Entre xaropes, baleias e TDAHs: a escola e a medicalização

Abstract

Among Zombielike, Whales and ADHDs: school and medicalization proposes a discussion on the ways in which the medicalization goes through school and constitutes subjectivity, as well as its consequences, such as the contingency of creating a discourse of medicalization at school and what power effects the relation between school and medicalization carries. The main objectives of this study are the questioning of discourses – as truth games between power relations – about the medicalization that runs by schools and how it deals with the differences, especially with so-called "troublemaker students". To achieve these objectives, we resort to various cultural artifacts; in particular, the reports submitted by the municipal schools of Juiz de Fora to the Department of Education describing their "troublemaker students" asking for support. These documents are discussed and problematized as discursive games that connect or are established between school / teachers / families / medicine, working in the constitution of subjectivities. This research points to how I was (re)making myself as a teacher and a researcher, and it had as reference the Foucault studies, cultural studies and gender studies. This study also aims to show that social, political, economic and especially the educational issues, as pointed out "learning difficulties" and "indiscipline", may be seeking and finding in healthcare a "solution" to their "problems", as we can see through the increasing number of ADHD diagnoses and the consequent prescription of medicines known as “obedience drugs” (Ritalin and Concerta).