Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 3

You Are Being ‘Taught’, or the Sky Is the Limit!

To discuss the study of foreign languages, the topic of language classes cannot be overlooked. These courses are characterised by small groups under the direction of an instructor. In essence, the basic methodology (forgive me for using this word; I’ve never liked it, either) in these courses differs little from those used in the school system, with the exception that attendance is voluntary and paid for. In addition, the students are generally adults and there by choice, which gives the course its own particular flavour. It seems to me that the flavour is peculiar enough to demand a deeper look.

You have likely seen ads posted around city centres and universities or on the Internet and in newspapers. These ads likely made a significant impression on you, and the cost didn’t seem to be very burdensome. The number of times the class meets each week didn’t seem too burdensome, either—once or twice a week. You made the decision and started going to the classes.

You felt pretty good telling your relatives and friends about your decision. As expected, your decision was met with approving glances, exclamations, and other pleasant emanations. Your status in society was significantly strengthened.

In the proper column of the mental report card, the important section on social interaction—under the title of ‘Good Intentions and Effort’ under your name—appears the mandatory checkmark. Your self-esteem is fortified. Within your chest rose that coveted warm feeling of practically having already fulfilled your task. After all, the difficult decision to learn a foreign language is in itself worthy of the highest respect. This universal truth is unquestionably accepted by all players in the game; isn’t that true, my respectable friend, filled with the highest intentions?

Armed with these very intentions, you show up once or twice a week to a somewhat cosy classroom filled with rows of desks and chairs. Hanging on the walls are grammar charts, fire-escape instructions, and some other visual propaganda designed to pour incessantly all kinds of knowledge of noun cases and conjugations into your brain. You sit at one of the desks—I usually chose one toward the back of the class—and attentively gaze at the blackboard and the instructor.

Immediately, you are filled with respect for this instructor since he knows various words that are unknown to you and he’s dressed in a suit and tie (about the instructors decked out in mini-skirts and half-transparent blouses, we will prudently be silent). Occasionally, your instructor will have a beard or wear glasses, which adds another level of sophistication to your lessons.

The instructor struts in front of the board speaking out words of wisdom and writes them out on the board for your optimal learning. You listen with the utmost attention, watch and try to understand, and remember it all. The especially diligent students even make detailed notes. (I swear, in the beginning, I also sinned in this manner, but only in the beginning!)

From time to time, the all-knowing instructor turns to the group and asks if everything is clear and understood. The answer is usually just silence, but sometimes, out of the 20–30 fairly tense students sitting at their desks, someone (like me, sitting in the back row—always the back row!) ventures to say that some portion of the lesson isn’t that clear. The wise instructor firmly but tenderly (ever so tenderly!), gazes at the inquirer, who is now, oddly enough, experiencing a feeling of guilt, and condescendingly repeats the unclear part of the lesson. He asks again if everything is clear and understood. The answer at this point is usually dead silence. The instructor adjusts his glasses in a distinguished manner and continues his lesson, so rudely interrupted by our not-so-bright student.

When a similar situation arises and the slow student again starts in with his questions, showing his inability to master the material at the same pace of his classmates, the instructor fixes his eyes on the transgressor with a bit less tenderness. All the same, he repeats the material, displaying his deep knowledge of the subject and simultaneously revealing his unsurpassed angelic patience.

The slow student (and not he alone) is not feeling quite so cosy anymore and even begins to cringe under the wise gaze of the all-knowing instructor. In addition, he now feels the silent condemnation of the rest of the group who, of course, perfectly grasps the material and can’t wait to get going again with the instructor at the pace of a supersonic steam locomotive. These irrelevant questions are just a hindrance to our instructor-engineer guiding his speeding, red-hot engine into that crimson language sunset beyond the clouds.

On another day, during a lesson on a new theme (practically every day is a new ‘theme’), the question once again is put forth, ‘Is everything clear?’ This time, it is asked directly to the slow and obviously mentally challenged student. This time, everything is clear. Having gained this small but vitally important victory for the successful forward movement of the smoke-belching locomotive... pardon, lesson... the instructor continues on, picking up the pace, heading ever deeper into the labyrinth of declensions, suffixes, cases, and weak predicates. So little time, so many suffixes and prefixes!

