Anti-Ritalin Campaign
In 2002, Neil Bush told the New York Post that he "endured his own Ritalin hell seven years ago when educators in a Houston private school diagnosed his son, Pierce, (then) 16, with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and pushed medication."
In a September 26, 2002, episode of CNN Interview, Bush told Connie Chung:
| “ | You know, we have a knee-jerk reaction in this education system where, if the kid doesn't perform well, then the reaction is to try to assign a label. The label is followed by a drug. The drug allows the kid to sit cooperatively, to pay attention, to focus in school. | ” |
Bush spent years researching the issue and found that "the educators were wrong" about his son. "There is a systemic problem in this country, where schools are often forcing parents to turn to Ritalin," he said. "It's obvious to me that we have a crisis."
Also that year, Bush testified before a hearing of the United States Congress to speak out against over-medicating children for learning disorders.
He has suggested that many parents believe the ADD and ADHD diagnoses and subsequent medicating of their children because it explains why they aren't doing well in school, saying "it's the system that is failing to engage children in the classroom. My heart goes out to any parents who are being led to believe their kids have a disorder or are disabled."
Neil Bush (along with filmmaker Michael Moore) is credited in the cast of a 2005 documentary called The Drugging of Our Children directed by Gary Null. In the film's trailer Bush says: "Just because it is easy to drug a kid and get them to be compliant doesn't make it right to do it".
Read more about this topic: Neil Bush
Famous quotes containing the word campaign:
“The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)