'Meducating' our children: is Adderall the magic bullet?

By Vivian Nguyen

I recently read a New York Times article published back in October of 2012 which discussed an alarming trend in some poor communities around America: physicians with low-income patients are prescribing elementary school kids powerful attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.) medicine in order to boost academic performance. 

Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, Georgia, is one such physician. He prescribes the pills not for A.D.H.D but rather to treat what he considers the children's true illness - poor academic performance in inadequate schools. According to the article, Dr. Anderson states that "I don't have a whole lot of choice. We've decided as a society that it's too expensive to modify the kid's environment. So we have to modify the kid." 

His statement got me thinking about something that we've discussed many times in GPP - the importance of how an issue is framed and how that framing produces certain solutions. If we believe that the education system is broken, then a structural remedy is called for. But if we believe that it is the children themselves who are broken, then the answer is to fix the kids. 

Given that the costs of implementing structural change are high, the cost-effective idea of fixing the issue at the individual level can be tempting. However, I personally disagree with Dr. Anderson's claim that we've decided as a society that "it's too expensive to modify the kid's environment." The issue isn't so much finance as it is convenience. We, as Americans, desire quick fixes. It is much easier for doctors to simply prescribe a child Adderall and see an immediate improvement in test results than it is to restructure our entire public education system. With just a flick of their pen, physicians have the power to significantly improve the education outcomes of America's poorest kids. The children have a better chance to succeed, their parents support the physician's decision (since the cost of Adderall is covered by Medicaid) and we as a society all benefit. Seems too good to be true?

That's because it is. Just because something is convenient in the short term doesn't mean that the long-term consequences won't be dire. In fact, as the article points out, many proponents of "meducation" have admitted to not knowing the potential hazards of prescribing these powerful and highly addictive pills to young kids. And because of that, this whole idea sounds like a huge gamble. We are essentially experimenting on poor kids from vulnerable communities and replicating the experiments just because we've seen some short term successes. This isn't science - it's exploitation. We are naive if we, as a society, have truly decided that that adderall is the "magic bullet" to fixing our education system.    

Although the battle over how to improve education in America will continue on for many years, one this is clear to me now - meducating our children is not the answer. 

You can find the original NYT article here.