The Myth of the Hyperactive Child
Kavanagh, Patricia
Book Review/Patricia Kavanagh Down the Upper Staircase • Thrashing a bad boy is obsolete; even le bad boy is passe. Now, according to rofessional educators, he suffers from iinimal brain...
...he treatment for this newly-discovered yndrome is a daily dose of stimulants 'filch, paradoxically, calm hyperactive aildren...
...They are afraid to admit their superiority over their pupils, afraid of destroying creativity, and afraid to assert control...
...One can assume that organic problems do prevent some children from reading or concentrating (in contrast with Schrag and Divoky, who think "hyperactivity" is a "myth"), and still be appalled by the flaccid and often casual standards of diagnosis and treatment which the authors describe...
...The authors are concerned legitimately that a generation is being schooled for dependence, but they imply that to raise independent children, schools must eliminate pressures to conform...
...Educators may in fact abuse power in these ways, le Alternative: An American Spectator April 1976 31 but the moral case against hidden cameras in reformatories is hardly as compelling as the story of the drugged child whose hand shook so badly he could not hold a pencil...
...The true causes of their misbehavior ranged from the comic —tight underwear—to the tragic—a malformed heart and brain lesions...
...In the December 1974 issue of Psychology The Myth of the Hyperactive Child by Peter Schrag and Diane Divoky Pantheon $10.00 Today, neuropsychiatrist Sydney Walker III described the true problems of children he had treated who were thought to be "hyperactive...
...But there are also grave dangers in the ;e of this treatment, as Peter Schrag and iana Divoky point out in this catalogue abuses...
...They show how doctors often prescribe psychoactive drugs for children without giving them thorough examinations...
...Partly as a result of this book, partly as a result of more cautious criticism of drug treatment from within special education circles, people are beginning to recognize the potential for abuse in "the smart pill...
...Teachers have clear need for extreme measures if they are to give even the appearance of education...
...children can learn neither to spell nor to sit still without social pressure...
...In 1973, Massachusetts passed a law forbidding school officials to administer drugs or to suggest that a child be given drugs...
...this and other estimates are broad as to suggest that the authors ed a dartboard in their research...
...Yet it valuable all the same, in pointing out e pseudo-science that surrounds the atment of "hyperactivity," "learning sabilities," and "minimal brain dysnction...
...In fact, the book is subtitled, "And Other Means of Child Control...
...It is an imprecise book: the authors n say only that between 500,000 and 000,000 children are maintained on ch drugs...
...This iagnosis is convenient for parents, who longer feel guilty for their children's iisbehavior: If something is medically rong with Johnny—even if it is vaguely efined and includes more than three andred symptoms—it is outside the there of human will...
...Schrag and Divoky want to lift manipulation out of the teacher-student relationship, but this seemingly benevolent goal underlies the practices they attack...
...If the charge that drugs are used for social control seems preposterous, consider these figures, released for the past school year by the National Education Association: Pupils committed 100 murders, 12,000 armed robberies, 9,000 rapes, and 270,000 burglaries on school property, and caused $600 million in school property damage...
...The Myth of the Hyperactive bad is a sensational book: the authors oke outrage with stories...
...they are asking $25,000 in damages for each child...
...Not incidentally, when stimulant drugs lose their calming effect in early adolescence, the junior high school teacher inherits 13-year-olds with the inhibitions of six-year-olds...
...of children egged against their will, but the stories often lack details—when and where e abuses happened—that one suspects mposites, or at least incomplete report-g...
...In earlier days, these restless children ould have been punished or shepherded classes for the retarded or emotionally isturbed, but now they are said to be riven by a medical disorder...
...What is so frightening is that the medical tendency is to treat all such children with similar stimulant drugs...
...In addition to their assaults on drug treatment, the authors rail against the keeping of school records from parents, the channeling of errant children into "predelinquency" therapy, and the use of behavior modification...
...In Taft, California, parents of 18 children have filed suit charging that the school doctor improperly prescribed psychoactive drugs...
...Now, according to rofessional educators, he suffers from iinimal brain dysfunction...
...Schrag and Divoky either fail or refuse to see that the mumbo-jumbo of LD and MBD resulted from a denial of the coercive nature of schools...
...Some murderers are insane," psychiatrists proclaimed, and the proposition was seized by lawyers who argued, "My client must be insane, because he murdered...
...A child who is fed stimulants by the clock is not free to improve...
...For there is a logical error in the treatment of hyperactivity, comparable to prevailing attitudes about violent criminals...
...Schrag and Divoky attack hyperactivity, however, not just as an abuse of power but with the assumption that no coercion of children is legitimate...
...Finally, people eager to believe that a normal person is not capable of violence, decided, "Anyone who murders is insane...
...And the treatment convenient for teachers, who can re-ore order to their classrooms by using the smart pill" rather than the rod or inmidation...
...If educators take drugs away in the name of liberating children from "control," what new methods will they devise to keep order...
...Teachers, to explain failure to ambitious parents, announced, "Your child must have MBD or he would learn...
...This means tat he acts like a brain-injured child even tough tests show no organic damage...
...One need not be sentimental about corporal punishment to see that a child could take his crack on the palm andthen decide to change...
...Coercion is built into classrooms...
...In their failure to distinguish proper from improper uses of authority, teachers have resorted to increasingly covert means of power—namely drugs...
...Thus, the authors cite studies in which 88% of the teachers said they could identify their hyperactive students, but in which doctors reached the same judgment for only 13% of the children so labeled...
...Finding that explanation palatable, parents agreed, "Any child who acts up is neurologically handicapped...
...Educators already have bought that line...
...Similarly, psychologists began to suspect about thirty-five years ago that some children misbehaved because of organic damage (a proposition never verified by consistent experimental results...
Vol. 9 • April 1976 • No. 7
