Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts: The Drug Attention Industrial Complex in Education

by Kenneth J. Saltman

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350440012
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/24/2025
Series:	Critical Directions in Education, Technology, and Politics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	899 KB

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.
Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA. He is the author of The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers (2022), The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance (2018) and The Politics of Education, 2nd edition (2018). He is a fellow of the National Educational Policy Center and a Fulbright Chair in Globalization and Culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Drug Attention Industrial Complex
1. Smart Drugs: The Educational Trade in Attention
2. Screen Addicts
3. Raging Hormones: Transgender Youth and the Ideology of Competition
4. Trauma Doping: Anti-Anxiety Medication and the New Trauma Education Industries
5. Race, Drugs, and the School to Prison Pipeline
6. Enchanting Education for Democratic Affect or Getting Kids Hooked on Theory
Conclusion
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Vividly written, richly theorized and uncomfortably familiar, this timely book documents the rise of the attention economy and the bio-political capture of children and young people by screen-use technologies. Precise in its cultural diagnosis and ideology critique, this is a must read for anyone interested in the 'education drugs attention complex' and the critical role of social philosophy to combating the worst excesses of this movement.” —Andrew W. Wilkins, Reader in Education, Goldsmiths, University of London

From the Publisher