Ethics Newsline®

Last week’s commentary by Rushworth Kidder, which examined a parent’s decision not to tell her son’s teachers that the boy had been treated for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), drew an unusually high number of responses.

The moral question at stake involved a parent’s belief that her son, now no longer taking the drug Ritalin, would be labeled as academically and behaviorally deficient if teachers knew that he previously had been treated. The parent based her view on a prior encounter when, she said, a glowing progress report during a parent-teacher conference suddenly went sour after she disclosed that the boy had been prescribed the drug. She decided to conceal the prior diagnosis when moving to a new school.

Several of those who wrote to us echoed the views of a reader from Arizona who maintained that the son’s prior diagnosis of ADD was simply none of the new school’s business.

Many also shared the view of an Indiana reader who maintained that educators may label a student, consciously or unconsciously, if the teachers know of a prior ADD diagnosis: “I think it is fair to give the student a chance to succeed on his own without any of the preconceived burdens associated with this unless problems surface. Otherwise this could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy situation.”

Others, including several educators, contended that it is a stretch to assume that all teachers would react in the same manner as the one who immediately shifted gears when learning of the past diagnosis. But while teachers by and large are capable of seeing past labels, argued another reader, prior diagnoses have a way of coloring their views and might tempt them to stop looking for other reasons behind a student’s problems.

A reader from Canada maintained that “stereotyping a kid does make it easier to justify not solving his or her problem.”

And a reader from Illinois added this thought: “Our systems of education should be celebrating the energetic [students like the one described in the commentary], realizing he is capable of making better choices, and employing new methods to hold his attention, rather than retreating to the read-and-regurgitate, sentences-on-the-board-in-detention, and “grounded for life” mentality of years past. Behavioral problems are best handled by reasoning students, compassionate teachers and school administrators, and actively involved care-givers. Without the understanding of right behavior, we graduate smart young adults without the character to show up for work or too greedy to say no to creative accounting.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman