ADHD symptoms, it turns out, are somewhat contextual. If you’re the sort of person who thrives on chaos and stimulation like a lot of extreme athletes, sitting in school all day may well suck out your soul. But with the rise of industrialism, educators thought all kids should be in standardized classrooms. “ADHD got its start 150 years ago when compulsory education got started,” said Stephen Hinshaw, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “In that sense, you could say it’s a social construct.”
