*School Responsible for Executive Dysfunction?*

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Just found an article which suggests that school, lessons particularly, may be hugely reducing children's capacity for healthy executive functioning, because it reduces the amount of make-believe and self-regulatory play-time that children get, at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=19212514

...it links now!

Well, if I am remembering this correctly, the prefrontal cortex plays a large role in executive functioning, as well as judgement, etc., and the prefrontal cortex does not finish developing until the early to mid twenties.

You are absolutely right; I've just been reading that executive function carries on developing from early infancy until the early twenties.

And that the most important years for constructing fundamental layers of it are the play years when "teach" oneself, in a sense, by self-regulatory play, something which the amount of time spent at school and on homework are allowing children less and less time to do.

If you're going to run all sides of the argument, there is no room for discussion.

There isn't any true way to measure the executive functioning skills in children. However, as a teacher I can tell you that around age 12 the school system starts making students more responsible for keeping track of their stuff. By high school (around 15), they are expected to actually know and be able to apply these skills. This is not problematic for an NT student.

It is problematic for kids on the spectrum, because by the time that they reach 15, they are in a pattern and a mode of comfort that has made them believe that learning these skills is a waste of time, because someone has always done it for them in the past. This is why a lot of kids on the spectrum start really bottoming out in high school. They can't handle the paperwork and they certainly can't keep track of it.

It is and it isn't the school's fault. Teachers find it easier sometimes to just continue to do these things for students. ASD kids are smart enough to figure out that someone else will do it, and they don't have to. So...the teachers continue to do it. I watch many special ed and resource room teachers disabling their students in high school because it takes too much time for the students to do it for themselves and it's "too late" to teach old dogs new tricks, so to speak. Parents do the same thing. they are way over protective or way too impatient and they just do it for them. Thus the students never learn.

Truthfully, kids are human, too. They know when they can be helpless and get away with it. The system has helped them to understand it and live with it.

This I agree with. We are so busy teaching our kindergardeners to read, that we forget that they need to know how to play as well. Play is when children work out how society works and how to manage the cues that others give them. They learn how to work out problems and how to deal with others by play.

This too is problematic for an ASD kid. Some do not play with others because of a lack in social skills, so miss these critical social lessons. Others can play with others, but miss the social cues, and then are ostracized by the other children, thus once again missing the learning of these critical social lessons. This is where it is extremely helpful to have a teacher that is training in ASDs and can help the child to navigate their world in the context of the confusion of social cues. It wouldn't be a bad idea for every teacher to have an aide who is trained in ASDs. That person can work with students having difficulties while the teacher does the academic stuff.

I'm sticking to one side, the one which argues that school is responsible for executive dysfunction. Certainly not arguing the other side!


I didn't get any help with my paperwork. It was the system in itself which functioned as an artificial executive-function. Just by being school it freed me of the need to think seriously about the future, to calculate what I should do to achieve such and such, to make myself do things; it did all that for me. As soon as I got to school all responsibilty was taken off my shoulders for organising anything.


That's what happened to me at university, because that's where I had to start organising myself, making myself finish things with no one to push me; work out who to get to supervise something, inform myself on what time to get somewhere to hand in project applications, etc etc. And it was a nightmare. So in the US it happens earlier. That is great in principle/theory, if children haven't, as you say, been already habituated by the standard school system to let school run everything for them. Don't 75% of NT children bottom out at the same time though? And many many with poor or non-existent executive skills just like the AS kids. It's just less remarked on.

If they hadn't gone to school, had had hours of free time for self-reg play with or without other children, until age 8 or 9 or later, as they could a 100 years ago, and no framework suggesting to them that they needn't plan for themselves... perhaps they would have EF skills. I think it may be schools fault, entirely.


I don't understand why you are so cynical/hard about this. I didn't get any extra help to cope with stuff; it was school itself which was like a wheelchair, and which since the age of 5 had fulfilled the executive function role in my life. I didn't get any "help". I wasn't diagnosed. I just naturally found the entire system took away all need to think ahead, to self-organise, etc, aswell as preventing me from indulging in as much self-regulated play as I would have liked, ( on my own just as much as with other children, it doesn't matter), which I longed for/thirsted for like food and drink, and which professionals now begin to realise may be essential to developing good executive skills.

i haven't read all the responses yet.

i totally have no ability to get things done. and i never had to in school. "projects" were few and far between, and even when i bombed them my teachers just kind of ignored it. i didn't have to study. homework was done in the next class and it was all finished before the school day was over.

now i have a house to run, a photography business i'm trying to start, and it's all coming down around me. i'm pretty sure i couldn't hold a real job if i had to. eventually, my "secret" would be discovered.

but i can keep my kids alive. i'm better at having food planned for dinner and in a cookable state.


i guess i don't know how to teach this stuff to someone that knows what they have to do, but can't get that part of their brain to communicate with the part that actually controls the "doing."

yeah, i bottomed out in college. i had never learned how to plan and organize, etc.. but, it's not really that i didn't learn. intellectually, i know what needs to be done to get things done, i just can't do it. it's like knowing what one has to do to do a double back hand spring, but there's no way in heck i could make my body do it.

I don't think school is responsible for executive function disorder. I don't think they know how to correct the problem, but they didn't cause the problem.

My brother and I (both NT) grew up in the same house, same schools. He is an adult with ADD and I'm an executive function machine. I figure he was born that way and I was born this way.

You were arguing and quoting yourself. Thus leaving no room for anyone else in the discussion. It seems to me that you are just looking for someone to blame for your inabilities. What have you done to help make this situation better for yourself?

