Then again, those children who happen to be especially sensitive or timid aren't exempt, because other criteria include being "shy," and having their "feelings easily hurt."

Kids who come from difficult family situations are also likely candidates for the diagnosis. Being "basically an unhappy child," and "feeling cheated in the family circle" are considered symptoms of ADHD.

It's hard to avoid the suspicion that just about any kid who doesn't fit easily into the school or family system might fall prey to the diagnosis and Consequently be treated with Ritalin. The Revised Conner's Questionnaire actually goes so far as to state that children who behave in a "childish" way are displaying a symptom of ADHD. And here all along I had thought that behaving in a childish way was a natural part of childhood.

In fact, the more I've looked at the diagnostic criteria by which children are labeled as having ADHD, the more I've begun to suspect that the only children who are completely safe from a diagnosis of ADHD are those who are so frightened to disobey that they are compulsively dutiful and obedient.

Are Our Schools for Compliance or for Learning?
Not being a particularly big fan of either Ritalin or our mass production school system, educator John Holt told Congress plainly that we give kids this drug so that "we can run our schools as we do, like maximum security prisons, for the comfort and the convenience of the teachers and administrators who work in them."20

I would have to agree that America's public schools are not particularly shining examples of how to bring out the best in young people. Although thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers, aides, and administrators, a good number of schools end up teaching little more than obedience and conformity. Research by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development concluded, "Many large middle grade schools function as mills that contain and process endless streams of students. Within them are masses of anonymous youth.... Such settings virtually guarantee that the intellectual and emotional needs of youth will go unmet." 21

One of the most penetrating critics of contemporary schooling is New York State's 1991 teacher of the year, John Gatto. "The school bell rings," he says, "and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell, where he learns that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.... It is absurd and antilife to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class.... It is absurd and antilife to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry. It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your youth, in an institution that allows you no privacy."22

For the entire school day, students are under constant surveillance. They have no private time or private space. Many teachers do their best to be humane, but pupils are typically expected to sit still for hour upon hour, and to do whatever they are told. This is not only totally unnatural, and profoundly frustrating for children; it also inhibits learning. Human beings are programmed by millions of years of evolution to develop by moving, touching, and being involved in life's tasks.