And as things get done quicker, you free up more time for other things you'd like to get done. More values and goals can then be entered onto the list.

Since starting my daily tasks list, I've managed to add in three other things to do each day, including, recently, an hour's daily tuition with my older son. (And I'm still on top of the ironing and banking duties I do each day!)

I feel good, feel as if I'm getting somewhere, have good targets ... and this is also affecting how I think about other issues in life too. Is X part of the plan? If not, why am I doing it? Can I delegate it if it does? As an adult who is stretched by many distractions - automating many of them so they become daily habits - has enabled me to concentrate on thinking about the deeper values that I want to secure and enjoy. It also keeps me from being distracted by the non-essentials.

So when I sit down with a pupil and we sketch out a plan for an essay, I explain how this relates to their life - about how, if we automate the plan (thesis, exposition, conclusion trio) then that frees our minds up to write more creatively ... and frees our time up to live more creatively when we apply it to the bigger picture of our life.

Peace and prosperity,
Alex

ECONOMICS Work and Leisure commentary - some women returning to child care duties

A simple economic narrative as reported in The Telegraph: there has been a 10% drop in high income earning women using child care in preference for staying at home with children.

This was prompted by the elimination of child care subsidies by the UK government for parents who fall into the 40% tax bracket. However, the number of children being placed in child care has risen as the the government has been encouraging lower earners to put their kids into institutional care instead of keeping them in the family.

Nonetheless, 6.1 million children are put into child care facilities, whose costs have fallen in real terms.

Okay, there are a few strands to pick up here using basic economics.

Firstly, there is a straight forward disincentive to put children into child care when the subsidy has been removed. This applies to only those families in which one or both parents pay over 40% tax on their pay. For the student of economics this means showing a drop in demand for child care either on a single graph or on two separate graphs - one for parents whose income attracts 40% tax and one for parents whose income remains below 40% tax. A shift in demand to the left would then suffice.

However, the demand for childcare has been steadily rising over time - which analysts note is stemming mainly from the relatively poorer but larger section of the community who pay less than 40% tax. So on the second diagram, you would show an shift in demand to the right.

In both cases, you would note that the change in demand has - at this stage in the analysis - been produced by the use of subsidy in the case of demand growth and the dropping of the subsidy in the case of demand falling.

But there' s more to the story. The survey indicates that it is not so much the price effect that is encouraging 40% + tax paying mothers to relinquish work in favour of looking after their own children but a change in preferences. That is, from basic economic concepts, the tastes and fashions for childcare have changed in this relatively wealthier market. There may be many reasons for this of course (such as studies showing children in child care to be more stressed than those who remain in the family environment) - but we can summarise it as a change in taste. On the diagram, demand thus drops to the left.

Two effective reasons therefore combine: a drop in the subsidy provided to parents to put their children into institutional care and a change in preferences in favour of home care: demand shifts to the right.

On the supply side, the article notes that costs for providing facilities have fallen. This would shift the supply curve to the right, all things being equal. Institutionally provided care has been seen to stabilise after years of increases, the articles note; however, the cost of  nannying services has also jumped according to the BBC. This could mean that some of the 40% tax paying mothers/parents are turning to one-to-one help for their parenting instead of using institutional services. That is, nannying is acting as a substitute - its demand curve shifts to the right for nannies as parents move out of buying childcare places in nurseries etc.

So while some of the mothers in the higher tax brackets are choosing to stay at home (perhaps those marginally within the higher tax bracket) others seem to be shifting their purchases to professional or informal care providers.