Essay Project #3

The Newest Way to Dominate

            Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is an illness that affects many children around the world. Its symptoms include hyperactivity, low attention span and heightened emotions which can often lead to temper tantrums. Medicines such as Ritalin and Adderall are prescribed by doctors to help the child feel and act more “normal”.  “Normal” in this sense of the word is meant to mean more like everyone else, a lack of individuality that prevents the child with ADHD from being a disturbance in everyday society. These medicines are often times very effective and sometimes too effective to the point that it causes the children to have an inauthentic experience in social situations. In addition it can cause the child to be even more separate and different from the other “normal” children of their own age. Finally the children with ADHD have a different way of thinking and reacting to the things around them, so by there very nature they are a potential threat to the established norms of society. This causes different ideas and thoughts to clash with each other, ultimately causing a disturbance to the delicate balance within society.

            In general, most people would agree with the statement that children are active and have a higher energy level than most adults. Children with ADHD have an even higher level of energy that causes them to have a harder time concentrating in the classroom and other social situations. That is when Ritalin and Adderall come in. These medicines change the energy and hormone levels in an ADHD child to a more normal and stable level, making them easier to control. From this perspective medicine acts as a dominating force used by those in charge, such as teachers and parents, to keep control of their environment and to retain their own power over those underneath them. Paulo Freire is an important theorist and intellectual in the area of education and literacy.  In his essay “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” he addresses the idea of those in charge needing to dominate those underneath them. In the essay he says “The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order and social peace (that is, the peace of the elites)” (6).  This can be related to children with ADHD, especially in a classroom setting, because the dominant elites, the teacher, use medications to assert their own dominance over the children that threaten their power the most, the children with ADHD. The medication acts to ensure that the order and peace of the classroom, through the eyes of the teacher, is maintained. This is significant because it makes the child acts in a completely different way than they would normally, making their experience with other children in the classroom impersonal. Thus the relationships that these children create and maintain with their peers are not as authentic as it could or should be because there isn’t a real presence of self for the child that is taking these medications.

            A child with ADHD has a different way of thinking and creating than a person without ADHD, this is due to hormone imbalances in the brain. When a child is different is scares a lot of people and a lot of them don’t know how to react when a child does something that is out of the ordinary. Children with ADHD do things differently on a very regular basis, making it hard for parents and teachers to accept and manage the child. The result again is more dominance and more pills. Paulo Freire says “to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed” (2). In other words, to prevent the children from having the power to think creatively adults will use medicine because it protects their interests in having the world around them stay the same. Medicine makes a threatening situation manageable because it makes the child less likely to push the boundaries, as well as making them less likely to question the dominance of those in charge of them. The power of the teachers and parents is les threatened when the children are medicated so the adults feel like they are in a safer environment, if not for their children but for themselves.

            The use of medication to kill the creative capabilities of children with ADHD also correlates with Sir Ken Robinson’s speech on how schools kill creativity. In this speech Sir Ken Robinson talks about how children don’t grow up to be more creative, but instead they grow out of their creativeness. Children diagnosed with ADHD often “grow out” of their ADHD and grow up to become fully functional and “normal” adults. Is it possible that these medications contribute to that? Yes it is very likely that over time medication makes it possible for children to grow up normally. Is it possible that these medications contribute to these children growing out of their creativity? Possibly, if the intention of these medications is to make the children more complacent by killing their “abnormal” creative skills it logically follows that these medications also causes people to grow up to have a lack of creative skills. Adult cases of ADHD are few and far between. Childhood diagnoses of ADHD are on the rise and more and more children are being medicated to solve their hyperactive and overly creative tendencies. In the future this could have some bad ramifications. As the children of today grow into adulthood they will be “cured” of their ADHD resulting in a noncreative, average citizen. This could mean a very bleak future for the arts and other creative outlets as less and less people have the creative ingenuity needed to excel in these areas.

