Posted on 09/25/2002 1:20:28 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:09:02 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
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What is this country coming to, Nazis with hypodermic syringes?
If it were up to the leftist educational elites and Libertarians all drugs would be legal, IMO.
Thank God some parents are fighting back agaianst the Liberal/Libertarian "drugs uber alles" crowd.
Like Newt Gingritch and Bill Buckley?
Thank God some parents are fighting back agaianst the Liberal/Libertarian ...
And no libertarian has ever advocated the forced medication of students.
Is there a way I can get paid to do what you do? Except I want to work for the good guys....
He is at times, "a hyper kid" but then so is his Mom, who also grinds her teeth.
His solution was piano lessons, mine was slapping around a volley ball at the Y.
Some folks just have "high sustained energy".
What took these folks so long to fight back against this "mislabeling" of our children.
That energy is the same characteristic of many of our "high achievers" within our work force.
Sac
This is a lot more rare at public schools than people here may think. Most public schools are lawsuit-adverse, and if they were to forcibly medicate with a drug not prescribed by the parents' physician, or were to make taking a drug not prescribed by the parents' physician a condition for school attendance, that is very likely to result in a lawsuit. (In my state, Pennsylvania, you don't even need a lawyer -- just write a registered letter to the district asking for special education hearing, and enclosing a requested witness list which includes every school adult in contact with your child, plus policy-making administrators from your district. In Pennsylvania, you also have a right to have the hearing scheduled at a time and place reasonably convenient to you--ask for a Saturday. In the letter, make clear that you will not waive any deadlines, so they don't think they can drag it out. Instructions on all this are elsewhere on the Internet. Most likely, they will cave in before the heading date.)
In my opinion, forced medication of children by the school is a crime, but a rare one. What is more common is the school people honestly describing a child's misbehavior or inattention in class and then suggesting that the parents discuss medication with their doctor. If you get this advice, I think that, if you can afford it, you should follow the part about asking a doctor -- except consult a psychiatrist, not a pediatrician. However, if you do not want to follow this advice, speak up.
Some parents feel that the school was forcing their child on ritalin when the truth is that the educators were just giving their opinion that the child would benefit from ritalin. Big difference. Even if liberals, and even if on the job, they do have a right to express their opinion, just as we do.
In my opinion, the problem is not ritalin, but too much ritalin. However, if you oppose ritalin, or just think it is not right for your child, your child still has a right to a public education, and, despite the hype, it is very unlikely that a public school will lock the door against your undrugged child.
Since I have always been law-abiding, I have no firsthand ability to judge both sides. So, is there a link or other evidence for this?
In the absence of evidence, I think that the two are totally different. On a reasonable prescribed dose of ritalin, one is moderately calmed, as rated by other people, but you yourself do not much notice the drug. Admitedly, some children are overdosed by doctors who don't take the time to experimentally find the minimum, moderately effective, dose for that child. By contrast, cocaine would be considered worthless by the user if the user could not notice being on it.
Stupid statement. Ignorant statement. Same thing.
Clue: google search
"...On a reasonable prescribed dose of ritalin, one is moderately calmed, as rated by other people,..."
As rated by other people? Who? You?
Some bonehead claims a normal kid that's being his or her normal
self; being inattentive to a boring teacher that's ineffective at the
job of teaching children....... And that bonehead blames the kid?
Drug the teacher and drag her away, leave the kid alone.
I have one who is so laid back, it's absurd but is "mean" when angry. One is high energy with no temper but is never mean. The third is high energy with a temper but also never mean and in fact unusually kind. All were high achievers and are prominent in their professions.
Mom is high energy. Dad is absurdly laid back.
Our schools and our families accentuated the positives in these kids and helped them be achievers.
P.S. When my 5 year old child came home from kindergarten and told me "do you know techers don't make a lot of mone??", I removed her from the public school system and put her in a Catholic School.
The kids all attended private schools in their early years and later attended a "good" suburban school.
Sac
You bet. Part of this problem is that a large percentage of the children diagnosed with ADHD are restless because they are dyslexic and can't read. About 60% of children diagnosed with ADHD are dyslexic. The overwhelming number of cases of dyslexia are caused by "whole language" or "whole word instruction."
Whole language is the opposite of phonics instruction, where children learn letter sounds and then combine the sounds to read words. Whole word instruction treats entire words as pictures. Children memorize a word associated with a picture. Children taught this way have a very limited vocabulary. (Dr. Seuss wrote "The Cat in the Hat" because his publisher told him that his target audience, trained in whole language had a sight-vocabulary of 213 words. The only two words on the list that rhymed were "cat" and "hat.")
Children instructed in whole language cannot "sound out" new words and thus become very frustrated by reading. Eventually, many of these children despair and give up on reading altogether. They then become restless ("hyperactive") and are often drugged (Ritalin).
Now here's the punchline: the intent of whole language instruction is to prevent children from learning to read. Why? Socialists, utopians and industrialists from the mid 1800s until this very day have sought to limit the reading abilities and hence, intellectual abilities of "the masses." Why? Socialists (Dewey was very explicit about this) wanted to subsume individual identity into the Group. Dewey believed that children taught with the whole language method would learn to cooperate with each other by guessing the meaning of words as a group. Utopians like Horace Mann thought that a benevolent elite would manage a vast illiterate and ignorant class. Industrialists (Carnegie, Rockefeller) wanted great numbers of compliant drones (Wundt, Taylor) to work at their factories.
Whole language appeals today to the liberal educational establishment for the same reasons.
That this is being done in government schools is not a surprise. As dangerous as forcing Ritalin into children more pernicious is forcing dogma into children via the government classrooms.
"...On a reasonable prescribed dose of ritalin, one is moderately calmed, as rated by other people,..."
As rated by other people? Who? You?
It's a 2,300 year old hoax.
In each person's life internal authority takes precedence over any bogus "higher authority". That most people choose to sacrifice part of their own authority to bogus higher authority is always a net negative/loss to themselves and society.
Every person had the bogus higher authority hoax foisted on them. The individual is the highest authority. Not government, not peers, not parents, not the media, not academics, not religion. Real power and real authority that increases well being, happiness and prosperity is owned by creative businesspersons and the productive working class from scientists to laborers.
Any institution that asserts itself as being an authority higher than the individual is doing it by initiation of force, fraud or threat of force. Those that are currently proclaiming to be higher authority via fraud have in their dossier a history of initiating force against innocent people. Governments used to do it by initiating force, (some still do). In the last century governments killed 100 million people; of those, governments killed sixty million of their own citizens. And the Christian crusades applied initiation of force, killing millions of people. Islam is still being used to kill people and pedophile priests are harbored by the Catholic church hierarchy.
Yes, but a disgraceful one. The basic thesis of this link, that ritatin is more potent than cocaine, is ridiculous because it all depends on the dose. A better comparison is with caffeine, which has (personal experience) the same effect (over fewer hours) as ritalin at low doses, and is more or less "potent" than ritalin depending on the dose. The first source cited in the above link the opinion of WHO, a UN agency. That should really convince us. Then we go downhill from there. The main source seems to be the research of one Nora Volkow, author of hundreds of scientific articles, who, in advocating a slightly different formulation of ritalin, has pointed out what she sees as moderate dangers in the current formulation. But, despite the misstatements of her position in the above link, Volkow is actually a ritatin supporter:
Don't you wish you knew what you were talking about?
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