Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts : The Drug Attention Industrial Complex in Education

With this book, Keneth J. Saltman argues that drugs are at the center of the most significant transformations of schooling.Children are increasingly being drugged to compete on standardized tests, to increase their attention levels in school, and are being diagnosed with ADHD at exponentially increasing rates.Saltman describes the material stakes in what he calls the education drugs attention complex, namely: educational profiteering through the mutually supportive sales of drugs and testing products; drugs and digital screen technologies; drugs and trauma/resilience programs; and drugs and the school to prison pipeline.He shows how each of these examples are part of a vast interlocking drug and attention industry in which pharma and tech companies are commercializing and producing youth problems for profit and are targeting the most vulnerable young people.The book covers the prevalence of screen addiction, the misuse of hormone therapies for transgenders youth, anxiety and trauma med