Caring, Articulate Insights For Nurturing Children

books:

	• Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable no-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed Chris Mercogliano Beacon Press, 2004 - 252 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

very interesting read

I found this book to be a very compelling read. The author makes his case for not medicating kids through personal stories of several students at his school as well as siting some scientific research. He also gives his opinions, and clearly labels them as so. This book is not a how-to book to turn to if you are the parent or teacher of a restless child. However, it is a book that will give some insights surrounding the larger pictures of how we as a society educate some of our more difficult children.

Every educator and parent should read this book.

As a homeschooling parent, I picked up this book just to see what "secrets" might be revealed. I was happy to see everything we do reinforced by the writer's experience as an educator. This book mixes scientific facts and studies in with the tale of a school year. He shows repeatedly that we need to let our children be. He explains how we have gotten ourselves to this point of drugging children en masse. He runs down the many ways of reversing this trend if we choose to do it. Turn off the TV, pay attention to the kids, spend time with them, help them feel useful, allow them to contribute, let them set the pace. So much great stuff- read this book!

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There is no need to reach for a pill

It speaks of this book's greatness that it is useful for both private, home, and public education. Mercogliano cares about the children he teaches. His caring passes from the page to the reader. I got more ideas to help my restless students than any other education book. Though working in a public school, many insights from the book were helpful to me and ultimately the children. I used Teaching the Restless to help parents make better choices for their children in a public school setting.

Caring, Articulate Insights For Nurturing Children

This book is a caring, compassionate examination of what's amiss in our educational and medical systems' approach to non-conforming children. Mercogliano offers his extensive experience and insights to explain how children can grow into motivated learners when they are given a non-threatening, non-repressive, and caring environment. Having worked several years as a mental health clinician I have seen how accurate this author's insights are and how disempowering and counterproductive the expedient, coercive approaches to challenging children are. When a physician says a child needs psychotropic medication that person is basically acknowledging that they are ignorant about how to truly help and they wish to repress the symptoms to appear that they are able to offer a solution or to conform with what all the other misguided "professionals" have been indoctrinated into doing. When you rely on unnatural behavior modification systems and disruptive synthetic chemicals to control a child's attention and behavior you are likely to impair that child's natural self-expression, intrinsic motivation, and internal regulation of biochemistry. It's wonderful to see a knowledgeable teacher offering insights into how to help children in a caring supportive way and to shun the demonstrably erroneous beliefs that some children "need" drugs that artificially manipulate chemistry in fundamentally the same ways as illicit drugs that children would get in trouble for using.

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Heartwarming

This is a heart warming book. The author recounts the year with children at the Freedom School in a manner that is insightful and deeply moving. I could picture the children in my head. Teachers and parents will both benefit from this truly beautiful book, the dedication and patience of the teachers at the school, and also the struggles of both parents and students from the urban environment the school is located in. When I finished the book I was sad to let go of the children and their stories, and could not shake the nagging question, "if it works in a place like this, why not everywhere?" You may ask yourself the same thing.

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We've all read the stories about medicating hyperactive (ADHD) kids. The controversy shows no signs of ending, as parents and doctors debate the merits of diagnosing and medicating children at younger and younger ages. Chris Mercogliano has a strong opinion on the matter, and he enters the debate as an educator. In Teaching the Restless, Mercogliano issues an urgent call for a shift in how our society perceives hyperactive children?away from theories of faulty brain chemistry and toward an understanding of children's lives.

Mercogliano codirects the Albany Free School in Albany, New York. There, he and his faculty have developed numerous ways to help hyperactive children relax, focus, modulate emotional expression, make responsible choices, and forge lasting friendships?all prerequisites for learning?without assigning pathological labels to the children or resorting to the use of biopsychiatric drugs.

Teaching the Restless profiles a handful of Free School students, six boys and three girls. All were either labeled and drugged in their previous schools, or would have been had they not thrown in their lot with the Free School. While in Mercogliano's mind there is no such thing as a "typical" child, these nine kids represent the legions of children across the country?estimates currently run as high as 6 million?that have been diagnosed with learning and behavioral disorders and prescribed corresponding drugs.

Speaking both to parents who worry that their kids cannot attend classes without drugs and to educators who wonder how to best teach these hyperactive kids, Teaching the Restless should bring new hope into an overcharged debate.

"TEACHING THE RESTLESS is a very important book for our time. That we continue to prescribe drugs to our children in such massive numbers is appalling. There are no historical precendents for a society perpetrating such a travesty on its offspring. Chris Mercogliano deserves a medal for his courage and insight, as well as his years of hard work on behalf of America's children."

?Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of MAGICAL CHILD

"Take a ride with master teacher Chris Mercogliano as he writes his way straight into your heart. This powerful tale reflects his work as a master educator and writer and gives us an up-close look at what is possible for America's school children when we choose not to drug them into silence. The Albany Free School is a hermitage for children, a model to the nation of how a school environment built on love, honor, respect, and responsibility can effect profound changes in kids' lives."

?Yehudah Fine, family therapist and author of TIMES SQUARE RABBI: FINDING THE HOPE IN LOST KIDS' LIVES

"TEACHING THE RESTLESS is a finely crafted moral commentary on a society that would rather "tranquilize our children than create a more tranquil world for them to grow up in." Chris Mercogliano is a gifted writer as well as a superb observer of children's lives. Here, he offers a rich blend of insights and observations based on his own extensive teaching experience. His stories of real kids struggling against the cultural constraints on their lives, including inappropriate labeling and drugging, are deeply moving and convincing."

?Ron Miller, executive editor, Paths of Learning magazine, educational historian, author of WHAT ARE SCHOOLS FOR?

"God bless Chris Mercogliano. He has turned his lifelong commitment to the creation of free learning communities for children and families toward a passionate defense against the oppression of children by psychiatry and the schools. May his longstanding drug-free school zone in Albany extend throughout our country and the world."

?John Breeding, clinical psychologist, author of THE WILDEST COLTS MAKE THE BEST HORSES

"A wonderful contribution to the growing literature on the sad practice of labeling and drugging America's "free spirits." Chris Mercogliano sees past the scientific jargon and deficit-ridden orientation of the ADD/ADHD paradigm, and reveals with great humanistic sensibility the passionate worlds of active kids who don't fit into the tight little boxes of most American classrooms."

?Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., author of THE MYTH OF THE A.D.D. CHILD

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