The issue of non-learning in school has been the subject of several studies in many areas of knowledge and, above all, in Psychology. Part of the discussion concerns the indication of the origins or causes, which highlights the attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, an organic problem, from medical competence, whose solution would be Ritalin. As soon as the problem is provided, it is diagnosed and solved. This article proposes a reflection about the “non-learning”, analyzing how this is taken as a problem, being childhood itself forged and seized under the scope of medicine. Taking this fact as a trigger of this issue, we turn to the criticism regarding the abusive use of Ritalin and the concept of biopolitics that places the genesis of medical knowledge in the control of forms of life, what becomes a knowledge about ways of living, of being a child. Often, psychology as a discipline and field of knowledge joins this ground supporting the processes of medicalization of life. We propose a further practice, immersed in the problematic biopolitic genesis: a political clinic, where psychology can reappropriate the cognitive and collective constituents that compose this theme.
Attention déficit disorder; Learning disabilities; Childhood; Educational policy; Medicalization