We can't look to the system to make our ills better. We have to figure it out. The school system takes on average 20-30 years to make changes, so the chance of us getting the school system to change to accommodate us or our children is about nil. That leaves responsible people to recognise these children so that they can help them to develop these skills.

There really isn't any way to teach people on the spectrum these skills. It's not that they don't have the ability to learn, it's that the ability to follow through is not there.

I guess my question is that NT children manage to learn these skills and have perfectly fine planning skills in spite of the school doing this for them a great portion of their lives, so what prevented you? What prevented you was your actual inability to follow through with these skills.

I'm not trying to be cynical or hard, but I'm trying to make you understand that it's not in reality the school's fault because the school is what it is. It's not going to change any time soon. So, it remains that we must all take responsibility for ourselves and we must figure these things out. That's what day planners and post it notes are for. Figure out how to compensate for not having these skills!

A lot of people off of the spectrum have executive function problems (ADD)

I don't think it's coincidence that exposure to more completely regimented institutions than schools already are, is one of the predictors of "bad outcomes" in adulthood.

Have seen numerous articles* about "why do teenagers make bad decisions ?" which posit that incomplete development of frontal lobes incl. exec. functioning is the reason, and that these regions usually reach their finished size/level of functioning by age 18 or 20.
* haven't links for them, but one was a yahoo news story & another was in Scientific American Mind magazine.

I have some of these issues, but not all of them-in some ways I'm very organized & prepared, in other ways I can't anticipate (use "future-brain") to save my life. Was very good at school, which prepared me only to be good at-you guessed it-school. Yet most other students seemed to have less problem making the transition from academic setting to "real life in the larger world". I dropped out of college because of several problems that I do not think relate to exec. functioning, but were ASD features-alas, I wasn't dx'd until 10 years later. My inability to work isn't because of exec. dysfunction* problems, I don't blame the school system. IMHO it's a coordination disjuncture between society at large and the education infrastructure-if the real world worked how school does, I'd be good at it.
*(sorry, using acronym "e.d." makes me think of those ads for men's sex pills).

A good book that I've read (though half the chapters struck me as a bit dry & overly obscure-other half of chapters were juicy thought-provoking stuff): "The Executive Brain" by Elkhonon Goldberg. It doesn't address/discuss school systems, though.

I don't seem to understand what executive dysfunction is in relating to that school can cause it.

Is it only planning, organising, executing?

The way school works is certainly easier than the way uni works - I had to drop out from engineering partially because I failed to adapt. There was something I was supposed to get and I didn't get it. My transition to the work environment was even more appalling - as I still seem to have less of an idea of what to do to take control of my life.

I believe, however, that it wasn't just school that caused this but the general environment; my parents, namely:


My mother's idea of making me function was invasive - resistance provoking. For example, if I had a playdate and I was still in my school clothes, she'd walk in the room and try to undress me by force in front of my classmate. She caused very awkward situations as she showed up and invited high school acquaintances over on holidays with the family - even if I warned her not to do it again she did it everytime causing me to dread having anyone over.
She herself is not too high functioning. She's a one-sided ranting machine but when it comes to actually doing things she relies mostly on my father; he arranges everything - for everyone. Some things, like getting some excercise, she has been procrastinating for over 20 years.
My father, in turn, keeps everything to himself - no one in the family seems aware of the paperwork details behind a lot of things; it's scary. He pays for my holidays - but it was very hard for me get him to let me arrange things myself. The moment I turn around he's phoned the travel agency guy to meddle in somehow. During primary school, there was optional sports on Saturdays - from morning to afternoon. I was forced to go. Instead of allowing me to go with everyone on the school bus - on the mornings - he drove me to the place at noon; then he sat at the edge of the field telling me how to go about doing things; which, in turn, isolated me from both others and my own instincts.
While my father has always been the one running everything for everyone in the family -my contact with him has always been minimum as he only stopped being a bully only when it became physically imposible for him to do so anymore; he missed the chance to prove he could abstain from being violent while he had the choice. All this has left me with a certain nihilism felt deep within - not separate from my procrastination as nothing seems truly worth the bother, no rule unbreakable, no ethical principle a lie. . .

A lot of dysfunctional systems were established in my everyday life with my parents.
There was a school transport that came to our doorway (I was a teenager already). At some point I decided I didn't like it anymore or we all got up way too late for me to go through the morning routine in time. Instead of cancelling it - as I requested - for months they just let the guy keep stopping by every single day and ringing our bell to be made to wait and then told to just drive on.
Another thing is that they always kept me out of the loop when it came to money matters - by the time I was at uni and some classmates were wondering about wages in the job market I had no idea what a good wage could be.
A lot of things still remain and are weird and annoying. For example: my mother walks into my appartment when I'm at work and puts food I don't need in my fridge. If I don't complain because the amount of food is low (like a random yogurt); the next time the amount will double and so on until we have an argument and it becomes "settled" that she's not putting any more food in my fridge - a week or two later random yogurts begin to "appear" and so on. . .

While everything seems to have been structured for me to have to go through them if I need anything - as though all they have managed to raise is some sort of junky - they themselves seem to have worse time management and procrastination issues than I do. When I do get to do things my solutions seem to be faster and to the point. Whenever I tried (or try) to coordinate with them the solution to some domestic problem, any insistence on my part of coming up with a clear plan or a possible deadline it all spirals down into a ridiculous argument; then I wonder why I'm even talking to them.

I'd be better off if they had actually helped me stay on track with what I needed to get done not to fall behind - instead of the extremes of downright neglect or invasiveness. I think most mediocre parents are good at that; not sure what's up with mine. . .

I am super organized at work and did well at school as well. With other things people generally regard as "easy," I have trouble. It is a great source of embarrassment for me.