Stephen Colbert on medicating kids rather than providing them with the resources -- and smaller classes -- that they need

On Tuesday, there was a stunning article in the NY Times by Alan Schwarz, showing how many doctors are prescribing amphetamines to children, not because they have ADHD, but to try to counteract the inadequate conditions in their schools:

“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”  ...

The superintendent of one major school district in California, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.

“It’s scary to think that this is what we’ve come to; how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this,” said the superintendent, referring to the use of stimulants in children without classic A.D.H.D. “I don’t know, but it could be happening right here. Maybe not as knowingly, but it could be a consequence of a doctor who sees a kid failing in overcrowded classes with 42 other kids and the frustrated parents asking what they can do. The doctor says, ‘Maybe it’s A.D.H.D., let’s give this a try.’ ”

Below, Stephen Colbert gives a brilliant commentary on this phenomenon that you must see.

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The amazing Justin Wedes!

Justin Wedes has emerged as one of the key spokespeople behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Justin, a 27 year old former NYC teacher, was on WNYC radio a couple of weeks ago, and  on the Colbert report last night (see video below), the first of a two part segment, the second of which will air tonight.

Though the reach and success of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been tremendous, Justin’s role doesn’t surprise me, since over the last year he has done some amazingly creative and compelling advocacy work, in addition to consulting with Class Size Matters and Parents Across America on our social media.

Among Justin’s accomplishments over the past year:

• He collected more than 11,000 signatures on a petition in a few weeks against the appointment of Cathie Black as Chancellor;

•           As part of the Yes Men, he helped put together a hoax that convinced the AP, among others, that General Electric had agreed to voluntarily pay back  to the government its 2010 tax write off of $3.2 billion, simply by issuing a convincing press release linked to a fake GE website, which Columbia Journalism Review called "the most amazing corporate press release in history."
  

     But my personal  favorite Justin moment was his hilarious appearance at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting last year, pretending to be Jason Wharton, Chicken of the Sea’s quality assurance representative, and giving out free tuna sandwiches to protest Bloomberg’s remarks that the PCBs in one tuna sandwich were more dangerous than the PCB-leaking lights in our public schools.

Two videos below:  Justin at the PEP last year and on the Colbert show last night. 

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