Remember the good, old days when parents acted like parents and wanted to prevent their kids from abusing drugs?
Parents seek ADHD meds to boost kids’ grades
Parents want their kids to excel in school, and they’ve heard about the illegal use of stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall for “academic doping.” Hoping to obtain the drugs legally, they pressure pediatricians for them. Some even request the drugs after openly admitting they don’t believe their child has ADHD.
Parents can be overly eager to blame poor grades on a medical condition rather than looking for other explanations.
For one company that sells suppliments and such, this issue isn’t about the dangers.
There are other gloom-and-doom arguments about the dangers of runaway cognitive enhancement. One is the concern for cultural diversity: human nature will result in the uncreative application of cognitive enhancement, making us less diverse. The underlying elitist idea appears to be that people should not be allowed to choose to use cognitive enhancement for humdrum (popular) choices. Another anti-cognitive argument is that cognitive enhancement would result in “loss of personality,” as is currently recognized as a characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease—although in a different direction—and that this makes it unacceptable to society. The concern here is that others will not recognize us to be the same person we once were.
Kinda hard to complain about this when I do my best work on a low-level caffiene buzz.
There is always a pill for something. If not now, for sure in the near future.
The use of drugs also coincides with the acceptance of cheating in academics. “You are only guilty if your caught” becomes “why is this wrong?” when you are actually caught. There are many theories as to what has caused this to happen. Many of them are based on blaming groups or organizations, other theories attribute such problems on “ism’s”. Communism, Fascism, Zionism, Consumerism and the like take the blame from many based on there particular agenda. Once again such generalizations do more harm than good as once ascribed to a problem one stops looking further into what is causing the root problem. You simply say there is the culprit now how can we illiminate it?
The argument for easy answers and against them have the same problem. It is that no matter which answer you believe you are addressing the wrong problem. The article asks the question “should we use drugs to allow children to help children get good grades?”. The sides then fall under “yes we should” and “no we should not”. Many questions then go unanswered. What is a good grade? What is causing some to not get good grades? The questions about whether these drugs actually help good grades and if so for how long and what are the side effects? Do they help you to understand the subject or memorize answers to score well on tests, yet fail at applying the knowledge in practical terms? Will you need to constantly increase the dose if you want to keep getting results or because you are sure you will see results believing the reason you have not is due to too low of a dose. It would be nice if complex problems had simple answers. “If your child does not do this or that give them a pill and do not worry about having water handy they just need to be swallowed: guaranteed results or you must be doing something wrong!”.
John
When literally thousands work a paper and use the same book, in the end there are so much word combinations to describe their homework that at some point places like Turnitin.com become useless.
After all, despite all the moralistic banter, what is really priced in the end is the grade, not the means to achieve it.
Alas, effects will be temporary – remember Flowers for Algernon?
The death of the individual is at hand. Very soon, EVERYONE will be deemed abnormal and will be put on drugs so they correspond to the “accepted” norms for society.
With any luck, I will die before they get to me.
Don
This recalls an Onion infographic that summarized the issue perfectly; “Isn’t there something we can put kids on that will get them off drugs?”
Parenting has degraded to an utterly insane level; in many instancfes, what goes by the name is largely wholesale neglect in a controlled environment. If Johnny won’t read, odds are it’s because he doesn’t live with readers.
In all, however, I’m simply very skeptical that “academic doping” is going to have much of an impact on the grading curve. Take a kid who doesn’t have ADHD and put them on ritalin and then see how well they do sitting still long enough to read a book, especially when they’ve begun sprouting that nagging wood every fifteen minutes. The experience probably isn’t going to be much different than if you tried to pop 60 mg. of adderall with a latte and tried to do your income tax without a calculator. In pen.
I’m all for simply creating an all-roid league, and I’d be down with this if they’d have printed some statistics showing an increase in interest or performance, but those are conspicuously absent, and the nearest equivalency seems to be the parental assumption that you can fix a “B” with dope. Given that their progeny clearly suffers a genetic handicap as well as whatever else may or may not be troubling them (like adolescence or spending seven or so hours a day in a high security, institutional environment jumping through hoops in preparation for a lifetime of ass-kissing and the good life), odds are that rather than fostering legions of brainiacs who destroy grading curves for those poor suckers who just say no, they’ll wind up in counselling and on drugs again at thirty and spend the next ten in therepy trying to purge the effects of the therepy they got as kids.
Parent needs a valium, kids end up on wellbutrin.
“I could have sent you to tranquility bay, you know! Now shut up, take your pills and bring your grades up, I’m sick of parent-teacher conferences. That’s why I graduated; so I don’t have to do that crap anymore.”
It’s cheaper for schools to encourage ADHD diagnosis rather than establish remedial programs.
In Florida, a child is granted more time and a quiet room in which to take standardized tests such as the FCAT. Better overall scores equate to promotions, bonuses, and better school funding.
It’s about the money. Except when the protests are the loud and forceful that “It’s not about the money!” In those cases it’s about the money.
#7 – I agree. I doubt it will have an effect on those children.
Our child has ADD (not ADHD), and the neurologist said the problem was due to a lack of dopamine stimulation. Because of this, children will tend to be fidget, hum to themselves, or be hyperactive to release dopamine in the brain. Lack of dopamine causes the frontal lobe (the self regulator) to function poorly, which means ADD children are very impulsive.
The medicine effectively stimulates the dopamine levels, and restores normal function. If a child already functions normally, what effect will further stimulation have? I don’t know. My understanding is ADD drugs are not a concentration drugs, they are sensory restoration drugs. They fix what is broken.