You diligently keep attending the lessons and even complete the homework—all those exercises, answering questions, cramming irregular verbs and participles and gerunds that inevitably sprout from these verbs. The instructor checks your homework and occasionally praises you, which is quite pleasant. Your self-esteem rises. You compare your success with the success of your classmates. Your success is no worse than theirs and, in some areas, even better.

Weeks turn into months, and the course is progressing well. However, you’re starting to notice though that your group is gradually thinning out. One student has a business trip that can’t be postponed, another becomes ill, another buys a boat that takes up all his time, another experiences family issues, and another gets a promotion at work. It turns out that people have many important things going on in life, and learning a foreign language is not at the top of the list.

Strangely enough, our slow student sitting in the back row didn’t join the ranks of the quitters (which you undoubtedly expected!) but continues to show up for class. Of course, he’s not asking any more questions and is completely lost on his homework. The instructor has even given up on checking his homework, figuring it to be a hopeless endeavour. Whatever self-esteem our dunce once had is now completely gone. What is he thinking of!?

Then your turn comes—you get the flu. It’s winter, and there is nothing you can do about it. It could happen to anyone. You are seriously ill, and you aren’t able to go to class. Your relatives, friends and associates totally understand; one’s health is much more important than any language course, especially as it’s only a month or so until the end of your course, and in addition, you can always take the course again next year.

You come out of the game with no loss to your status in society or self-esteem. If not strengthened, then at least there was no significant damage to it since the conditions were clearly stronger than you, and it would have been completely unreasonable to get upset about it. You displayed strength of character and at the same time showed your flexibility, so necessary in these complex times. And what could be more important than such satisfaction?

But what about the foreign language? What foreign language? Oh, yeah! The language! As far as the foreign language goes, without a doubt, you learned many new and interesting things; you met and spent time with new and interesting friends. You became acquainted with a wise and outstanding instructor who knows so many complicated concepts about gerunds, predicate phrases, and indirect speech, so important for a correct understanding of the processes that take place every day in a foreign language.

Overall, your course turned out successful. Hmmm… maybe not.

[Via Language Tai-chi, or You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language, by Nikolay Zamyatkin]


Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 1

Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 2

Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 2

Where To Begin, or Information Not For Idiots

Where, then, does one begin in studying a foreign language? First and most important, you must have a strong desire to teach yourself a foreign language.

I will now explain what it means to have a strong desire to teach yourself a foreign language. It’s by no means a mechanical execution of a predetermined number of exercises a day with one eye glued to the television while listening to the latest pop music on your iPod—even if the music is in the foreign language you’re studying! It’s not experiencing a tight knot in your stomach that appears when you realize you have to study today. It’s not constantly glancing at the clock with self-pity over how slowly time seems to pass when you ‘courageously’ study your foreign language. It’s not a sigh of relief breaking forth from your suffering soul when you gladly slam shut your loathed foreign language textbook.

If this is what’s happening to you, then please cease wasting your limited, precious time on this Earth and take up a more peaceful and pleasant task—something like breeding rabbits for meat, jogging, dancing cha-cha, studying yoga, or some other fine activity. The study of a foreign language should stir in you positive emotions and a pleasant longing. Without these feelings, you will wander in despair down a dusty road to nowhere for months and years.

I repeat and will continue to repeat until it is fully grasped by all interested parties, including you, my friend: it is impossible to overemphasize that you need to recognise that only you can teach yourself a foreign language. And by the way, that goes for every subject you may tackle—no one, not even someone who has three doctorates in some science or other, can really teach you anything. Until you grasp this, you will never master a foreign language. Give up on thinking that language study has to do with finding a ‘unique’ course that is tailored just for you or finding the most recent scientific insights on education. Give up on thinking that you will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief, kick back in a comfortable armchair and say, ‘Ah, now teach me! Come on, chaps, show me that I didn’t waste my money!’ As long as this draining and paralyzing mirage still resides somewhere deep within you, you will never master a foreign language. Never!

The second thing to realize will likely be a surprise to you (though a pleasant surprise): you must stop thinking that you’re an idiot.

