This is in direct opposition to the average classroom where many more disruptions occur. The quiet room would seem to be the ideal place for children to excel in tests measuring attention. Yet a high proportion of the students tested showed some attention weakness. When comments from parents and teachers were added to these results many of these students even appeared to have attention deficits. I believe that we are just seeing the tip of the ice berg.
Many children DO suffer from attention deficits.
In fact, if one just used the available criteria for measureing attention deficit on the average student between Grades 3 and 7, one would discover an extremely high percentage of today's students have trouble attending. But that finding just hides the main issue. We don't need to stop measuring and testing kids but we do need to reconsider our lifestyles and the ways we teach children. I believe that many, if not most of the attentional problems you encounter in today's classroms are the resut of learned behaviour and not true 'disabilities'. Kids can't 'pay attention' because they have not learned how.