ADHD is an acronym for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Children diagnosed with ADHD have been described as: not able to pay attention, easily bored (especially in a classroom), can’t stop running around, can’t control their emotions, get into arguments easily and sometimes may even get into a scrap, sneak comic books into the school, chew gum in class, take part in food fights in the school cafeteria with enthusiasm, doodle in their notebooks during class (especially with colored pencils), and other such endeavors typical of childhood.

In a word, it could be said that if a child seems to be “wild,” then diagnose him-or-her as ADHD. You will hear it said of some children that they’re “rambunctious,” which means they’re “troublemakers,” which means it’s open season on them by those set on “getting them straightened out” (and “straightening them out” in every mean-spirited way). Well, aren’t we all wild when we are children? And how cruel that adults intent on frightening this wildness out of children through any means at hand are sanctioned in their schemes by the school and society.

Although I don’t think anybody could’ve said that I was ever openly rebellious, at least not with anger, I’ve never followed the drumbeat that many others seemed to follow (if that’s even an accurate way of describing it) and because I didn’t, it caused me a lot of trouble growing up – but it could’ve been worse. I’m sure that if I’d’ve come along in the 1970s and 1980s, some over-zealous school authorities would’ve tried to convince my parents that I was ADHD and then tried to get them to dose me up with Ritalin. But I’m just as sure they wouldn’t’ve succeeded. My mother was ferocious if she sensed that anybody was threatening one of her children.

I’ve seen how Ritalin works on children. It renders the youngster “manageable,” as it’s said, so that he no longer causes any trouble (and most of the time, it’s a boy who is “diagnosed” with ADHD). After the school nurse fully medicates him in the morning (and often at lunch too), he sits in his seat holding onto his desk for all the school day, no longer what the so-called experts say is “disruptive.”

But despite what the school psychologist and the drug company rep proclaim, he’s not “teachable” when he’s on Ritalin, not if being teachable means that he can learn something he can put to productive use in his life, such as learning how to spell or how to solve a math problem or how to gather firewood and kindling from a woodlot and start a fire with it and keep the fire going safely so he can cook over it, thus feeding himself and others – something you learn in the Boy Scouts and maybe even at school if it’s a good school.

To me, it seems the best way to “cure” so-called ADHD and other made-up conditions is to get the boys and girls outside on the playground and let them run around for a couple of hours just like teachers do with kindergarteners. Let them play basketball, or softball, soccer, volleyball, tetherball, help them plant and tend a garden on the school grounds, anything to get them moving vigorously – even letting them to rake leaves or shovel snow or help the janitor cut the grass.

Then you can bring them back into the school and let them take a nap for about an hour, just like they do with children in kindergarten. (So what if they’re twelve years old. I like to take a nap in the afternoon. Don’t you?) Then for the rest of the day, you have children you can teach because they’re relaxed, alert, and ready to learn.

They don’t need all that “intervention,” or whatever they want to call it – mostly so that a bunch of good-for-nothings can have jobs that sound important, passing themselves off as “experts” to people who don’t know any better, and then forcing children to suffer through a lot of foolishness, and worse.

In any school, the teachers who are genuinely and deeply concerned with helping the children develop their best possibilities are easy to find if you know where to look. They aren’t making spectacles of themselves, politicking at the school board, but working their hearts out in their classrooms and on the playground helping the children learn what they need to know so they can live good lives. They don’t have the time to do anything else. To find out who these teachers are, ask the recent graduates of any school, or the students at the school right now. They’ll tell you because these are always the teachers who help them learn what’s important. That’s all the evaluation you need, and the best you’ll ever get.