I bravely assert, in the most decisive way, that you are not an idiot! What? You didn’t think you were an idiot, even without my assertions? I assure you that you did think that and you still do! You couldn’t feel otherwise. Our ability to master a foreign language is directly tied to the reality of being products of our school system. For many years, while at your most impressionable age, it was persistently instilled in you by the best methodology that, in the strength of your natural idiocy, you are not capable of learning a foreign language. And you, my poor, cruelly deceived reader, have become so accustomed to this idea that you have already forgotten that you think this way. The small child deep within you, frightened for years by teachers, could not think differently.

So now, you and the child within can confidently rejoice: at a minimum, you have an average ability to learn a foreign language. And with a certain amount of self-discipline and a capacity for hard work, you are capable of learning one, two or three (would you need more?) languages.

Then again, it’s very likely that your intellectual capabilities are higher than average, and you of course already know that this can be quite useful to learning something, including a foreign language.

You are likely feeling an urge right now to scream out, right here in the bookstore, ‘But Why!? Why when I was in school did they…?!’ There are weighty reasons for this, but your capability to learn a foreign language is not tied up in those reasons. Let me assure you of this! The main cause of this has to do with the dishonesty of the system, when all of us, teachers and students alike, are placed into conditions in which a realistic mastering of a foreign language is simply not possible; no matter how well it’s packaged by the players of this game. The very format of instruction in a foreign language in our schools doesn’t allow for a positive end result.

It would be like you trying to learn to swim, and from time to time, you are brought to an old rusty bathtub, on the bottom of which is a couple of inches of cloudy water. You can listen for years and decades to various lectures about the properties of this water and even be told to go down and touch the water or put your foot in it, all to ‘learn’ how to swim. For your efforts and enthusiasm, you receive more or less comforting grades. The whole process depends upon the teacher’s ability to entertain his students and keep them interested, but it is all in vain in terms of teaching you how to swim. Even if they took radical measures by occasionally cleaning the bathtub, adding a few of inches of water and launching a couple of rubber ducks or toy boats, it would still be in vain.

School students don’t understand this, although the majority of them intuitively know that something is not quite right, that ‘there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.’ Regardless of their initial honest efforts to follow the algorithm given to them in school for studying a foreign language, they hit a brick wall. Though their life experience is somewhat limited, their intuition tells them that honest labour should bring forth at least some fruit or at least some noticeable results, some forward movement. But in the case of foreign languages, their labour seems to bring forth nothing but frustration and a feeling of exhaustion, like they have been tramping through sticky clay.

Students are unable to blame the system for their misfortunes, which for them has always been a system beyond criticism, created by those who, in the eyes of children, are demigods who are incapable of consciously deceiving them, so they naturally end up blaming themselves, secretly or openly encouraged in this by their teachers. This murky and formless sense of guilt develops through the early years—fruitless, painful school years—and then turns into a firm conviction that most will never escape: ‘I am guilty! It’s my stupidity! I am incapable!’

This is precisely what takes place: subdued by the merciless pressure of the system, defenceless children blame themselves for all of it. The years pass by, those glorified early years of school, and all the while, the bright, wide-open eyes of expectant, trusting children begin to fog over with a lacklustre film of mistrust toward the school system and their teachers. The first sprouts of cynicism sink their poisonous roots into their little and still passionate hearts.

Teachers take part in this ugly game for various reasons. Many do not understand what’s going on due to their own fallibility (can you imagine that?!) and ineptness. Many have thrown up their hands in defeat and voluntarily become part of this corrupt system. They have given themselves up to the murky waves of this all-consuming conformity. For whatever reason, they never confess this to their pupils, even if they do understand that it’s not the idiocy of the children that’s to blame but the dishonest conduct of the adults.

In addition, the situation, which is already unpleasant for all players of the game, gets even worse with teachers’ painful realisation of their own inferiority; many teachers show low language proficiency in both speaking and listening, and for some of them, the ability to communicate in a foreign language is practically non-existent. Haunted by the fear that their ineptness will be publicly and embarrassingly revealed, they subconsciously concentrate on fields that are less dangerous, such as grammar and reading. These are the margins within which teachers feel sufficiently comfortable and confident, ruthlessly nipping in the bud any attempt of a student to venture out.

