You make some good points. Let’s focus on the Ritalin problem for brevity. Parents make that choice. You and I agree that they are making the wrong choice. I would point them to studies showing that 5 periods of vigorous exercise per day is just as effective in controlling real ADD (ignoring the over-diagnosis problem for now) as Ritalin. You and I agree that huge soulless corporations encourage them to make the wrong choice. You and I probably disagree that soulless power hungry government agents are going to be better that soulless money grubbing corporations. (It is easier to come up with money that to come up with an army, and yes money often works with government agents also, but let’s not go there.) In fact, it is institutional schooling, government schools in particular, that finds 5 periods of vigorous exercise per day “impractical” (i.e. Ritalin is for the convenience of the school), but has no problem working in Islamic prayer times.
In short, your diagnosis of these problems seems to be that ordinary people are stupid, but smart educated people like you are not, and your prescription is for people like you to make these decisions for them. But people like you have consigned “ordinary” people to government schools, which effectively force Ritalin on ADD children as well as perfectly healthy but rambunctious children.
While we are on the topic of government schools and Ritalin, a plug for Separation of School and State: http://www.schoolandstate.org
