Drug-Free School Zone

By Chris Mercogliano

I am in absolute agreement with Bruce E. Levine: it isn’t ODD at all that our society has stepped up its efforts to pathologize young people with biopsychiatric labels like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), when they either cannot or will not march in step with the majority culture, and then dose them with the corresponding biopsychiatric drugs.

As Levine reminds us with his deft bit of historical research, America has a long tradition of marginalizing anyone who deviates from established norms—which currently are narrowing at an alarming rate. Or as French philosopher Michel Foucault pointed out in Discipline and Punish, the control of its citizens has always been a primary aim of the state, and what we are witnessing in modern times is the evolution of increasingly subtle ways in which to do so. Today, instead of relying on brute force as was the case in the days of pharaohs and emperors, social institutions like schools, the military, and the mass media subliminally enforce a conformity so pervasive that overt forms of control are no longer necessary. All who resist and refuse to take their places in the social and economic machine, according to Foucault in Madness and Civilization, are labeled with some form of abnormality, and then, as I argue in my book, Teaching the Restless, about the ongoing ADHD hoax, they are medicated with powerful psychotropic drugs that extend society’s control all the way down to the biochemical level.

This business of labeling and drugging kids who won’t sit still, can’t keep up, or don’t fit in became a deep concern of mine in my role as a teacher at the Free School, a noncoercive, democratic, inner-city school for sixty-five students ages two through fourteen in Albany, NY. In the early 1990s there was a sudden spike in the number of students who came to us having been labeled in their previous schools, and so, curious as to why, I embarked on an exhaustive review of the already considerable ADHD literature.

The notion of a sudden epidemic of children—primarily boys—whom mainstream scientists and medical professionals claim to be suffering from a chemical imbalance in their brains, most likely genetic in origin, just didn’t wash with me. In evolutionary terms, how could as many as ten million kids have come down with a neurological disorder virtually overnight? The idea defied reason.

Then I came across an article by Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer Natalie Angier. In “The Debilitating Malady Called Boyhood,” Angier suggested that there has been a radical shift in our culture’s definition of what constitutes a “normal” boy. The nineteenth-century Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn archetype—brash, willful, naughty, rambunctious, aggressive, and always dirty—is no longer acceptable. Today, psychologists, pediatricians, parents, and teachers alike increasingly view the temperamental and behavioral distance between such boys and an ever narrower definition of normality as evidence of a medical problem. Such boys, they believe, are sick enough to require medication.

Meanwhile, in my school we permit Sawyeresque behavior in children as long as it doesn’t violate the rights and sensibilities of others. We don’t label a child who is constantly on the move “hyperactive,” which is a prescriptive term. Instead we say that he or she is “highly active,” which is a descriptive one. And since the school is always buzzing with noise and activity, highly active kids don’t really stand out all that much and are not considered to have or to be a problem. Moreover, we’ve noticed that when highly active children can run, jump, climb, yell, dance, dig holes in the sandbox, and hammer ten-penny nails into two-by-fours in the wood shop to their hearts’ content, they gradually settle down and develop the ability to modulate their energy level and control their own impulses. The trouble begins when you suppress their need to move and do.

Similarly, we say that kids with minds like hummingbirds, who aren’t yet inclined to spend long stretches of time reading, writing, and figuring, are “flighty” or “easily distracted,” not that they have attention deficit disorder. The interesting thing about these children is that given the chance to pay attention to what they want to pay attention to, they will often spend hours at a time working on a drawing, or a birdhouse, or a new skateboard move. When it is their choice, they will devour good books and stories and keep asking for more. But if you try to force them when the desire and excitement are missing, indeed that is when the trouble begins.

While I wholeheartedly agree with author Thomas Armstrong that the so-called “ADD child” is a myth, it doesn’t mean that many of the children so labeled aren’t suffering from some sort of emotional, social, or cognitive distress—and usually an individualized combination of the three. It’s not easy growing up in today’s high-speed, fear-driven world. A great many kids for a great many reasons aren’t receiving all of the nurturing they need, and it is causing gaps, and pauses, and stops and starts in their development. And then they are herded into school settings where teachers are no longer able to care about them individually and adapt strategies that will enable them to learn and to bond with their peers.

Meanwhile in my school, especially in our preschool section, we are far more concerned with outbreaks of PDD—Poopy Diaper Disorder—which quickly leads to DDD—Droopy Diaper Disorder, both of which are very real and have a clearly identifiable biological basis. And then in all seriousness, we try to pay careful attention to signs of what Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls NDD—Nature Deficit Disorder—because it truly is reaching epidemic proportions as today’s children spend more and more time indoors interacting with one kind of electronic media or another. Because what my thirty-five years of working with every imaginable type of child has taught me is that when schools address children’s physical, emotional, and social needs—flexibly, so that no one is left behind—it is absolutely unnecessary to drug them into attentional focus or behavioral submission. The learning process builds up a momentum all its own and doesn’t need to be relentlessly measured and controlled.

Chris Mercogliano is the author of In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness. He has been a teacher at the Albany Free School since 1973 and codirector since 1985. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, and he is also the author of Making It Up As We Go Along, and Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed.

