Saturday, May 28, 2011

Dyscalculia

In typical breathless fashion we are told that "Students who struggle with math may have a neurocognitive disorder called dyscalculia". There's even a research paper written about it (be still, my beating heart!).

They use MRI studies of the brains of people doing or struggling with math, and find differences. Given how plastic the brain is, it would hardly be a surprise to find differences between people who have trained pathways working and those who don't.

Seriously--why must the first impulse on discovering something in the human condition be to medicalize it? It seems positively diabolic--any weakness means you must be handed over to the doctors who, even if they cannot cure, will at least charge.

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