Some teachers, however, break through with a protest and let out a sigh, filled mainly with self-pity and regret for years wasted on school. At these times, they say something vague—sometimes even to students in classrooms—that we must study a foreign language in a different way, that a rusty bathtub with a little puddle of dirty water on the bottom is not a place where one can learn how to swim. These honest impulses, however, are quickly bottled up by those who let them out of the bag: ‘What can we do? Such is life! Everybody does it!’ and so the daily lie goes on and on, soon turning into teachers’ natural habitat, away from which they feel about as comfortable as a fish on a heated frying pan.

For the rest of your life, you—all of us, as a matter of fact, with the exception of a lucky few—are pursued by a firm belief that, in the field of studying foreign languages, you are a complete and utter idiot—this being the highest achievement of our school system.

Thus, the quicksand of explicit lies and half-truths sprinkled with ‘good intentions’ sucks both teachers and students in, making it hard to distinguish which are the real victims—children or adults. Personally, my heart goes out to the children, although I do understand the situation of the teachers. However, unlike adults, children don’t have a choice: a teacher has the choice to quit and become anything from a janitor to a philosophical taxi driver to a poetic farmer or a Buddhist monk, but a poor school child has nowhere to go. A school student is a dependent creature, chained to his loathed desk by invisible but nonetheless solid, bonds. He perishes every day attempting to storm the unreachable heights of a foreign language while a ruthless teacher-general keeps sending him, armed with nothing but a puny pen, into head-on attacks against the heavy artillery of modal verbs, the barbed wire of past tenses, and the steel barriers of impersonal constructions. Let us bow our heads in memory of those fallen in this unequal fight…

Can the pointless, unimaginative head-on attack on a foreign language be the one and only strategy?

No, it cannot, and it is not. Is it possible that you, my friend, could take the heights of a foreign language and sit on the top of this stronghold, letting your feet dangle, glancing down victoriously?

Yes, it is. How can it be done? Read this book carefully. Smile and frown together with the author and at the author (well, who knows, why not?). Rebel against the insolence and paradoxes of his statements! Be sceptical. Don’t just take his word for it. Think. Then think some more. Test on yourself the statements and guidelines contained in this book. Become sure of their correctness and effectiveness. Make this book your Linguistic Bible and your Foreign Language Action Manual. You will be destined for success…

[Via Language Tai-chi, or You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language, by Nikolay Zamyatkin]


Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 1

Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 1

No One Can Teach You? So Teach Yourself!

My dear reader, likely it was the title of this book that caught your attention. How could it not? Among the heaps of multi-coloured courses, textbooks, books and booklets promising to teach you all of the languages of the world in a couple of months (or even a couple of weeks) in a pleasant and stress-free environment, this title undoubtedly appeared to you as a less-than-pleasant surprise. That brings me pleasure. Many surprises of this nature await you in the pages of this book. Now don't rush into despair and begin trampling this treatise in rage right here and now as if it is some poisonous and dangerous insect. That’s unnecessary for one simple reason.

The claim that it's impossible for you to be taught a foreign language is an incontestable and indisputable truth, as true as the sun rising in the morning, yet you surely can learn a foreign language. That is, you can teach yourself!

A fundamental difference exists between these two notions. No one, under any conditions, is able to teach you a foreign language, but teaching yourself (and by no means should we exclude the use of competent resources for assistance)? That you can do!

A recognition of this ancient yet cornerstone truth is the key to the successful mastery of a foreign language or, if you like, a dozen foreign languages.

Let's return to our multi-coloured fallow ground of courses and aids for the study of foreign languages, with their loud—at times high-pitched—promises of ‘heavenly pleasures’ with minimal effort from you in using these very aids. ’Buy us! We are shiny and beautiful! Within our pages are beautiful glossy pictures! Within our pages are secret signals, thanks to which in you will become a superpolymegalinguist in no time at all!’ What do these books and aids all have in common? A dose of howling shamelessness and lack of honesty! By their appearance and manner, they are reminiscent of a loose woman of low morals persistently offering you her ‘faithful and incomparable love’ for sale right here on this very street corner.

