READING and RITALIN: Too Scary to Think About

A special education teacher wrote to me complaining about the abuse of Ritalin. The teacher said: “My students are on Ritalin. This is a brain shrinking, top tier heavily psychotropic drug, as you know. The authorities KNOW this is their weapon for the most intelligent boys... ”
The teacher believes this is a high-level NWO conspiracy, which is not a road I personally like to go down. But the teacher got me thinking and worrying. What if there is a link, a connection, of some kind?
Here are the two parts of the puzzle I’m personally convinced of:
1) The Education Establishment in this country, for 75 years, has used unworkable methods (i.e., Whole Word) to teach reading. For many millions of children, the result is illiteracy and a collapse of each child’s confidence, with a concomitant increase in anxiety and misbehavior.
2) Running parallel to this, a separate set of experts (the psychiatric community) diagnose millions of young children as having something called ADHD. The common treatment for this hyperactivity is Ritalin. (Interestingly, according to a government site, “This pattern of behavior usually becomes evident in the preschool or early elementary years
, and the median age of onset of ADHD symptoms is 7 years,” which just happens to be the age when children, taught with Whole Word, wake up to the fact that they are falling behind their friends and seem in some way to be damaged.)
So those are two well documented worlds. Question is, do they exist independently of each other, or is there some synergy, some cross-linkage? And is that connection, if it exists, coincidental or purposeful?
I would like to think that these two groups of experts are separate and sincere. The thought that the two groups are actually working together (as in conspiring) is almost too horrible to think about. But isn’t it obvious that continued use of a bad method (Whole word) creates behavior that can lead to a perceived need for Ritalin?
Here is my question: does anyone have solid evidence or personal anecdotes that can help illuminate whether there is a sinister connection between reading and ritalin?
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Final thought: Inability to read will usually destroy a child’s sense that he is smart and in control. AT THE VERY LEAST, shouldn’t all those highly-paid medical professionals assess the reading abilities of their patients, and then demand that the education experts do more to make sure these children can actually read by the second grade?
Even if these groups are separate and well-intentioned, it seems to me you still have a serious dereliction of duty if doctors are prescribing powerful drugs to children without understanding the actual cause of their anxiety and misbehavior.