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Teaching the Restless
One School's
Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and
Succeed
by Chris Mercogliano
First Edition Hardcover
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We've all read the stories about medicating hyperactive (ADHD) kids.
The controversy shows no signs of ending, as parents and doctors
debate the merits of diagnosing and medicating children at younger
and younger ages. Chris Mercogliano has a strong opinion on the
matter, and he enters the debate as an educator. In Teaching the
Restless, Mercogliano issues an urgent call for a shift in how our
society perceives hyperactive children—away from theories of faulty
brain chemistry and toward an understanding of children's lives.
Mercogliano co-directs the Albany Free School in Albany, New York.
There, he and his faculty have developed numerous ways to help
hyperactive children relax, focus, modulate emotional expression,
make responsible choices, and forge lasting friendships—all
prerequisites for learning-without assigning pathological labels to
the children or resorting to the use of biopsychiatric drugs.
Teaching the Restless profiles a handful of Free School
students, six boys and three girls. All were either labeled and
drugged in their previous schools, or would have been had they not
thrown in their lot with the Free School. Speaking both to parents
who worry that their kids cannot attend classes without drugs and to
educators who wonder how to best teach these hyperactive kids,
Teaching the Restless should bring new hope into an overcharged
debate.
Chris Mercogliano has been a teacher at the Albany Free
School since 1973, and co-director since 1985. His writing has
appeared in numerous publications and he is the author of
Making It Up As We Go Along. He
lives in Albany, New York.
Editorial Reviews
"Mercogliano makes a strong case against medicating these children
into submission... While [he] is describing experiences at one
particular school, parents all over will find his critique of
contemporary education provocative."
—From Publishers Weekly
"This powerful tale gives us an up-close look at what is possible
for America's schoolchildren when we choose not to drug them into
silence."
—Yehuda Fine, family therapist and author of Times Square
Rabbi
"A wonderful contribution to the growing literature on the sad
practice of labeling and drugging America"s "free spirits." Chris
Mercogliano sees past the scientific jargon and deficit-ridden
orientation of the ADD/ADHD paradigm, and reveals with great
humanistic sensibility the passionate worlds of active kids who
don't fit into the tight little boxes of most American classrooms."
—Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., author of The Myth of the A.D.D.
Child
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"Teaching the Restless"
