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Mercogliano, Chris. (2003). Teaching the Restless: One
School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children
Learn and Succeed. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pp. xii+252
$25 ISBN 0-8070-3246-8
Reviewed by Terry L. Stoops
University of Virginia
July 20, 2004
The origin of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
dates back to the mid-nineteenth century when Dr. Heinrich
Hoffman published “The Story of Fidgety Phillip,” a
children’s book that chronicles the plight of an
inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive schoolboy. In 1902, Sir
George Still gave ADHD scientific legitimacy in a series of
lectures delivered to the Royal College of Physicians. Yet, not
until the early 1990s did the public begin to debate the
existence of ADHD and the desirability of medicating children
with treatment drugs like Ritalin. Today, the National Institute
of Mental Health estimates that between 3 and 5 percent or
approximately two million adolescents in the United States have
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. (NIMH, 2003)
In Teaching the Restless: One School’s Remarkable
No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed,
Chris Mercogliano, teacher and codirector of the Albany Free
School, argues that the medical community has been wrong about
ADHD and that administering medications like Ritalin to children
is a travesty. Specifically, Mercogliano doubts that ADHD even
exists and proclaims that the use of Ritalin is akin to a mass
drug experiment perpetrated by the medical establishment.
According to the author, although children may be inattentive,
hyperactive, and impulsive, these children are not suffering from
a biological disorder and do not require medication. Instead,
these behaviors are symptomatic of an educational system that
pushes academics on children too soon and too forcefully and
schools that fail to attend to the unique emotional and physical
needs of children, especially familial problems and environmental
stresses. For Mercogliano, children are naturally restless, and
left to their own inner direction, children learn
self-understanding, self-regulation, and self-confidence, which
are all prerequisites to learning. Consequently, the Albany Free
School leaves academic pursuits to the discretion of each
student.
Mercogliano declares that the purpose of his book is not to
offer blanket recommendations for school reform. By recounting
the stories of nine hyperactive or distressed Free School
students, the author seeks to change the way that society,
especially teachers, administrators, and policy makers, thinks
about restless children by showing that they can be successful
without drugs and labeling. In this way, Mercogliano’s
book follows a popular genre of educational writing, exemplified
by Gloria Ladson-Billings’s The Dreamkeepers and
Deborah Meier’s The Power of their Ideas, whereby
stories of schooling provide models for rethinking conventional
educational practices and beliefs. On the other hand, the author
also maintains that the “highest aim” of the stories
is to illustrate that educators can only appreciate the origin of
a student’s distress through their unique stories and
circumstances.
The book follows six boys and three girls, so-called
“Ritalin kids,” through one year at the Albany Free
School. The first six chapters introduce the background of each
child, while the final six chapters describe various episodes
from December to the end of the school year. It is significant
to note that the author’s use of the term “Ritalin
kids” does not mean that all of his subjects were diagnosed
with ADHD or were taking medication to treat ADHD when they
enrolled in the Free School. Of the nine children focused on in
the book, only two were actually diagnosed with ADHD and taking
Ritalin or a similar drug when they entered the Free School. Six
of the featured children were not diagnosed or medicated by the
time they enrolled, although the author speculates they would
have been diagnosed and medicated if they remained in public
schools. One child began taking Ritalin after she left the Free
School.
Mercogliano offers a number of reasons why administering
medications like Ritalin are detrimental to child development,
especially in boys. Philosophically, the medication violates the
desire of the human spirit to become whole persons. It is an
inhumane and cowardly path toward conformity. Socially, Ritalin
discourages socialization and stigmatizes the child as
deficient. Psychologically, Ritalin may suppress spontaneity and
curiosity. Children on the medication may perceive themselves as
bad and lose self-esteem, and in some cases, they use the
medication as an excuse for disavowing responsibility for
improper behavior. Physically, Ritalin may suppress growth and
development. For these reasons, Mercogliano believes that
Ritalin is a “chemical straitjacket” for children who
are simply physical and energetic. Obviously, the Free School
does not permit students to take medications like Ritalin, and
they maintain a strict medications policy, going to great lengths
to keep medication of all kinds away from its students.
Mercogliano blames public schools and the condition of society
for not attending to the needs of energetic and distressed
children. Mercogliano’s unabashedly criticizes public
schools and conventional classroom instruction for the harm done
to children. He finds that school systems burden teachers and
students at all levels with academic standards. With the
emphasis on standards, schools are only concerned about
left-brain academics at the expense of right-brain creative
activities. In addition, public schools hopelessly rely on
standardized discipline and an environment of constant
surveillance to coerce children into learning.
In sum, the author finds that the regimentation of public
schools runs counter to a child’s basic nature, and
educators, in general, fail to appreciate individual differences
in children. Specifically, school environments do not account
for individual personalities, temperaments, and learning styles.
Therefore, the failure of public schools to attend to the
hyperactivity or distress of the “Ritalin kids” is
simply the result of the trauma of a passive curriculum, an
overly controlling environment, a school and teachers unwilling
or unable to meet the individual needs of students, and the
failure of teachers to help students understand their own
behavior. Mercogliano concludes that the nation is oblivious to
the “human wreckage” caused by regimented and
restrictive schooling.
Our society produces “human wreckage” of its own,
echoing James Garbarino’s notion that contemporary American
culture is a “socially toxic environment.” Like
schools, we live in a surveillance society that urges parents to
program, manage, and sanitize children’s lives, while
bombarding parents with fears about all aspects of a
child’s emotional, physical, and intellectual development.
