Is ADHD what we think it is?

Fleas like to bounce around a lot. Kind of like my two boys.

If you put a flea in a bowl it could easily hop out. If you put the flea in the same bowl but with a lid, the flea still tries to escape but it hits its head. It continues to do so over and over, always trying to escape but never quite able.

Eventually, you will be able to remove the lid and the most amazing thing occurs — the flea will jump to the height of where the lid was. Though it is strong enough to jump out of the bowl, it no longer will. It has been conditioned to believing that there is a lid that it cannot jump beyond.

It is my fear that the public education system is that same lid for the bouncing children of the United States. It is a system that causes confident children to take on false ceilings, trapping them from achieving their full potential. It takes bouncing kids and tells them that there is something wrong with them because they are unable to sit still for hours. It teaches them long lists of topics that are uninteresting to the child and dulls the vibrant child until they are bored enough to stay in their bowl.

The current system of education does not work for the student, but forces the student to morph to the classroom.

Right now, in the United States, every 1 in 4 boys is being diagnosed with ADHD. In order to “help” them in class, they are prescribed Ritalin and Adderall. The amount of these prescription drugs being passed out is up 58% since 2012.

I watch my sons and I cannot help but wonder — who really benefits from kids who can sit for long hours? It isn’t my sons. It has to be the teachers and administrators who have an easier time controlling them. And when they can’t, rather than exploring how to harness the gift of their energy, they would recommend a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to alter their chemistry and make them controllable.

I am not angry at teachers or administrators, but I do think we have for too long allowed a system of education to be mass enforced that does not work for kids.

I love alternative education because it rewards the teachers who students like, who teach the things kids want to learn, in a way they are able to learn it.

I truly believe that the existing form of education is on its last leg. The internet and Ai are changing the possibilities of when, where, and how we are able to learn. The marketplace of teachers online will open new worlds for those who struggle to learn in rigid, concrete block classrooms.

And as education begins to work for people with different brains, we may just come to realize some brains don’t need controlled by stimulants, but instead unleashed.

Good education brings freedom. Freedom to be a bouncing and wild child. Freedom to learn what interests you. Freedom to learn your own brain and body and how it might contribute to the world without the need of pharmaceuticals.

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