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War on Boys: Nearly 1 in 5 Boys Diagnosed with ADHD

by Nathan Harden - Fix Editor on April 3, 2013

The New York Times reports that nearly 1 in 5 young boys in the U.S. has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Give me a break.

Anyone ever think that maybe boys, with their strong drive for physical activity, simply aren’t made for sitting around at a desk all day?

Two thirds of those diagnosed are on some kind of medication, such as Ritalin or Adderall.

Something’s wrong when we’re drugging 15% of the young males in this country. We should be thinking about redesigning the educational experience to accommodate young boys’ needs for more frequent physical activity, not sedating them with drugs so that they will sit in a drug-induced stupor throughout the long tedious (and often wasted hours) of a typical school day.

I’m sure these drugs benefit some kids. But, overall, the rush to diagnose millions of boys with a psychiatric disorder is a grave injustice in our culture.

Mind-altering medication should be a last resort. Far too many educators, doctors, and parents rush to give their kids medication for these so-called disorders, thinking they are doing good, when in fact what they are doing is stamping out the life of young boys, and trying to force them to fit into a sedentary classroom experience they simply aren’t built for.

These are powerful drugs, which sometimes come with serious side effects such as addiction and anxiety. They are used far too indiscriminately. It’s almost like we are using drugs to domesticate and feminize boys.

Young girls, on average, are better able to sit still and converse quietly for long periods of time. Primary education in America is tailor-made to fit young girls’ natural proclivities. Good for them. But let’s not try to fit all boys into that same box. Instead, why not look for ways to change the classroom experience in order to better accommodate boys’ style of learning and boys’ need for frequent physical activity?

Bottom Line: Doctors and parents need to stop medicating the life out of healthy and active young boys.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book, SEX & GOD AT YALE: porn, political correctness, and a good education gone bad.

Like The College Fix on Facebook. / Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden

(Image by Werner100359 / Wikimedia Commons)

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Women Outperforming Men in College

by College Fix Staff on February 21, 2013

Inside Higher Ed reports on new research that seeks to explain why women, on average, are outperforming men academically:

The facts of women being more likely than men to go to college, perform better academically, and major in fields other than science, technology, engineering and mathematics are mostly attributable to factors affecting students before – in some cases, long before – they enter the halls of academe. But that doesn’t mean colleges can’t do anything to mitigate the consequences.

Those are the conclusions of the authors of a new book, The Rise of Women (Russell Sage Foundation), about how and why female students continue to outpace their male counterparts in education (yet still can’t seem to earn a comparable paycheck).

“We’ve seen astonishing change over a very short historical period,” Thomas DiPrete, the book’s co-author and a sociology professor at Columbia University, said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

Starting with the people born around 1950, the rate of men’s bachelor’s degree completion stopped growing, and it stayed stagnant for years. In 1970, 20 percent of men and 14 percent of women finished college. By 2010, women’s graduation rates had “skyrocketed” to 36 percent, DiPrete said, while the rate among men grew only seven points, to 27 percent.

Today, women outpace men in college enrollment by a ratio of 1.4 to 1.

Beginning as early as kindergarten, the authors explained, girls have better average social and behavioral skills than boys, and that relates to girls’ higher average grades at each stage of school and why girls are more likely to earn a degree.

“The grade gap isn’t about ability,” said Claudia Buchmann, co-author and sociology professor at Ohio State University, “it’s really more about effort and engagement in school…”

“We really need schools that set high expectations, that treat students as individuals – not just as gendered groups – and also motivate students to invest in their education so that they can reach the big returns of a college degree that exist in today’s labor market,” Buchmann said.

Read the full story here.

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