There is a lot of good that has come out of the ability to diagnose and treat an array of learning problems, and hopefully with more articles by Jay Green and company, the evidence will be overwhelming and the conclusion will be widespread that a government-run, public school system is uniquely UNqualified to deal with anything other than teacher-pleaser type students who are able to function adequately within the mold that the public school system markets as being the only reliable education model possible.

http://www.cthomeschoolnetwork.org/

Homeschooling is alive and well in your state, it seems.

Kim, I have a very hard time believing what you say holds true for the entire state of Connecticut. Some backwater school districts, maybe . . . but the State? Frankly, it soulnds like you have an axe to grind.

Krodeb, you are on to something. Again, this is my own anecdotal evidence, but I have seen very similar things. I was just making the point that this is not just an issue in public elementary schools – it’s in parochial schools (which aren’t necessarily the same as private schools) too. At least where I am.

And the pressure on parents to toe the line is very high.

And to add to the anecdotal nature of this comment thread let me say that my experience in this comes from one relative who has had a child diagnosed ADHD and put him on medication, one friend who had the same diagnosis and after seeing the side effects of the medication on her child chose to fight the behavior issues without it for 10 years now (the girl is now a wonderful teenager whose behavior is all the better for the years of work), and a boy who I mentored for several years who was put on meds in 2nd grade largely because of his behavior which likely had nothing to do with ADHD and more to do with his miserable home life, lack of good parenting, and spirited personality (in fact, he was tested after nearly 6 years on the meds and that doctor said he had absolutely NO distraction problems). The medication he was on ruined his appetite, stunted his growth (he would grow during the summer when off the drug and not grow during the school year while on the drug) and God know what else. His mom finally took him off the meds in 8th grade although the school really resisted it. She felt bullied all along by the school in the process even though, legally, the school was not supposed to suggest drugs AT ALL to parents.

If you are seeing pre-K kids on Ritalin something is very, very wrong, because ADHD should not even be diagnosed in children so young. And, unless there are 80 kids in the parochial school classroom, on a statistical basis at least it would be over-diagnosed.

No more than 1/20 kids is diagnosed with ADHD on a national basis. Most are boys, of course.

But I saw similar things – how about a Pre-K class with 4 boys on Ritalin already? – in our local parochial (Catholic) school. So it’s not just government schools.

Ugh I dread next year (my oldest starts kindergarten). And my son is already like yours at three – he’s going to be a handful by six!

Should be interesting. Good luck to you next year!

The teacher was, frankly, incompetent. The children ate breakfast around 0700, were made to sit in class (no recess) until their lunch hour at 1210 with no snacks, lunch “hour” ended at 1220, and then began the only short recess period of the day. How any child could do that without breaking out at some point, I can’t imagine, but it probably helps to be drugged. At first the teacher made the “disciplinary challenges” sit out recess back in their classroom, until my wife insisted that if the children were in the classroom, the teacher had to be, also. My wife certainly wasn’t going to watch them, if only for liability reasons. So after one or two unhappy recesses in the classroom, off the children went to the principal’s office. Why the principal put up with it, I’ll never know.

I should add that many of these children were theives, pickpockets, bullies of the first order. Their own parents failed to supply them with school materials, and they stole from our son relentlessly, despite repeated warnings to the teacher. They reached into his pockets to steal cough drops. When he fought back or complained, he was punished. When the teacher won’t protect him, imagine how alone and defenseless he feels. Only in the last month of the school year, when the teacher found her purse empty of both money and car keys, did she finally admit what we had been telling her all along.

At the end of the year, we found that our son, who scored not only highest in his class for reading, but higher than most second-graders, was put back in the slow class for second grade. Thanks to a friend, we found that in the school’s “confidential” (read: no parents to know) assessment system, our son was labeled a problem child.

So what I found most interesting in Dr Greene’s articles is the note that students aren’t to be labeled LD or similar when the problem is poor teacher performance. But who watches the teachers?

Every day in government schools only reinforces the value of home schooling, if only we were in a position to do so ourselves.

I don’t have any reason to disagree with you, but also find it hard to agree that whole language (reading) instruction has fostered illiteracy. I say that because an entire generation of post-war babies received the equivalent — basal reading instruction (”Dick & Jane”) — in the ’50’s, and without the benefit of phonics.

I would look to television and videogames as possible culprits before I looked to whole language.