I also have some concern about the number of kids who are prescribed Ritalin.
My children attend a school with students from a dozen or more countries. I have never encountered a parent from a country outside the US that has ever heard of ADD or related syndromes, and I have never encountered a parent from outside the US that was aware that large numbers of children apparently "need" to be drugged. It appears to be an exclusively American phenomenon, which is interesting.
A number of the teachers in the school are American. They agree that most of the behavioral problems treated in the US with drugs could be managed without drugs, if the parents were sufficiently involved. In the absence of parental involvement, they say the schools have little choice but to recommend drugs, which are, if nothing else, quite effective in controlling many forms of aberrant behaviour. Without them - and I've heard this from a number of experienced teachers - the teachers spend so much time and effort managing the behaviour of the problem kids that it is practically impossible for them to teach the non-problem kids effectively.
I asked two of the Kiwi teachers; both said that they had never heard of a school on New Zealand giving behaviour-management medication to students.
I draw no conclusions from any of these observations, but they are interesting.
If parents object to a school giving Ritalin, I think the drug should not be given, provided that the parent in question is willing to work with the school and the teacher to whatever extent is necessary to solve the problem. If the parents aren't willing, I think the schoopl has every right to require the drug. It is not reasonable to expect the other students to put up with having their education disrupted by students whose parents are not willing to do the work required to control them.
Of course, I would expect that the children who have behavioural problems are most often the children of parents that have no great interest or involvement in the education of their children, for fairly obvious reasons.
Too many parents take the easy way out and blame the school for the behaviour problems of their children. I think that's bullshit: teaching a child to behave is the job of parents, and it is not reasonable to try to pass it on to teachers, who have more than enough on their plates already. |
