Academic Doping? Gimme a break!

by Karoli on September 9, 2006 · 5 comments

Sorry MSNBC, but this is NOT news. It is, however, offensive.

[sarcasm]

How to take non-news and make it news:

Talk to a Boston pediatrician who has just come from an appointment with parents who obviously need Prozac
Take his off-the-cuff remarks about bizarre parents demanding Ritalin to boost their child’s school performance and hype it up — call it “academic doping” to pull Google juice from the athletic doping stories
Frame your report in such a way that it APPEARS that you are reporting a “trend”.

“I spoke with [some] colleagues the other day and they mentioned three cases recently where parents blatantly asked for the medication so that their children would perform better in school, yet there were no other indications that the child had ADHD,” says Dr. Nick Yates, a pediatrician and director of medical ethics for Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y.

(My gosh! THREE cases? Maybe it’s an epidemic in Buffalo?)
List all of the negative side effects with merely a passing mention of the positives for those who really need them.

[/sarcasm]

I saw this story blogged yesterday on a university newspaper site and passed it by. Why? Because it’s NON-NEWS.

The NEWS is that these parents are obsessed with their children’s academic performance to the extent that they are appealing to their children’s pediatrician for help boosting it.

The NEWS is that the dynamic in play here sets up their non-ADHD kid for a sense of failure where none need exist.

The NEWS is that it’s time to have a much closer look at the way grades are determined. I’m still puzzling over Sticks’ “B” in his AP Chemistry class when weighed against the 5 on the AP test. Which should carry more weight? What does each score represent? How should someone who doesn’t know Sticks interpret the disconnect between the two? What weight should colleges give to GPA versus test scores when evaluating a student for admission? (An aside: other kids in that class who received an A in the class received a 2 on the exam…is that a test-taking thing? Or a learning thing? All bright kids, and the teacher was excellent)

The NEWS is that by framing the issue in this light, the writer (Victoria Clayton) minimizes legitimate use of Ritalin for ADHD kids, further demonizes the prescription of stimulant medications, and shifts the focus from the REAL issues to non-issues which are NOT NEWSWORTHY.

Oh, Victoria Clayton has one kid who is 3 years old. She’s a freelance writer for MSNBC who co-wrote a book on pregnancy.

[sarcasm]
Surely that makes her qualified to write on ADHD.
[/sarcasm]

With apologies in advance to John Stossel….

GIMME A BREAK

Related:

Toxic Parenting
Too Few Overachievers Thank you, Liz

Update 9/11/2006: Dr. Farrell over on WebMD thinks it’s news, and cause for concern. My response? Maybe the parents’ behavior is cause for concern, but if the prescriptions aren’t written, there’s no abuse, right?

Technorati Tags: AD/HD, academic doping, ritalin, pushy parents, grades, academic achievement, rant

Tagged as: ADHD, News, Rants

http://lizditz.typepad.com Liz

You wrote exactly what I had in the hopper. Only I would’ve been harder on the reporter for the lack of research.

“Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other physicians say this is an increasingly common scenario in doctors’ offices around the country, though there are no hard statistics on it.”

Perrin, prove it. This is just innuendo.
http://lizditz.typepad.com Liz

I also want to add a quote from Jay Matthew’s op-ed, Too Few Overachievers

“I have spent a great deal of time interviewing students and parents in the 20817 Zip code, where Whitman is located, and similar neighborhoods such as 10583 (Scarsdale, N.Y.), 60093 (Winnetka, Ill.) and 91108 (San Marino, Calif.) News editors and book publishers are susceptible to Robbins’s argument because many of them live in such places, where family incomes are in the top 5 percent nationally and talk about school stress in rampant. It would be almost a relief to many educators if these families, and their highly motivated students, were typical and overachievement were the greatest threat to high school education today. But the sad truth is quite the opposite.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national achievement test, reading and math scores for 17-year-olds have been stagnant the last 30 years. One of the reasons for this, many educators say, is that students, educators and parents have bought into the notion popularized by Robbins and other social critics that American teenagers have too much schoolwork and should be allowed instead to read for pleasure and watch the sunset and think deep thoughts.

But how, exactly, are they using their time? Robbins is quite right about Whitman. Its students are frequently taking five or six AP courses and putting in four hours a night or more on schoolwork. What Robbins and the parents and students in such communities fail to see, however, is that they are in the uppermost 5 percent in homework, just as they are in housing square footage, money spent on vacations and stock market investments. Only about 10 percent of American high school students have Ivy League ambitions. For the vast majority, academic stress is pretty rare.”
http://drumsnwhistles.com drumsnwhistles

Liz,

Both excellent points. I had meant to say something about the good doctor’s statement about statistics. As has been shown to me more than once, intuition is not necessarily proven when the hard numbers are crunched.

And particularly to the second point, BRAVO. I could not agree more and it’s so well put.

DnW
http://www.Myomancy.com Chris Tregenza

Hi,

I had a very different take on the story than you did.

You are right that it is a non-news story and that drawing conclusions from three anecdotal stories is stupid. However what I think is important is the attitude of the parents because they represent a growing proportion of the non-ADHD population that believe Ritalin et al is not a medicine but a performance enhancer.

This devalues the seriousness of ADHD and has potential devestating impact on non-ADHD kids who feel they need the same ‘performance boast’ from Ritalin that ADHD sufferers get. The full impact of stimulent use, especially on the younger children, is unknown with some studies suggesting long term harm to the centeral nervous system.

With more and more parents and students pushing to get stimulents we will likely see a backlash in schools against stimulent use that would harm many ADHD kids.

On my blog I have coverage of ADHD medication on my blog, Myomancy [ http://www.Myomancy.com ].

Chris
http://drumsnwhistles.com drumsnwhistles

Chris, thanks for coming and commenting.

I do have a bit of an issue with your statement that the full impact of stimulant (i.e. Ritalin) use is unknown…it has, after all, been studied for well over 60 years. While there are always discoveries waiting to be found I’d say that the odds run well in favor of Ritalin’s track record for treating ADHD.

However, your point about viewing stimulants and Ritalin in particular as a performance enhancer rather than a medication used to treat a legitimate condition is well-taken.

Welcome!

DnW