At the risk of angering all the people who will scream from the rooftops that “correlation doesn’t equal causation,” like it’s some kind of Scriptural edict, here’s some data that’s worth considering. From 1980 to 2020, the share of male teachers, in both elementary and middle schools, declined from 40% to less than 20%. Men have mostly stopped teaching young children in school. And during this same period, as men have abandoned elementary schools, there’s coincidentally been another major change in childhood education: Everyone’s being diagnosed with ADHD.
More than 21% of 14-year-old boys in this country now supposedly suffer from this condition. The number goes up to 23% for 17-year-old boys. As a result, prescriptions for drugs like Ritalin and Adderall have skyrocketed. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat ADHD increased dramatically by nearly 60%. Boys between the ages of 10 to 14 were the demographic that saw the highest increase in these prescriptions.
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