I suspect the data would confirm what's intuitive. Special kids who need more attention do better when they get it. Children prone to ADD symptoms also are especially vulnerable to the rising academic competitiveness at the elementary level. Subjects like multiplication and division are introduced a year earlier than in the curriculum of 25 years ago. After-school work for a 4th grader at Commoner averages about an hour nightly.
Parents tend to be ambivalent about the increased workloads.
At the same time, their children complain, and everyone feels hurried much of the time. Parents generally sense that both they and their children are overloaded and there's no free time for anyone in the family. In part, the need to fill every corner of the child's day is a safeguard against boredom, which parents fear will lead to too much television and possible delinquency or alcohol and drug use. Lawrence H. Diller, M.D., is a physician in Walnut Creek, California. A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill , with permission from Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. in New York City.