by Elizabeth Farrelly
The Sydney Morning Hearld

Sedation nation: the cost of taking boisterous out of boys

Excerpt:

The Ritalin wars are usually treated as just another tussle between the pharmaceutical companies and the rest, but is there something else going on here as well? Is it part of a more generalised, covert war on boyhood?

Thirty years ago Australian primary schools employed five male teachers for every four females. By 2006 there was one male teacher for every four females. This overwhelming feminisation of primary education, and of culture generally, has made boy-type behaviour stuff to frown upon. Are we in danger of seeing boyhood itself as a disorder?

When Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness, quoted a psychoanalyst saying “We used to have a word for sufferers of ADHD; we called them boys”, he probably did not expect it to become the most famous line of his book.

Read the Full Article Here: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sedation-nation-the-cost-of-taking-boisterous-out-of-boys-20110216-1awij.html