As deplorable as it may be, this is exactly the way things are. I have yet to see one foreign language course (including, by the way, some very good ones), that is absolutely honest, without allusions and verbal fog, that directly explains what the study of a foreign language really is. We are given either no explanation at all or we are given a confused, incomprehensible offer to execute some vague instructions, leading to many years of fruitless wandering in an impassable maze of a strange language. I'm not even talking about the laughable ‘textbooks’ attempting to teach you a language in three minutes a day. These are beyond the pale!

My fellow seekers of linguistic wisdom! My brethren! It’s to you I appeal! To try studying a foreign language in only three minutes a day is as easy as trying to cross a stormy ocean in an empty sardine can. Trust me—someone who has graduated from a language institute, studied languages independently, worked as a translator for many years, and taught languages to American Green Berets, military intelligence, National Guardsmen, and employees of the CIA and NSA, someone who has worked for some years at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey—one of the largest and most prestigious teaching institutions of its kind in the world.

Trust me—a specialist in the realm of studying foreign languages. Miracles here are extremely rare— though in principle possible—but don’t expect them to happen to you! Don’t place your hope in miracles here. Intense and long hours of effort await you, but you will be rewarded according to your labour. Instead of a being conscious of growing failure and the bitterness of defeat, you will be rewarded with the sweet taste of well-earned victory! The things that taste sweet in life are those earned by overcoming obstacles and difficulties, not those that effortlessly fall into our laps.

Let us go back to the manuals and textbooks that bookstores have been flooded with in the last few decades. By no means do I assert that all of these textbooks and courses are completely, one hundred percent useless and inadequate. Quite often, they contain some fair and sometimes even good components.

However, without a clear understanding of the process’ strategy and precise, unambiguous instructions for the execution of these supplementary components—they can lose a significant share of their usefulness and even become harmful. It is similar to thinking that tea is good for you but, for whatever reason, being unaware of how it has to be consumed, assuming that chewing dry tea leaves with boiling water poured into your mouth as a chaser will benefit your health. Or if someone told you that, to make a stew you need meat, potatoes, and carrots, forgetting to say that you will also need water, salt, and other key ingredients and, most importantly, ’forgetting’ to mention such a thing as cooking itself, that is, putting the pot on a burner. Would you be satisfied with such minimalistic stew put together by this short-version recipe?

I’ll repeat myself: I have never come across any thorough and completely honest instructions on how to use any foreign language manual—the kind of instructions that would eliminate any two- or three- fold interpretations and be understood by someone without a degree in linguistics. Hypothetically, I allow the possibility of the existence of such instructions, as I do not exclude the possibility of extra- terrestrial life, or for example, a Bigfoot, but I have yet to encounter either.

And even if you were able to find the sought-for ‘ideal’ textbook, you should not forget for one second that your goal is not to study a textbook. Your goal is to study a language! Neither effort is tantamount to the other. You can study from cover to cover as many wonderful textbooks with pretty pictures and fine print as you wish without moving an inch toward speaking the desired foreign language. Try to keep that in mind, my—I hope still intrigued—friend.

All of this is precisely what inspired me to write this treatise. I realized that, unfortunately, no one else would take on this work. Years and decades passed, but my reverent and immeasurably wiser colleagues were not rushing to do it, being engaged with other, obviously more important and interesting endeavours.

Somehow or other I ceased waiting for a favour from above, diligently sharpened my trusty old pencil, pondered for a minute or two looking out of my window at a blooming apple tree, gathered my thoughts, took a deep breath, and decided to take on this pleasant and simple task.

In this work, I intend to convey the complete truth on studying a language. I will uncover all secrets, tear off all the covers, and once and for all make the study of a foreign language understandable, logical, and simple. Or, rather, relatively simple. Notice, my dear friend and reader, that I did not say ‘easy’ since I do not want to, nor will I deceive you; the study of a foreign language cannot be easy. Only a fool or a liar would claim the opposite, whatever shiny packaging and promising titles he may hide behind.

And with that…

[Via Language Tai-chi, or You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language, by Nikolay Zamyatkin]

13 Simple Facts about English

1. The most common letter in English is e.

2. The most common vowel in English is e, followed by a.

3. The most common consonant in English is r, followed by t.

4. Only two English words in current use end in -gry. They are angry and hungry.

5. The word bookkeeper is the only unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters.
 
6. More English words begin with the letter s than with any other letter.

7. The word uncopyrightable is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.

8. The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This sentence is often used to test typewriters or keyboards.

9. The only word in English that ends with the letters -mt is dreamt. 

10. The shortest complete sentence in English is: I am

11. We pronounce the combination ough in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.
 
12. The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is rhythm.

13. There are only 4 English words in common use ending in -dous: hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.

Obesity Is Not Disease

‘Well, what diets have you tried so far?’ asked the GP, flicking through the patient’s notes. I was an innocent trainee doctor on my general practice placement at the time and watched the interaction carefully, sensing a row was about to ensue. ‘Look, I don’t want to go on a diet, I want you to prescribe me these,’ snapped the patient, bringing out a neatly folded page she had torn out of a magazine. The GP, rolling his eyes at me, took the paper but didn’t read it. I suspected he’d read it before. This was yet another example of what’s becoming a very British epidemic: obesity being self-diagnosed as disease.

The doctor attempted to explain that tablets really aren’t suitable in her case. As well as having some potentially nasty side effects, they’re expensive to prescribe, and don’t offer a long-term solution. This was clearly not what the woman wanted to hear. ‘Fine then, don’t help me, see if I care. I’ll get my sister to get them off her GP — he gives her whatever she wants’; and she stormed out. It struck me as bizarre that while some people using the NHS are dangerously malnourished, other people are desperate to take tablets to ensure that their food passes through their body unabsorbed, while the taxpayer foots the bill.

It happens all the time. The patients who are not interested in changing their diet in any way, demanding to have their cake, eat it and then pop a pill so that the calories never touch their waistline. And as a result, Britain now combines austerity with obesity. The majority of us are now overweight or obese — a third of children are considered too heavy. It costs an extra £5 billion a year, and 300 hospital admissions a day are directly due to obesity. To pick up the newspapers is to witness a country adjusting itself to losing a national battle of the bulge.

Take the East Midlands Ambulance Service. It emerged this week that it has been picking up so many fat patients — weighing in excess of the 28-stone maximum — that it needs a new fleet. It has, hitherto, been struggling along with just one ambulance for fatties (a ‘bariatric’ vehicle), but now thinks all 272 of its ambulances need to be upgraded with double-wide stretchers for patients who (it says) can weigh in at 55 stone. The plan will cost £27 million.

Once the obese patient is in hospital, a whole new set of equipment is required: reinforced operating tables, sturdier trollies, longer needles and even wider MRI scanners. There is a great demand for bariatric surgeons. One of them, Sally Norton, recently wrote in the Royal College of Surgeons’ house journal that without special equipment for the obese, there may be ‘enquiries into the potential use of veterinary or zoological scanners, with resultant loss of dignity for the patient’. There is a cost to all this: in the kit, and in operations like gastric bypass operations, which have increased sevenfold over the last seven years.

Moving obese patients out of their house can be too difficult for the NHS. Recently the fire service had to demolish two walls of a house in south Wales so that a 63-stone teenager could be taken to hospital. This required more than 40 emergency service workers at an estimated cost of £100,000. Over the past five years, fire services have been called to more than 2,700 incidents to assist ‘severely obese’ people, including some who had got stuck in the bath. Rescuing fatties is now a routine operation, with its own entry in the Fire Brigade incident reporting system (filed under ‘bariatric persons’).

So what to do? The government spends money asking us to eat ‘five a day’ fruit and veg, but it seems to have no effect. Nottingham, the fattest region in Britain, recently decided to spend £500,000 on replacing pavements in areas with particularly fat pedestrians, to try and encourage people to walk more. Our landscape is being, quite literally, reshaped in order to accommodate the obese. In the past few years, we have moved from being outraged about the epidemic to just planning around it. Like a middle-aged man deciding to eat what he wants and let himself go, Britain is pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and heading to the fridge.

