For millions of children across the world, inattention has become a desperate situation. Even under attack by psychostimulants, inattention seems to flourish. Why? How has inattention become a virus increasingly resistant to the most potent medications science has to offer?

Clue: Rather than living within us, the colliding atoms of inattention exist in the space between us. To solve the riddle of inattention, we have to embrace the social-situational space of inattention. We have to have the vision and courage to think inside that box.

But according to official diagnostic protocol, there is no disorder that is situational rather than individual. Entertaining a social- situational perspective of disorder seems to invite chaos; it is an idea that synchronizes poorly with the cultures of mental health and education. In both cases, a broad revisioning of inattention, and its ecology, is overdue. This is a shift we could collectively manage if only we weren't stifled by convention and an inclination to assign individual responsibility for inattention, wherever it might drift.

Focusing on Inattention
Our current philosophy of inattention holds that the syndrome is a matter of an undisciplined, disordered mind. (Here, disorder does not refer to illness, so much as a crisis of sequence. An inattentive mind refuses to bend to priorities; it prefers pleasure to pain, and daydreaming to productivity.) With this perspective in mind, we risk concluding that the person who is the "identified problem" has some type of moral deficit such as not caring about their indifference to situational priorities, or maybe "he doesn't try hard enough."

An alternative scenario:
What if the roots of inattention had less to do with a moral failing than young minds having evolved in such a way that attention in some environments, particularly those that provide minimal sensory stimulation, was essentially impossible?

Forgive my blasphemy. In mental health, we pledge allegiance to a philosophy of individual disorders. Where situational distress emerges, we move to locate the cause within individuals, and then get busy trying to fix it through counseling, medication, or both.

The "crazy" thing about this approach is that the disorder of inattention lies elsewhere for a sizable group of kids. What is in dire need of reordering is how we relate to inattentive kids. I don't mean pleading, complaining, yelling, or ignoring.

Think multimodal sensory engagement. Think of vocal tone and body-based energy as the instruments that can be heard above the cacophony of distraction. Think of attention as an ecology that is sustained by synergy.

And, think of distraction as stimulation that fills a cognitive void. We cannot make the void disappear (unless, of course, we radically, and communally alter our interactions with children from infancy, reconstruct our relationships with nature and technology, and change the social and economic realities of our time); we can only decide how the void will be filled.

(Innumerable cases of so-called ADHD are preventable, no matter how much money "Big-Pharma" spends to spread the dominant mental health mythology of our time - chemical imbalance.)

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Contradictory Messages?
I've written books and frequently give workshops on helping individuals succeed in the classroom, transition to high school, and communicate effectively. You may well ask, am I contradicting myself by emphasizing synergy as a primary strategy for managing inattention? I certainly hope not. Schools are filled with all kinds of students, and it has always been my commitment to help students and schools navigate the situations and systems that we have, as humanely as possible. You simply can't be an effective therapist or educational consultant without being willing to engage the practical realities we face.

However, these roles have also reinforced how critical it is to address the larger social, economic, and scientific issues influencing our approach to human development. When we think about economic issues, let's be clear, inattention is not a problem of too few laptops, outdated books, or diminished field trips. Rather, inattention is a crisis of shrinking time.

Most parents or teachers struggle to find the time required to orchestrate such a synergy. Along those lines, one key reason we cling to inattention as a matter of personal disorder is that revisioning the problem as a lack of synchronization between systems is so stressful and unsettling as to be morally repugnant.

Partitioning disorder as a matter of individual responsibility is a philosophy that can coexist with the harried way in which most of us live. Even recognizing that life tempo may cause inattention, we choose to battle individual aspects of distraction, rather than disrupt the splendid havoc of unsustainable overconsumption.

Inattention may disrupt families and classrooms, but it's great for business. The consumption of retail goods is a reliable "hit" of stimulation for adults, and our peace offering to kids is a plethora of handheld electronics.

What About Inattention and Life Beyond School?
Shouldn't we take a hard line with inattention, so that we prepare students to pay attention in college and in the workforce? Short answer - no.

Universities have already equipped themselves to cope with this situation. They no longer associate inattention with intellectual deficiency, as reflected by busy, sophisticated learning centers. As for work, you can safely bet that those students who require a highly interactive environment to stay focused will naturally gravitate toward jobs that provide high levels of stimulation. And in fact, vast sectors of our economy reflect - and require - this orientation. Arguably, this ship has already left the harbor.

Human beings have had this self-sorting instinct for generations. If anything, the real crisis for some kids is the pressure to do white collar, sedentary work, even when it is a poor choice for their temperament, tempo, and need for kinesthetic stimulation. As increasing numbers of college students elect to do internships on farms or the sea, we can be assured that rebellion against the century-long bias that has devalued the practical intelligence of manual work is in full swing.

It may be hard to accept, but when we meet a young person who finds reading and reflection boring, in all likelihood he or she will shun a desk job like it's the plague - no matter how intelligent he or she is. To read more about this phenomenon, and the sublime pleasures of handwork, I strongly recommend the bestselling Shop Class as SoulCraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford.

Can we make body-based learning a core aspect of school curriculum?

I'm not referring to physical education, so much as opportunities to perceive, organize and retain knowledge using the body; a body that at present does little more than prop up heads so that eyes can see the smartboard.

Is it unthinkable that some classrooms would have no chairs? Might some topics be taught on the move - perhaps walking through the woods, playing basketball, or kayaking on a pond? Can we imagine assessment methods that emphasize the physical expression of knowledge and attainment of cognitive competence?

[Are you thinking what I'm thinking? How would such assessments fit in with district or state-wide expectations? And how would teaching such classes fit with traditional preparation in the field of teacher education? Am I alone in feeling more excited than worried about these questions?]

A Cooperative Ecology
Managing inattention is inherently a group activity. Within schools, it involves redrawing the boundaries of responsibility. It means translating good intentions into programmatic changes that address the global problem of inattention. North America may be in the most desperate shape, but my colleagues suggest that Australia, Asia and Europe are also feeling the stress. As we cooperatively redraw the boundaries, everything from curricula, to instructional style, to school architecture should be in play.

Naturally, there are many students who don't require such changes. This is good for them, but the balance is tilting the other way. Shouldn't we design education to meet the evolving needs of students? Our energy and presence may be more important to educating the current generation of students than our intelligence or educational pedigree.

Please accept my apologies if I'm preaching to the choir here. Still, my sense is that the hook on which many of us hang our hat is some form of content expertise. Yet even the most knowledgeable teacher of literature will fail to focus attention on Huckleberry Finn without strategic performance skills at his or her disposal. Those thinking about becoming a teacher should ask themselves how comfortable they feel with this aspect of the job description. In addition to sharing content, am I willing to animate my lessons with the energy that binds attention to instruction?

Achieving this kind of adhesion leads to the harmony that is the essence of a well- balanced classroom. It not only supports a sustainable ecology of attention, it is an attitude of empathy that leads children toward feelings of belonging - an opportunity for bliss. Yet attention, empathy, and bliss are not always moments of quiet reflection. Within the new ecology of attention, adults may need to orchestrate such moments with a turbo boost - the will to defeat boredom. And caffeine alone may not do the trick.

The most powerful tool we have for overcoming the desynchronization that separates us is not a drug - it is the recognition that connecting with the people we care most about requires a range of tempos. Dig deep, think creatively, shift gears when circumstances warrant, and the reordering of inattention will be well on its way.