Drugging the kids who can't do those things is fairly clearly a matter, at least some of the time, of drugging kids who simply aren't READY to do them... yet.
I've said for years (and experienced elementary educators have been saying it, as well) that it isn't kids that have changed-- it's what the system is doing to them (and expects of them).
A few doctors are drugging children to close the low income vs. high income achievement gap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/h...-prescribed-pills-to-help-in-school.htmlAttention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School
By ALAN SCHWARZ
New York Times
October 9, 2012
CANTON, Ga. — When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall.
he pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.
“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.”
Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance.
