“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.
In a way, I congratulate this doctor for finding a solution within his limited sphere of influence for a major societal problem.
Also, I'd like to think that he's inadvertently shining a bright light on how allocating resources to schools based on test scores and the wealth of the local community is just cruel and evil.
