Jerry Jesness is a special education teacher in a south Texas elementary school. His email address is: jjesness@hiline.net.

I read two interesting pieces in the news recently. One outlined the class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer or Ritalin. The other was about legal action parents are taking against schools that attempt to discipline their children.

Insight magazine reported on the suit in California and New Jersey against Novartis and the American Psychiatric Association for conspiring to create a market for Ritalin. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, meanwhile, described a case in which parents of Atlanta-area football players sued to have their sons returned to the football team after being suspended for vehicle theft and vandalism.

The latter story also reported on a case in Wisconsin where a school paid $7,000 to students who were suspended for hazing. The newspaper also reported that youth baseball league director Dick Fowler warned his coaches, "If you make a kid do push-ups or run laps, be careful because the parents may sue you."

The two stories seem unrelated. But could there be a connection here?

'Differently wired' ... or just plain spoiled?

I recently attended a teachers' workshop entitled "The Differently Wired Child." After admonishing us for a few hours to not become angry with or judgmental toward difficult children, our consultant began to sound like a salesman for a pharmaceutical concern. "These children are not bad," he explained. "They simply need medication to function like other children."

The implication was that the ability to sit still for seven hours per day is somehow natural for young children, and that children who lack the ability have some deficit that should be treated chemically. Our counselor also expressed his opinion that attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity actually are not diagnosed as frequently as they should be.

I left the workshop with the sickening feeling that we have moved several steps closer to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a world where society instills conformity through operant conditioning and enforces it with doses of the happy drug soma.

I keep reading reporters' stories about children who show near-miraculous academic improvement after being put on Ritalin or some other behavior-modifying amphetamine. I have yet, however, to see such improvement myself.

In more than 20 years of teaching, five in special education, I have never seen a child show dramatic, long-term academic improvement as a result of amphetamine use. My wife, who has worked with many emotionally disturbed children both in public schools and institutions, has seen only two.

Sometimes medication will cause behavior to improve somewhat. Often, grades of amphetamine users will rise, but this can be illusionary. Amphetamines can make children less impulsive and better focused, but this does not necessarily make them learn more. Sometimes higher grades mean that Johnny turned in all five assignments this week instead of just three, and sometimes they simply are a sign of gratitude from a teacher who is happy to have fewer disruptions.

Case studies in drugging children

I once had an extremely hyperactive student who was put on a fairly high dosage of Ritalin. His behavior improved dramatically but not for the right reasons. Instead of disrupting my class, he would sometimes spend entire periods resting his head on his desk and complaining of splitting headaches. He once actually told me that he wanted to die.

We quickly arranged a meeting with the child's mother and suggested that she ask her doctor to reconsider his diagnosis. His dosage was lowered and his previous behavior returned, but at least there was no more talk of suicide. While the high dose of Ritalin did make him less disruptive, a case of salmonella poisoning would have had the same effect.

Another student was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by a private psychiatrist whom the parents sought in part because they did not like their child being labeled mentally retarded but still wanted special education services for him. The psychiatrist gave the child an ADHD label and told his mother that the Ritalin regimen would make him a "B" student.

A slight decrease in impulsivity did make my job a bit easier, but no drug-induced miracle occurred. He was able to count to 100, recite the ABCs and read pre-primers by his eighth birthday, but progress toward those goals became no greater after the child began taking the medication.

Nowhere is it written that good children sit still while evil ones fidget. A century ago, a good child was one who would chop the wood, pump and carry the water, and help tend the farm animals. One who was comfortable sitting at a desk for seven hours per day probably would have then been considered a laggard.

Just say yes to discipline

The answer to misbehavior at school is discipline, not drugs. In bygone days, students who disrupted their classes were subject to punishment, sometimes corporal, perhaps unpleasant work, or perhaps some sort of humiliation. This did not mean the children were evil but simply that there were consequences for not following the rules.

But in these modern times, when schools risk lawsuits even for expelling felons, imagine how difficult it is to oblige a child to sit still and be quiet while a teacher delivers instruction. No wonder officialdom has turned to behavior-modifying drugs as the answer.

According to the spirit of our time, there is no need for unpleasant punishments for our children. We need not even judge them. We simply can force pills down their throats until they become compliant.

It may be difficult for the Aquarians, the generation that believed that psychedelic drugs could expand minds, to see that difficult children would be better served by a little punishment, combined perhaps with an extra daily hour of recess, than by amphetamines. But it is time to open our eyes. History will remember us as the generation that believed it kinder to drug our children than to spank them or make them run laps.