In many instances, he says, those children don't need Ritalin, they just need to be taught how to read. Over a two-year period, he concluded that in a majority of children he evaluated, the problem was caused not by a medical or psychological disorder, but by a failure of the school's instructional program to teach reading rationally and effectively. The situation is made more tragic because the schools refuse to acknowledge their failure and deny that the instructional program could be at fault.
Parents suffer, too.
They are told that their children have disabilities which in fact they do not have. They are told that their children lack self-esteem, do not get enough attention, are under too much stress, and require psychological treatment or medication to assist in focusing and staying on task. Skepticism about the whole language approach is growing. After years of declining reading scores, the California Board of Regents in 1995 attributed the decline substantially to the use of whole language reading instruction. The role of whole language instruction in the decline of literacy in the Massachusetts educational system is also under investigation.