Change the Schools or Drug the Kids
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Change the Schools or Drug the Kids

12 Oct Change the Schools or Drug the Kids

Posted at 15:51h in Education, Human Development, Learning Environments, Psychology of Becoming by

October 12, 2012

Contrasts!

Two pieces in the New York Times early this week—

“Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School” and “Invitation to a Dialogue: A Student’s Call to Arms.” The first is a prominently placed article (by Alan Schwarz, October 9, 2012). The second is a Letter to the Editor (by Nikhil Goyal, October 8, 2012).

The article reports on the prevalence of giving poor kids drugs so they’ll be able to tolerate going to school—these are kids without a diagnosis of ADHD—because American society won’t or can’t change how schooling is done.

“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”

The letter to the editor is a high school senior’s plea to change the schools so that students and teachers can be treated like human beings.

“As a student, I want to be taught how to think and create and explore. I’m not a number in a spreadsheet; I’m a creative and motivated human being. I want my teachers to be paid well, given autonomy and treated like professionals. I want my school to be adequately funded. Is that too much to ask?”

 

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1 Comment
  • Tim Buchanan
    Posted at 20:30h, 12 October

    Nikhil sees through the veil! That is encouraging, however, the furture of zombie land is scary. Projecting what I see daily in continuation school, where the majority of students are poor and of color, makes me quake. It is similar to Lois’s point about why African American children end up in resource class, or why ghettos and jails proliferate in our country. What are we creating? My students proudly self medicate; some may be enjoying the medicines Dr. Anderson subjectively rationalizes for his young patients, but where does it end? Is this education that I am directed to administer that imperative that long term effects of it and drugs are ignored? I think not.
    The oligarchy grows stronger, drugs and ingnorance are its control devices. What pharmaceutical stock should I buy?

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