| It does if everyone else is telling you that you're abnormal (and need to be 'fixed'). That was the point of using those examples. That's why I used the word 'inherently'. People telling you you're abnormal is not inherent to those conditions. Only if society has defined as valuable the ability to do only one thing, without distraction, for whatever period of time. Therefore, anyone who cannot do this must be 'broken' somehow. ADHD doesn't interfere with your life because other people are making fun of the fact you can't sit still. It interferes with your life because it's very difficult to be productive in any way if you can't concentrate for whatever period of time and being productive is what's valuable to society. I have mild myopia and I don't feel any resentment to my optometrist for labeling me broken. I'm just happy he augmented/fixed me so I can read signs at a distance. And unless/until we have proof that prescribing Adderall is so dangerous that it's not worth the gains, then I don't see a problem treating it the same as contact lenses. I'm not suggesting that ADHD isn't a problem. Merely that we should exercise some caution before we label some things (people?) as broken, when perhaps they are not. Well, clearly they thought they were broken somehow when they went to the doctor with concerns about their attention spans, no? |
By this reasoning, anything that reduces productivity as currently valued by schools acting a proxy for employers is a candidate for treatment.
Examples include: questioning authority, emotion, and passion for things whose value has not yet become apparent.
Other problems include the notion that schools today have the ability to judge what kind of people we will need to be in the future.