Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts - by Kenneth J Saltman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

With this book, Keneth J. Saltman argues that drugs are at the center of the most significant transformations of schooling. Children are increasingly being drugged to compete on standardized tests, to increase their attention levels in school, and are being diagnosed with ADHD at exponentially increasing rates. Saltman describes the material stakes in what he calls the education drugs attention complex, namely: educational profiteering through the mutually supportive sales of drugs and testing products; drugs and digital screen technologies; drugs and trauma/resilience programs; and drugs and the school to prison pipeline. He shows how each of these examples are part of a vast interlocking drug and attention industry in which pharma and tech companies are commercializing and producing youth problems for profit and are targeting the most vulnerable young people. The book covers the prevalence of screen addiction, the misuse of hormone therapies for transgenders youth, anxiety and trauma medication, the connection between race and drugs, and in the final chapter offers critical, democratic, and practical solutions for educators and policy makers to tackle these issues.

Review Quotes

Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts is a vital book that beautifully lays out how big pharma and digital technologies work in tandem to overstimulate, control, atomize, and addict young people for profits. Yet Saltman also vividly illustrates that critical pedagogies can offer something vastly better and potentially even more addictive, which is the promise of solidarity and collective liberation.

Kenneth J. Saltman's Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts masterfully illuminates the profound intersection of education, pharmaceuticals, and digital technologies. With compelling clarity and a fierce commitment to social justice, Saltman unveils the sinister ways in which the pharmaceutical and tech industries commodify youth attention, exploiting their minds and bodies in the name of profit. The book is both a powerful critique of modern schooling and a call to arms, urging us to reconsider what it means to truly educate. This is a timely and essential read, as it offers a profound reflection on the commodification of childhood and the future of education in the age of digital distraction. Through insightful analysis and rich narrative, Saltman calls us to imagine an educational system that values critical consciousness over mere compliance, urging readers to reclaim education as a site of meaning, agency, and social transformation.

About the Author

Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA. He is the author of The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance (2018) and The Politics of Education, 2nd edition (2018) and The Disaster of Resilience (Bloomsbury, 2023). He is a fellow of the National Educational Policy Center and a Fulbright Chair in Globalization and Culture.