Prescription Drug Use in Schools

I hate to begin with a cliche, but I’m going to do it anyways.  When I was in elementary school,  there were no such things as ritalin, or prozak or any sort of idea present that drugs were a way to help kids in school.   If you weren’t making the grade,  you weren’t working hard enough.  That got most of us through.  The fear of failing was enough of an incentive to hit the books and try your best.

Now I did not always pass my exams.  In particular,  one science class was just so beyond my ken,  I never did get the gist of any of what was being taught.  All I can recall is that it was something about “nature”  but wow,  I could never see the connection between the concepts that were being chalked up on the blackboard,  and the life and nature around me – and i was in  quite a rural area.  Anyways,  I am sure that taking Ritalin to help me with my grades, would NOT have worked in my favour. 

It seemed to me that all through school there were kind of different “groups”  of kids,  not that any labels were used – but some kids were just “The Brilliant Ones”.   Some,  most i suppose, were “trying their best and getting along with passing grades for the most part”.   And then there were always a few of what we now call “special needs”  – I mean maybe 1 out of 100 kids,  who needed special tutoring,  or had speech troubles,  or the like.  There was no classification given,  we just called them “Joey”,  or “Renee”  or whatever their name was.  In a small town you can keep things like that simple.   They were given a looser leash than the rest of us,  more time to complete projects,  less attention on marks and more on “trying”.   More options to do what we figured were the “fun” classes -  more crafts or wood working etc.   I think we envied their situation in many ways.  I did,  not being especially suited to sitting for hours in a chair at a desk when i would have much preferred to be outside skipping or finding new birds down by the lake.

Fast forward to today – wow,   we have apparently spawned a whole majority population of kids at risk.   And the accompanying philosophy is “YOU MUST DRUG KIDS AT RISK”.   Why?  I don’t know.  Well I do know.  But i didn’t want to get into pharma bashing here.   For instance 60% of the male kids in school in a suburb near Vancouver BC are BEINBG DRUGGED.   No-one can tell me with half a hope of convincing me that 60% of the male population is “AT RISK”.   Or that 60% are “SPECIAL NEEDS”.   These days,  special needs is a pretty broad brushstroke of a name for “KIDS WHO WE WANT TO PUT ON DRUGS”. 

I am pretty fed up with this whole sham of labelling kids this that and the other.  I don’t see it having any positive effects (oh yes I know there is always one or two parents who will stand up and say how little Johnnie doesn’t chew up the carpet anymore since being put on ritalin)  but the MAJORITY of these kids perhaps are not being challenged enough.  Look at what they get on TV and INTERNET resources.   If they live in any sort of urban locale,  there are MULTITUDES of entertainment and educational resources in their local town or city.   And then think of them having to stay tied to a chair and a desk for – what – 6 hours a day? 

Who wouldn’t get a little bored,  inattentive,  etc.  That’s what bored kids do.  They get into being their own entertainers, otherwise known as class clowns,  or troublemakers.   I think it’s time to stop all the mass drugging of our youth,  and start overhauling the educational resources we are offering them.   Let’s look at the whole picture.  Prescription drugs have NO PLACE in the school system.   No charlatan sales campaign (no matter how deviously brilliant)  will ever make sense of cranking out drug addicts from our schools at the age of 7 , 10 or 12.  Prescription drugs do NOT belong in school.  Period.