Mercogliano argues that modern parents are less attached to and
seldom involved with their children. Many parents leave children
without a steady and strong adult authority in their lives,
leading to problems in developing relationships with peers and
siblings. Socioeconomic factors and other environmental aspects,
such as living in an unsafe neighborhood, further traumatize
children. With society, parents, and schools in such disarray
and so stifling, Mercogliano contends that the presence of
students acting out their distress has less to do with biology
than with overwhelming environmental pressures.
Accordingly, Mercogliano has five recommendations to meet the
needs of hyperactive and distressed children without the use of
medication. First, children need a society that is less
restrictive to their development, require supportive families,
and honors individuality and uniqueness. Second, he urges that
schools must educate according to how the brain actually learns.
Third, teachers should act as loving guides and role models, not
taskmasters. Psychological support systems must respond to
children with insight and compassion rather than with labels and
drugs. Finally, society must accept children for who they are.
When the failure of society, families, and/or schools leads to a
distressed child, then the author contends that society must find
an effective solution or intervene into the child’s home
life. The way that society undertakes this is a mystery because
Mercogliano does not specify who would formulate, implement,
enforce, or pay for these solutions and interventions. Judging
from the high level of involvement that the Free School had with
parents, I suspect that Mercogliano believes that schools should
assume much of the burden. Nevertheless, these schools would have
to abandon their conventions and practices, and align themselves,
not surprisingly, with the educational philosophy of the Free
School.
Regrettably, many of Mercogliano’s reflections and
discussions of school and society, which are interspersed among
the stories, are problematic because they contain a great deal of
conjecture, unsubstantiated claims, or rash stereotypes. For
example, Mercogliano argues that corporal punishment used by the
father of one of the children is “part and parcel of the
culture of the rural South” (p. 26-27). As a former teacher
at a high school in rural Virginia, I never found that there was
a uniquely Southern culture of corporal punishment. Like the
rest of the United States, the rural South features countless
cultures and groups that defy singular characterization.
Mercogliano offers no evidence or research to substantiate this
claim about the rural South. Indeed, the vast majority of the
author’s claims have little or no evidentiary basis, and he
frequently admits that there are no studies or research to
support his statements.
In fact, Mercogilano’s book contains little research
pertaining to the focal area of the book, ADHD and medicinal
therapies. In the few cases that the author does deal with
medical research studies, one finds that these studies are dated
and discussed in an embarrassingly cursory way. In total,
Mercogliano cites two books on the subject of ADHD, four medical
journal articles, and two documents from the 1998 NIH website.
Thus, the reader never gets a sense of historical trends and
debates, or even a clear refutation of the medical
establishment’s evidence in favor of medicating ADHD
children. In other words, the author adamantly repudiates the
medical establishment but he scarcely demonstrates why we should
too.
The answer does not seem to be found in the Free
School’s “remarkable no-Ritalin approach.”
Indeed, Mercogliano never convincingly demonstrates the
school’s success in helping hyperactive and distressed
children learn and succeed. Three of the boys are consistently
disruptive throughout the school year, and all three continued to
have considerable difficulties after leaving the Free School.
Only one of the six boys did any substantial academic work, and
this was because he had an apprenticeship outside of the school.
Of the three girls, one left for a public school for the
emotional disturbed, the second had difficulty adjusting to the
public high school, and the final student graduated from the Free
School with mediocre verbal and math skills.
Could a “Ritalin kid” be better served in a public
school than in an alternative school like the Albany Free School?
In one troublesome incident described briefly in the book,
Mercogliano’s commitment to the free school idea and his
aversion to public schools outweighed that possibility. A
particularly distressed “Ritalin kid” named Mark came
to the Free School during the middle of his first grade year.
His parents brought him to the school in the hope that they would
improve his struggling academics, but Mark spent most of his time
playing, showed little interest in reading, and eventually began
stealing and roaming the streets. After languishing at the Free
School for three years, Mark’s father, who had since
separated from his wife, chose to put Mark back into the local
public school. But Mark devised a plan to return to the Free
School. He decided to act “real bad” in the public
school so that he could return to the Free School, a plan that he
openly announced to the Free School teacher’s lunch table
on his last day. Rather than urging Mark to try his best to be
successful at his new school or working with the new school for
Mark’s benefit, Mercogliano gleefully reports that Mark
triumphantly succeeded at being expelled from the public school
after three months of mischief. By failing to intervene in
Mark’s “plan,” the Free School staff was guilty
of an insidious breech of professionalism and, more importantly,
ethics. In the end, when it comes to the needs of children, the
author appears more dogmatic than pragmatic.
The Free School approach did not appear to demonstrate greater
success rate in accommodating “Ritalin kids” than a
child on medication attending a public school. Although
Mercogliano admits that there are no easy solutions for helping
hyperactive and distressed children, the title of his book claims
that his school’s no-Ritalin approach leads to learning and
success. Judging from the results, the title is blatantly
misleading.
References
Garbarino, J. (1995). Raising children in a socially toxic
environment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful
teachers of African American Children. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Meier, D. (1995). The power of their ideas: Lessons for
America from a small school in Harlem. Boston: Beacon
Press.
National Institute of Mental Health. (2003). Attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. Retrieved May 27, 2004 from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.cfm
About the Reviewer
Terry L. Stoops is a Ph.D. student in the Social Foundations
of Education program at the University of Virginia. His research
interests include the history of education in the South, private
schools and academies, and conservatism in education.
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