EASE UP ON THE RITALIN AND LET BOYS BE BOYS

A reaction is under way against drugging children because they are behaving
like children, especially boy children. Colorado's elected school board
recently voted to discourage what looks like drug abuse in the service of an
ideological agenda. The board urged teachers and other school personnel to
be more restrained about recommending drugs such as Ritalin for behavior
modification of children, and to rely more on discipline and instruction.

One reason for the vote is that some school violence has been committed by
students taking psychotropic drugs. But even absent a causal connection
between the drugs and violence, there are sound reasons to recoil from the
promiscuous drugging of children.

Consider the supposed epidemic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
that by 1996 had American youngsters consuming 90 percent of the world's
Ritalin. Boys, no parent of one will be surprised to learn, are much more
likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD. In 1996, 10 to 12 percent of
all American schoolboys were taking the addictive Ritalin. (After attending
classes on the dangers of drugs?)

One theory holds that ADHD is epidemic because of the modern acceleration of
life -- the environmental blitzkrieg of MTV, video games, e-mail, cell
phones, etc. However, the magazine Lingua Franca reports that Ken Jacobson,
a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts,
conducted a cross-cultural study of ADHD that included observation of two
groups of English schoolchildren, one diagnosed with ADHD, the other not. He
observed them with reference to 35 behaviors (e.g., "giggling," "squirming,"
"blurting out") and found no significant differences between the groups.

Children, he says, tend to talk, fidget and fool around -- "all the
classical ADHD-type behaviors. If you're predisposed to label any child as
ADHD, the distracted troublemaker or the model student, you'll find a way to
observe these behaviors." So what might explain such a predisposition?

Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, writing
in Commentary, argues that ADHD, "social phobia" (usual symptom: fear of
public speaking) and other disorders certified by the American Psychiatric
Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" are
proliferating rapidly. This is because of a growing tendency to regard as
mental problems many characteristics that are really aspects of
individuality. So pharmacology is employed to relieve burdensome aspects of
temperament.

"Psychiatric conditions," says McHugh, "are routinely differentiated by
appearances alone," even when it is "difficult to distinguish symptoms of
illness from normal variations in human life," or from the normal responses
of sensitive people to life's challenges. But if a condition can be
described, it can be named; once named, a distinct disorder can be linked to
a particular treatment. McHugh says some experts who certify new disorders
"receive extravagant annual retainers from pharmaceutical companies that
profit from the promotion of disorders treatable by the companies'
medications."

The idea that most individuals deficient in attentiveness or confidence are
sick encourages what McHugh calls pharmacological "mental cosmetics." This
"should be offensive to anyone who values the richness of human
psychological diversity. Both medically and morally, encumbering this
naturally occurring diversity with the terminology of disease is a first
step toward efforts, however camouflaged, to control it."

Clearly some children need Ritalin. However, Ken Livingston, of Vassar's
department of psychology, writing in The Public Interest, says Ritalin is
sometimes used as a diagnostic tool -- if it improves a child's attention,
ADHD is assumed. But Ritalin, like other stimulants such as caffeine and
nicotine, improves almost everyone's attention. And Ritalin is a ready
resource for teachers who blur the distinction between education and
therapy.

One alternative to Ritalin might be school choice -- parents finding schools
suited to their children's temperaments.

Gwen Broude, also of Vassar, believes that the rambunctiousness of boys is
treated as a mental disorder by people eager to interpret sex differences as
personal deficiencies. Danielle Crittenden of the Independent Women's Forum
sees the "anti-boy lobby" behind handwringing about the supposed dangers of
reading the Harry Potter novels which feature wizardry, witchcraft and other
really neat stuff.

The androgyny agenda of progressive thinkers has reduced children's
literature to bland gruel because, Crittenden says, there is "zero tolerance
for male adventurousness." The Potter books recall those traditional boys
books that satisfied boys' zeal for strife and adventure.

Harry is brave, good and constantly battling evil. He should point his
broomstick toward Colorado, where perhaps boys can be boys.

Will is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, based in Washington,
D.C.