            When different ways of thinking, ideas or cultures clash the result can either be incredibly good, or incredibly bad. Since children with ADHD have a different way of processing information from those around them it is very often that the clash with each other. Mary Louise Pratt calls the point where two opposing forces clash a contact zone. In her essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” she says “Many of those who govern us display, openly, their interest in quiescent, ignorant, manipulable electorate.  Even as an ideal, the concept of an enlightened citizenry seems to have disappeared from the national imagination” (5).  On a small scale, this idea of those in charge wishing to make the masses ignorant can be applied to doctors and parents who prescribe and give these medications to the ADHD children. The adults try very hard to make these medicines seem like they are important, even essential, to these children have any semblance of a “normal” childhood. They wish to keep the masses, in this case the children, ignorant of their true intention to have complete control of their children and the children and all situations around them. If the children, especially those old enough to really understand the situation, were to find out just how much the adults in their life are trying to control the way they think and act there would be a sort of revolt. Children would refuse to take their medicines, causing those in charge to panic because they would no longer have the control that they desire in this situation.

            The ultimate hope and goal of medicating these children is to ensure a community where everyone is the same. In a community where everyone is the same there is little room for clashing and a smaller chance of things ever changing for the better or worse. Pratt calls this sort of  “ideal” community “safe houses”, which means “social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogenous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection for legacies of oppression” (6).  The idea of a safe house can be extended to understand why adults rely on medication so much to treat ADHD. Medications do have their positive affects, the medications help create a place where everyone has the same chances at learning. It makes a normally hyperactive, distracted child more able to concentrate. The use of medication is rooted in the natural desire to be part of a safe house where everyone included is relieved of oppression and threats.

 The concept of a safe house includes the idea that individuals should be free from domination and oppression. So, by the using medication in an attempt to create a safe house, adults are making it impossible for a safe house to exist. Medicine is used to dominate and control the children with ADHD by those in charge. The use of domination to create a safe house violates the very definition of a safe house, therefore a safe house cannot exist until medicines are not used anymore in an attempt to control situations.

            In today’s society, being the same as everyone else is encouraged. Being individualistic will make you an outcast because being different or doing something that isn’t already an established “normal” thing to do is viewed as being an inappropriate and wrong thing to do. John Taylor Gatto was a teacher for about 30 years when he wrote his article “Against Schools” about the way schools are not doing their intended job. In this article he says “This might as well be call ‘the conformity function,’ because it’s intention is to make the children as alike as possible” (36). While Gatto is talking about schools, this concept can be extended to society as a whole. Society in general conforms, often without question as to the motives. When one doesn’t conform they are criticizes to the point that they give up and conform because it’s the easy thing to do. This is why medicine is necessary. When a child with ADHD doesn’t or can’t conform to standards thrust upon them, they are forced to conform through medications. ADHD medicines fundamentally change a person hormonally, essentially making them a completely different person.

            Children with ADHD who are medicated do benefit from taking these medicines. However, the ultimate benefit goes to those in charge. Those in charge benefit the most because they have more control over their situation and can therefore assert their own dominance.  The intentions of the dominates is most likely good, a community where everyone is equal with equal opportunities for learning is a noble idea. However, in this case the means do not justify the ends. By medicating these children they lose themselves in the process because the medications change the way they think and act. In addition, the future of these children is devastated because they lose their capacity for creativity. In a future where a majority of the population does not have the ability to think creatively and problem solve areas of society that are essential suffer, such as the arts. Also by the very act of dominating the idea of a safe and equal community is shattered. Domination makes room for rebellion and a sort of class system where those being dominated are inferior to those in charge.

            The natural instinct to dominate those different from the majority is the reason that medicating children with ADHD is viewed as a necessary and even normal thing to do. Medicating children with ADHD is an act of domination, used to help create a community of individuals created equally. When in reality it creates a place where everyone can’t ever be the same, where children suffer the inability to simply be children. ADHD medicine has its benefits, but it is possible that the negative aspects of medicines like Adderall and Ritalin outweigh the positives.