It need not be this way. For too long, my fellow doctors have pussyfooted around their obese patients, too scared to confront the, er, elephant in the room. They don’t want to cause offence. Unbelievably, draft guidelines announced last year by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence and Health (Nice) suggested that doctors should even avoid the use of the term ‘obese’ for fear that larger patients might be upset. Instead, Nice recommended advising corpulent patients that they should seek a ‘healthier weight’.

But nice euphemisms mean that people don’t confront reality. I’m not going to stop diagnosing cancer just because people don’t like hearing the dreaded word. So why should it be different when informing people that they are obese? Sometimes morbidly so. What Nice is delicately skirting round is what many doctors, nurses and dieticians will confirm: people don’t like being told that they are overweight, even if it’s objectively clearly the case. And by pretending that this is a disease, the doctors are making it even worse.

There’s something comforting about blaming obesity on genes. It enables people to relinquish responsibility for their weight, which can be seen as outside their control. It’s nothing new, either. Years ago, fat people blamed their ‘glands’. When I started medical school, I patiently waited for us to be taught about these magical ‘glands’ that made people fat. I’m still waiting. Even when people have problems with an underactive thyroid, which can slow the metabolism and result in weight gain, this can be treated with thyroid replacement tablets and the metabolism returns to normal. As a rule, however, fat people have one thing in common: they eat more than they need to.

Certainly some people metabolise food at a different rate to others, meaning they are more likely to lay down fat stores than other people. But this is a reason to eat less, not to become fat. You cannot get away from the basic biology of the human body — fat is simply stored excess energy, and weight gain is only possible when the total amount of energy consumed exceeds the total amount of energy expended. Even those who have a genetic predisposition to become fat are not slaves to their DNA.

An in-depth study published last year, which looked at the genes of more than 20,000 people and was conducted at the Medical Research Council’s epidemiology unit in Cambridge, found some people are predisposed to be overweight. But an active lifestyle and reducing food intake can counteract that. Simple. While some will be annoyed by this research, I find it empowering. The idea that our genes control us is profoundly depressing. After all, there is more to being human than a few strands of DNA.

The rate of people considered clinically obese has risen from around 1 to 2 per cent of the population in the 1960s to over 25 per cent now. Why? A simple answer would be lifestyle, but it’s actually a little more complicated. A fascinating survey conducted by the Department of Health compared data collected from 1967 and 2010. It showed that, while people back then were slimmer, they ate fattier foods and had access to far fewer gyms. We eat better now, we work out more. But we live relatively sedentary lives. Only three out of ten households had a car then, compared to seven out of ten now. While 75 per cent of people walked for at least half an hour a day in the 1960s, this is only about 40 per cent now.

What really stands out, more than the lifestyle differences, is the sharp contrast in the attitudes towards obesity between the two different eras. The 1967 survey found that nine out of ten people had attempted to lose weight in the past year, compared with barely half of adults questioned in 2010. Perhaps most tellingly though, 40 years ago only 7 per cent of those people who considered themselves overweight had failed to do anything about it, compared with nearly half now.

It would be easy to blame Britain’s fatness on lifestyle changes, but the worst of it is attitude. People just aren’t bothering to lose weight any more. Perhaps obesity is viewed as more normal. But this is also down to the attitude that we doctors increasingly encounter in our consulting rooms: the reluctance of patients to accept that ailments can be blamed on their behaviour, for which they are reluctant to take responsibility.

Patients blame obesity on the government, cunning food manufacturers, their parents and their genes. They demand fat-loss pills on the NHS and stomach-stapling surgery as a right. In a world where health care is becoming consumerised, patients see themselves as customers. There’s not much demand for hard truths.

America has severe obesity problems, and seems resigned to them. But Britain has a National Health Service, and therefore a far higher capacity to change. It ought to be easy. Doctors should be required to tell patients a blunt truth: if you’re fat, eat less, exercise more, or both. And if you keep guzzling the tasty treats, you will die earlier. It’s not a disease, it’s a mindset — and that means it can be changed. We doctors need to be a little less understanding, a little more judgmental, and realise that our oath — ‘do no harm’ — must come before our desire to save the feelings of our patients. The truth can be the hardest drug to administer. But holding our tongues, prescribing the fat pills and bankrupting the NHS in the process is the worst solution of all.

