Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts

With this book, Kenneth J. Saltman argues that drugs are at the centre of the most significant transformations of schooling. Children are increasingly being drugged to compete on standardised 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 programmes; 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 commercialising 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 transgender youth, anxiety and trauma medication, the connection between race and drugs, and in the final chapter offers critical, democratic, and practical solutions for educators and policymakers to tackle these issues.