Maggie's Farm

.

I scored 2. But it means nothing. Now, let me comment about ADD/ADHD: they are a bogus, invented, fabricated problem. If you really look for a problem, you will find one – whether there is a problem or not. There is a lot of payola in ADD/ADHD diagnoses. It has become an industry. Thus, there is lots of arm-waving over this fabricated 'problem'.

I graduated from high school in 1966. There were more than 400 Seniors who graduated in my class. NOT ONE of them failed to graduate. NOT ONE student dropped out of school over the 4 years I attended. I was typical, in that I never missed a day of school in 4 years.

The class before and after mine had the same 100% graduation rate. By today's standards, ADD and ADHD should have been rampant in a school with 1,600 students. But it was nowhere to be found. All students were expected to pass their classes and graduate, and excuses were simply not accepted.

The grade school and high school I attended allowed no alternative to learning. If homework was not completed, students were required to spend at least two hours after school, hand-copying a college level paper titled "Magnetohydrodynamics". A single spelling error, or bad penmanship, would result in starting over. It was pure make-work, intended to encourage students to do their homework. As you can imagine, it worked very well. There simply was no choice. We were not allowed excuses for failing. Most of us went on to college.

Unless ADD/ADHD has suddenly appeared out of nowhere during the past few decades, it simply does not exist. It is an invented malady, and a convenient excuse for the abject failure of the Education lobby, which derives its income from having warm classroom seats.

My wife is a retired middle school Principal. I have seen the degradation of teacher quality, and the intense water cooler politics that relegates students to a very low priority in the scheme of things. Today, students are income for govenrment schools, nothing more. The endless platitudes about 'putting children first' are disgusting lies.

ADD/ADHD are simply excuses for students who fall somewhere outside a standard deviation or two from the average. Those students can be taught, and they can become valued members of society. But the Education lobby cynically uses excuses like ADD and ADHD to further its own ends at the direct expense of the students, who understand that they are being treated as if there is something wrong with them. There is not. The problem begins with the totally unnecessary and harmful Department of Education, and percolates down to the numerous inept, unqualified and self-serving teachers and their unions.

I have seen it from the inside. Education has gone from bad to worse over the past 25 years or so. In education, ADD/ADHD are simply convenient excuses for the failure of the various special interest groups that put their personal interests far ahead of the good of the students. If you look at ADD/ADHD from that perspective, maybe the scales will fall from your eyes, and you will see the true problem.

.