Our school systems like to label children, then medicate them for these so-called problems. Kids are said to be ”learning disabled,” “hyperactive,” “oppositionally defiant,” and to have a variety of other “disorders.” I’ve written about this for years, preferring to think that the problem is with the schooling system rather than with the children. All too often, schools deflect blame onto the victim rather than owing the problem, which originates from a misalignment between children’s needs and the demands of an outdated, assembly line education system.

One of my articles appeared in Natural Life Magazine in 2006 and detailed how, in addition to the school problem, behaviors that are labeled as problematic can result from environmental and dietary issues.

Unschoolers and homeschoolers often reject these labels. And, often, when their children are removed from the school environment and allowed to learn at their own speed, based on their own interests, the so-called “symptoms” disappear.

Psychologist Naomi Aldort has written two important articles in Life Learning Magazine about this issue. She says, “Labels are the invention of the human mind when it believes that one way of being or learning is right and another is wrong.” The first of two columns is entitled The Einstein Syndrome and Other Labels. And the second one is  linked from the bottom of  that one.