Some children labeled hyperactive are multiscanners. These children are adept at what anthropologist Jules Henry called polyphasic learning-absorbing information through several channels at once.27 Paying attention to many things at the same time is natural for them, and in many environments would be a great asset. But not in a classroom where "central-task" learning requires them to pay attention to one thing at a time. Their natural learning styles do not involve organizing their experience in a linear way, and they can easily feel bewildered when asked to do so. Yet, when exposed to integrated thematic instruction programs (including the use of art, music, field trips, and other multisensory approaches), these children often emerge as not only capable, but brilliant, imaginative, and creative.28

A dreamy child may be destined to a career as an artist or inventor. Asking such a child to be as detail oriented as someone whose future lies in accounting is like asking everyone to wear the same size shoes.

In this regard, a particular child comes to mind, by the name of Alva. His teacher was a minister, and an observer left us this record of their interaction: "The minister, of course, taught by rote, a method from which Alva was inclined to disassociate himself. He alternated between letting his mind travel to distant places and putting his body in perpetual motion in his seat. The Reverend, finding him inattentive and unruly, swished his cane. Alva, afraid and out of place, held up a few weeks, and then ran away from school."79

It is fortunate that young Alva lived some years ago, before the medicalization of childhood was under way. His full name, by the way, was Thomas Alva Edison, and today, he would almost certainly be diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin. If he had been, we might still be reading by kerosene lamps.

Ritalin helps children to conform to externally imposed Naples and regulations But I have serious questions about drugging children to make them more obedient to authority. What happens to those young people \vEose special destiny lies in being innovators, who carry it within themsel~ es to challenge abuses of power in order to help create a better world?

What if young Martin Luther King, Jr., had been drugged as a child? Would the world have ever been touched by his dream, and had the op portunity to make it come true? What if young Rosa Parks had been sub jected to such treatment? Would she have grown into the woman who had the courage to keep her seat on the bus that auspicious day in Alabama? Young Thomas Paine was quite a rebel as a child. If he had been subjected to Ritalin, there might not even be a United States. If a young William Shakespeare had found himself in the hands of modern medicine, I doubt that the world would ever have heard him remind us, "To shine own self be true."

I'm not saying that the children diagnosed ADHD are all potential Thoreaus, marching to a different and higher drummer. I recognize that some of these children may benefit from medication, and I sympathize with teachers who must cope with certain young people who seem prenaturally gifted at bringing chaos into a classroom. But I also know that some of these youngsters come from very difficult home situations, and act out at school the pain they carry. Tragically, some of these children are the very ones the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect was referring to in the recent statement, "Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are starved, abandoned, burned and severely beaten, raped, and sodomized, berated and belittled."