Quote: (03-24-2019 11:56 AM)MrLemon Wrote:
Don't know if this has been covered already, but almost all schools in the United States *relentlessly* shove ADD and anti-depressents on the kids. ADD for the boys, anti-depressents for the teen girls.
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WHY do teachers want kids on ADD drugs? Becuase the kid is refusing to do the horrific masses of homework that the asshole teachers dump on kids. The reason for the homework is to push the school's ratings higher on the internet. High ratings = higher property values for the neighborhood and thus higher teacher salaries. Asian communities (tiger moms) are notorious for this.
Except that the Asian kids doing the "horrific masses of homework" actually do it and don't wind up on the pills nearly as often as the white kids. I don't know where you are, but the white parents near me seem to care more about football games, bake sales and cheer leading than whether or not their kids are actually learning. When you consider who the parents are, it all comes together. See the graph in the first post of this thread - divorced moms on psychiatric meds, consumed with their own vanity.
The parents who actually care enough about education wind up home schooling or sending their kids to private/parochial schools - if they can afford it.
Any rise in genuine autism probably has more to do with women having babies in their thirties instead of their twenties (and possibly being on pills themselves). But yes there are plenty of bullshit diagnoses too. ADD is chalked up as an "autism spectrum disorder" which clouds the stats.
Put the boys on ADD meds and they become easier to manage. Put them on SSRIs and they become school shooters (fact). Either way, schools often get extra money from the state when they have a few special needs kids in the mix, since they justify support personnel and add to the teacher union rolls. I heard of one woman hired to give an "autistic" kid back rubs while he was in math class. Teachers don't need to worry about student competency, they simply inflate the grades and hand out participation trophies left and right. Colleges rely on the SAT scores even less than before, so even the valedictorian who thinks she's top of her game winds up struggling at an actual college in a real major (seen it happen).
The graph on the original post is from 2014. Given the trend line, I bet that med use statistic is now probably closer to 70% of all white middle aged females.