Spring Break
Adderall: the steroids of intellect
Colin MeGill
Issue date: 5/9/04 Section: Commentary
There are many side effects of the drugs easily researchable online, but "doctors who prescribe stimulant drugs often seem oblivious to the fact that they can cause psychoses, including manic-like and schizophrenic-like disorders." Has anyone seen the film "Requiem For A Dream?"
Surely the rampant increase in prescriptions among children in America and Europe deserves our attention. "Since 1991 prescriptions for all drugs to treat ADHD have quintupled. This year about six million children, roughly one child out of every eight, will take Ritalin or other forms of methylphenidate. The number of stimulants prescribed for children two to four has increased 200 percent to 300 percent between 1991 and 1995. Studies show that stimulants cause especially severe reactions in young children. Since there are no good studies, no one knows what it does to the development of the very young child's brain" (addhelp.org).
Why is medication so popular? Two interconnected reasons: first, it is easier than parenting, and second, there have been major changes to the education system in the last half-century.
When our baby boomer parents were in school, there were no corrective drugs, yet the education system was not in shambles (as would be expected if 12.5 percent of the children could not participate at all). The reason was the teachers had authority the parents backed up.
In schools, teachers used to be allowed to beat students. That was wrong, but with the demise of physical authority and the removal of the Ten Commandments (among other steps to make schools more politically correct), schools lost a lot of the power they had over kids. I assure you, I am not calling for the reinstatement of religion or physical abuse, but simple calculations will show you that K-12 students spend around 24 percent of their waking hours per year (including summers) in school. It is simply a fact schools have a large hand in raising kids. What schools really lost was not the power to harm children or the ability to stuff a religion down their throats; it was fear. Schools lost an aura, a symbol. Schools lost fear.
Surely the rampant increase in prescriptions among children in America and Europe deserves our attention. "Since 1991 prescriptions for all drugs to treat ADHD have quintupled. This year about six million children, roughly one child out of every eight, will take Ritalin or other forms of methylphenidate. The number of stimulants prescribed for children two to four has increased 200 percent to 300 percent between 1991 and 1995. Studies show that stimulants cause especially severe reactions in young children. Since there are no good studies, no one knows what it does to the development of the very young child's brain" (addhelp.org).
Why is medication so popular? Two interconnected reasons: first, it is easier than parenting, and second, there have been major changes to the education system in the last half-century.
When our baby boomer parents were in school, there were no corrective drugs, yet the education system was not in shambles (as would be expected if 12.5 percent of the children could not participate at all). The reason was the teachers had authority the parents backed up.
In schools, teachers used to be allowed to beat students. That was wrong, but with the demise of physical authority and the removal of the Ten Commandments (among other steps to make schools more politically correct), schools lost a lot of the power they had over kids. I assure you, I am not calling for the reinstatement of religion or physical abuse, but simple calculations will show you that K-12 students spend around 24 percent of their waking hours per year (including summers) in school. It is simply a fact schools have a large hand in raising kids. What schools really lost was not the power to harm children or the ability to stuff a religion down their throats; it was fear. Schools lost an aura, a symbol. Schools lost fear.