Comments

[Megan Park]

With all due respect, I must disagree with your conclusion that "there is no ADD child." Many children diagnosed with ADD do not need to be on medication to deal with their attention problems. Many children who do suffer from ADD develop coping mechanisms and are never diagnosed. I will even admit that there are almost certainly many children wrongly diagnosed with ADD as the diagnosis becomes more and more popular. But to say there is no such thing as ADD is not only ignorant, but also offensive, because it ignores the struggles of the many people with this illness.

Sir, do you personally know anyone with ADD? I ask this not to be rude, but to help my own understanding of the situation, because as someone with many friends and family members with serious cases of ADD, I have a rather different perspective on the role of medication.

My younger brother is very intelligent, but also very ADD. With his meds, he takes honors and pre-ap classes. Without meds, he was in danger of failing his grade. He can NOT focus long enough to function well in society without the help of his medication. His medication is a godsend; without it, I'm not sure anyone would be patient enough to deal with him...(note that I adore him, he's my little brother)

My cousin, on the other hand, is also ADD and has problems with completing schoolwork. She was on medication for a time, but lost her appetite and became a shell of herself. She's been off the meds for several years now, choosing to use coping behaviors to deal with the ADD instead, and, although her grades are not as good as they were on the meds, she is much, much happier.

Anyway. No disrespect to you or your school system, but ADD is a real illness, a real problem, and ignoring it or claiming that all that needs to be done is "handle" the kids properly is foolish and will end up hurting a lot of kids.

[h sofia]

You may have already come across this, but here is the link to a study in the peer-reviewed Public Library of Science about the effectiveness of anti depressants when the unpublished studies are taken into account (drug companies are required to submit all studies to the FDA, but are not required to use them all in demonstrating their drugs' effectiveness).

The ADD scam is ridiculous to me. So many people have bought into it. My brother in law was typical: a rambunctious, brown skinned boy in a white public school - he was labeled ADHD. One day he was at the doctor's and the doc gave him a piece of paper and a pencil and said, "Draw me something while I talk to your mother." Twenty minutes later they realized he hadn't said a word. When they looked over at him he was quietly focused on his drawing. The doc said, "Why don't you come on over here," and he said, "Just a minute!" When he came over and they looked at the drawing, he'd made a man with a three piece suit; one arm was in the air and the other had been as well, but he'd erased and redrawn it to make his hand be behind his back as he'd not had time to complete the detail of his hands to his satisfaction. At eight, he was drawing at a 16 year old level. The doc said, "Well, your son has ADHD, and I think we've found his cure." My in-laws scraped up the money to put him into art lessons for the rest of his childhood (amazingly, he could concentrate on art!) He is now a very successful artist (and manager) for a video game company.

I'm sure there are a million stories like this. Incidentally, my brother in law was put on meds anyway as a child, but once he got old enough to decide for himself, he went off of them; isn't on them now, and is functioning just fine.

[Chris Mercogliano]

Dear Megan,

Your reply is both respectful and articulate, and I appreciate you taking the time to do it. You very succinctly brought out the difficulty in writing about an issue like ADD, especially doing so in 1000 words or less. One of the problems is there is a macro and a micro way of looking at it, and in this instance I was all macro, primarily examining the social/cultural backdrop behind this business of labeling children. And let us not forget that we are talking about BIG business here.

Another problem with writing about anything is that there is always the danger of losing sight of one's audience. When I give talks in public about ADD I always try to stay mindful that there are quite different points of view about the issue, and also that for many people it is a deeply personal one. I always make a point of saying that if individuals feel it is useful to see themselves as suffering from a medical disorder, and if the corresponding medication truly helps them to feel and perform better -- if it is an informed choice, in other words -- then I think all is well and good. Unfortunately, especially with young children in our schools, this is all too often not the case.

Yet another problem with writing is that it's always hard not to generalize beyond one's own experience, and that almost always leads to trouble when addressing a highly polarized issue like ADD. Again, in my 35 years of experience in my school I have never encountered a child who needed drugs like Ritalin or Adderall in order to feel or perform better. And virtually every child I have ever talked to who has taken them has told me they made them feel worse.

But there you and your family and friends are, outside of my experience and with an entirely different experience, which is absolutely valid. My apologies to you and anyone else who felt offended by my take on the subject.

What I especially liked about your response was the way you highlighted how individual the problems associated with so-called ADD are. Clearly I should have done a better job of that in my essay.

[mia]

A well-written post. Agree with you, but did you know that attention deficit disorder can be cured? I had this problem (some time ago) and then i seeked advices from websites like http://www.attention-deficit-disorder.net . And presto! I think I can see an imporvement in my condition. It's almost magical. You should try it too.

[ken Long]

Many Children start abuse of drugs at an early age, but this can be controlled. Children at this age are at a time when everything is a mystery waiting to be explored, given the right guidance and counseling the right decisions can be made.

----------------------------------------

Ken Long

http://www.addictionrecovery.net/colorado
Addiction Recovery Colorado