PuhLease:
I appreciate your comment, articulate, evidence based, and rational. You explained far eloquently than I did about the interplay between education and emotion, being different issues, yet coexisting.
A theme for me, is that schools and yeshivos have engaged in crowd control, filling classrooms beyond the normal teaching control of a single teacher. One of the main tools used is discipline. If that succeeds at controlling the class, fine. But it fails miserably at teaching. And that explains why the successes in our yeshivos are mostly correlated with the internal motivation to learn. And since we cookie cut the curriculum, it is a challenge to adapt it to students whose learning styles are different from the average (or perceived norm). So the poorly performing student is tagged as someone with a problem, and this only feeds the system of disciplining him. The alternative is the labeling and sending the child for a host of evaluations, consultations, and outside interventions. Yes, there are those who need the additional attention and services. But others just need the Rebbe or teacher to extend the helping hand. And this can be done without public embarrassment.
Meanwhile it is equally destructive to whitewash the entire diagnostic category of attentional disorders as to shoot the label at any student that does not conform to the predetermined “norm”.