EDUCATION MATTERS: Readers tell us what they think

If you walked in our shoes, you’d carry stick

As a former hard-headed, mischievous adolescent student and recently retired public school teacher, I can assure AJC education columnist Maureen Downey and the lawyers, district attorneys and advocates that she quoted in her column that many, if not most, of today’s schools bear little resemblance to the adult-controlled learning institutions wherein we matriculated and respected our elders and the rules they enforced for our unsuspecting benefit.

Methinks they all might change their opinion of the school officials’ actions they condemn should they spend a semester in these officials’ shoes.

Craig Spinks, Evans

Lock up parents, too, and kids would behave

In response to Maureen Downey’s column on the stiff penalties meted out to high school students, the cost of student high jinks would be greatly reduced if parents were locked up along with their kids that don’t receive any guidance at home. (That is, if the parents can be found.)

Jack Franklin, Conyers

I’d be jail bird now instead of free bird

If my high school had taken as tough a position on teenage pranks as did the schools described so well by Maureen Downey, I’d still be behind bars today and I graduated 25 years ago.

Mark Davis, Jonesboro

Zero tolerance has undone common sense

I couldn’t agree with Maureen Downey more that the police response to such student wrongdoing as throwing water balloons is getting “out of control” but I believe she missed the true reason. It has little to do with revenue from fines or egos.

The real reason is that we have raised several generations now in our public schools under “zero tolerance” policies. It’s absurd. In my opinion, educators have taken the easy way out because they are afraid to make the tough calls. What does this mean?

We have raised kids who grow up to be police officers, judges, teachers, probation officers (anyone who is “supposed” to know how to exercise discretion) but they don’t know how. They have, in effect, been programmed/brainwashed from kindergarten.

My generation carried pocket knives to school to whittle with at recess, and now you’re expelled (or arrested) if you even draw a picture of one. God help us.

James D. Cool, Johns Creek

Administrators should collect school fees

AJC education columnist Maureen Downey didn’t go far enough in her column about what happens when students don’t pay various school fees.

Collecting money for special “days” and similar “cost” items deemed significant for students should be covered by the school budget. If the school’s administration decides that the activities will go on, regardless of funding availability, then it is an administrative responsibility to collect the funds, not the teachers’ nor a potential penalty for students.

Too often, schools and teachers are being used as fall guys to protect administrative shortcomings. Taxpayers need to insist that administrators be actively involved with their schools. The principal sets the tone for the school. If we want excellence in education, start with insisting that administrators demonstrate their excellence by consistently and effectively meeting their responsibilities.

Gene Hayes, Alpharetta

Responses to Julia Janssen’s guest column “Drugging children: Just a quick fix?” Opinion, June 8

Plugged in kids can’t unplug and get focused

Although I agree with guest columnist Julia Janssen’s observation that “our children are being placed into this behavioral box of focus before they’ve even finished developing,” the problem starts way before school.

From the time of infancy, children today are constantly receiving too much stimulation. Crib toys have blinking lights and lots of sounds. Bouncy seats no longer bounce due to the baby’s movements, but operate on batteries that also play music or create light displays. As they age, children’s toys contain more bells, whistles and blinking lights than most train depots. Even grocery carts in some stores are equipped with TVs.

Children don’t have the old-fashioned need (or desire) to entertain themselves. Their toys/games/electronics do it for them. How can we expect a child accustomed to constant bells, whistles, sounds and movement to be entertained and stay focused in a classroom?

If children today were taken back to the basics of playing with simple things such as rattles, wooden building blocks or modeling clay, they would find it much easier to stay focused on the “boring” tasks in the classroom such as coloring, listening to storytelling, filling in worksheets, etc.

When I was growing up in the late ’60s and ’70s, ADD and ADHD were unheard of. I can’t help but think that the simplicity of play may have been why.

Ilene Troy, Hoschton

Writer oversimplifies complex issues of ADD

While I agree with Julia Janssen’s suggestion that classrooms should better adapt to children’s diverse needs, her portrayal of the dispensing of these medications is oversimplified and furthers an unfortunate myth about ADD/ADHD medications.

The vast majority of kids diagnosed with ADD/ADHD first must undergo a battery of cognitive tests designed to identify these deficiencies. Janssen makes it sound as though anyone can get these meds by just asking, which is not the case.

Tommy Meers, Decatur

Impulsive behavior is out of parents’ control

Julia Janssen’s article on incorrect diagnosis and treatment of ADD/ADHD and drugs being the first alternative parents try to keep their children in the “focus game” to fit in with other students is largely a myth perpetuated by John Rosemond and other “experts” like him because they don’t believe that the disorder is real and contend that most bad behavior in children is the result of bad parenting. I beg to differ.

I’ve read “Raising Cain” (and hundreds of books like it) and agree with the basic principle that boys learn differently from girls and need more active time during the day. However, the fact of the matter is that the majority of boys (and girls) can sit still and work in class for seven hours a day — in fact, the majority of them do.

ADD is not a disorder that one immediately gets a prescription for from a doctor; it’s diagnosed through a battery of psychological and physiological tests and only after every other behavioral modification regimen is tried and fails. We weren’t “bad parents.” We did behavior modification; it didn’t work.

Our son simply didn’t care about time-outs and early bedtime punishments, because his impulsive behavior wasn’t something he could control. He’s now 23 and finally began taking medications in the eighth grade and his learning and grades improved dramatically. He quit taking them when he left home at 18, and college for him was a disaster, and he bumped around from dead-end job to dead-end job until despair and a little more maturity forced him to realize that he needed help.

Now, back on the medications and living at home, he is going to college, has a B average and is able to focus and not fidget. He goes to class, does his assignments and is easier to be around. If he misses a pill, the difference is noticeable.

Don’t let the nay-saying “experts” goad you into believing that bad kids necessarily equate with bad parenting and drug-pushing doctors. There are a lot of ADD adults out there on medications that have changed their lives. Talk with a few of them before you jump on the “boys will be boys” bandwagon.

Laura E. Taylor, Buford

‘Experts’ ought to meet real families with ADD

I am curious. What makes Julia Janssen, a sophomore in college (and presumably not the parent of a kid diagnosed with ADHD), an expert? She opines that we are “drugging our kids.”

Does she have a child who was failing school and considered himself stupid? I think not. Does she have a child she took to a counselor, therapist, specialist and physician to avoid such “drugging” and help him? I think not.

Does she have this same child who is now making straight A’s at a challenging private school and is self-confident and well-adjusted? I think not.

Why don’t people stop giving opinions about “drugging kids” (Yes, you, too, Tom Cruise!) and write about things of which they are actually knowledgeable?

Suzanne Fink, Roswell