[Via The Spectator]

How Trolls Win With Toxic Comments

At its best, the Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But Web-savvy news junkies have known for a long time that reader feedback can often turn nasty. Now a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that rude comments on articles can even change the way we interpret the news.

"It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning," says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called nasty effect. Those trolls she's referring to are commenters who make contributions designed to divert online conversations.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Virginia's George Mason University worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology. More than 1,000 subjects reviewed the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits.

Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments like, "If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot."

"Basically what we saw," Brossard says, "is people that were exposed to the polite comments didn't change their views really about the issue covering the story, versus the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story."

Brossard said they chose the nanotechnology topic so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity. She says communication research shows that people use mental shortcuts to make sense of things they don't understand.

"We need to have an anchor to make sense of this," she says. "And it seems that rudeness and incivility is used as a mental shortcut to make sense of those complicated issues."

Brossard says there's no quick fix for this issue. While she thinks it's important to foster conversation through comments sections, every media organization has to figure out where to draw the line when comments get out of control.

"You don't want to be censoring opinions, but you don't want to allow neither points that are out of topic and that are offensive to the other people that are discussing," she says.

Some sites remove offensive comments, some have moderators to regulate the conversations, and others turn off commenting features once a certain number is reached. Brossard says it's important for people involved in journalism and online communication to realize the influence that comments can have and to formulate appropriate policies.

"I think what we need to define now on the Web, what is a good conversation? What are the things that are allowed socially? Also, as an audience, what do we let happen there?"

All good things to keep in mind before you post a comment below.

[Via npr.org]

Child Mortality in Detroit

Child mortality occurs at a higher rate in Detroit than in several Third World countries, according to a study conducted by Detroit News. After collaborating with national health departments, researchers discovered that the number one factor impacting Detroit’s high child death rates is prematurity, followed by a culture of violence.

The city of 713,000 is the only U.S. city with upwards of 100 deaths per 100,000 children. In what one doctor declared a “public health emergency,” 120 out of every 100,00 children in Detroit died in 2010. The infant mortality rate — which is higher than the rates in Panama, Romania, and Botswana — is another prominent issue. Between 2000 and 2011, 2,300 infants died within their first year.

Health concerns stem from the city’s long history of financial troubles; all told, 60 percent of Detroit’s youth were impoverished in 2010. Detroit’s economic conditions pose ongoing challenges for residents — including food insecurity, unsafe housing, and the inability access medical care — all of which impact child health, according to Dr. Irwin Redlene, a pediatrician and Columbia University professor.

There is a dearth of physicians in the area, and traveling to receive medical attention is hindered by a poor infrastructure. At this time, women who are not pregnant or nursing do not qualify for Medicaid, and the insurance is stripped away from them shortly after a baby is born. Dr. Elliot Attisha, who created a mobile clinic service that serves kids through the city, explained that children are not receiving necessary medical attention in this context, from “yearly checkups” to “treatment for their chronic conditions.” Many die of “common illnesses” like asthma and the flu.

High homicide rates throughout the city also foster a culture of trauma and stress among children. Officials recognize the extent to which gun violence particularly affects youth, although limited resources make it difficult to curb the problem. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Behavior Risk Survey concluded that many youth skipped school out of fear of violence, and more students were likely “to be threatened on school property with a weapon one or more times” than anywhere else. Altogether, thirty-six children died in Detroit as a result of violence in 2010.

While there is a concerted effort to expand medical services to youth, as hospitals and private organizations develop strategies to improve child health, Detroit’s economic chaos may foil those plans. Last year, Detroit became the largest city to file for bankruptcy — planting the seeds for 24,000 retirees to lose health benefits on March 1. The Motor City is far from economically secure enough to overhaul the systemic problems exacerbating child mortality. Nevertheless, 500,000 people throughout Michigan will be eligible for Medicaid in April, which will provide health insurance for many women with children.

[Via Thinkprogress.com]