(2010-07-15) Gray Add School Diagnosis

Peter Gray questions the amount of ADD diagnosis happening. In one study involving 16 different schools and more than three thousand children, teachers filled out the standard ADHD diagnostic checklist of behaviors for the students in their classrooms.[2] In that study, where teachers' ratings were not averaged in with the ratings made by parents, 23% of elementary school boys and 20% of secondary school boys were diagnosed as having ADHD... What does it mean to have ADHD? Basically, it means failure to adapt to the conditions of standard schooling. Most diagnoses of ADHD originate with teachers' observations... How convenient that we have this official way of diagnosing kids who don't sit still in their seats, often fail to pay attention to the teacher, don't regularly do the assignments given to them, often speak out of turn, and blurt out answers before the questions are finished. (Teen Mental Health)

From an evolutionary perspective, school is an abnormal environment... People have always lived in communities, and communities--as well as the individuals within them--benefit from diversity. It is good that some people are relatively restrained while others are more impulsive, that some are relatively passive while others are more active, that some are cautious while others are bolder, and so on... But school, especially today, does not have a variety of niches. Everyone is expected to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way.

Update: stories from readers who did Home-School or UnSchooling or Free Schooling or equivalent with kids who had been diagnosed. Conclusion 1: Most children who had been medicated for ADHD while in conventional schooling were taken off of the drugs when removed from conventional schooling, and those who were never in conventional schooling were never medicated... Conclusion 2: The children's behavior, moods, and learning generally improved when they stopped conventional schooling, not because their ADHD characteristics vanished but because they were now in a situation where they could learn to deal with those characteristics... Conclusion 3: Many of these children seem to have a very high need for self-direction in education, and many "hyper focus" on tasks that interest them.