Drug-Enhanced Education and the Role of Motivation

It seems like a new trend is coming where people take mind 'enhancing' drugs to help them work better. According to a couple of recent editorials in Nature, people in professions that place a premium on thinking are beginning to take drugs that purportedly boost brain power, just like athletes use steroids to get better performance from their bodies. This includes students, who apparently are already taking Ritalin and other "cognitive enhancing" drugs in large numbers to help do better on tests. Coffee is old-school I guess, the cool kids now take Modafinil and Adderall.

The latest article is actually pretty positive about the whole trend. The authors, a combination of lawyers, doctors, and neuroscientists, argue that first, the trend is coming anyway and fighting is futile, and moreover, why shouldn't people be able to take drugs to boost their brains if they want to? Although it might make us cringe, these authors think there is nothing morally wrong with it. In their words, "The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology - ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself." So taking Ritalin is sort of like going to the gym - both may help you get better grades.

I'm among those who cringe at the thought people popping these drugs to do better at school, but I've got to admit they have a point. This country was built in part on the idea that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and for the most part taking coffee, ritalin, marijuana, alchohol, and a whole host of other drugs is basically a trade you make with yourself of temporary benefit for possible future harm. I hate even taking aspirin, but who am I to say that someone else shouldn't take a drug as long as it doesn't put them in the hospital on my dime.

The authors do point out a couple of real moral objections. In addition to unknown long-term risks, the one that spoke to me the most was the possibility of coercion. All the other students are taking these drugs that are helping them do better on the test, so you better also, otherwise you'll be on the wrong side of the curve. As someone who doesn't want to take drugs, that bothers me. But what also struck me is that the specific cognitive functions being enhanced by each drug may be just a small subset of those really needed to succeed. This was brought home by another paper in American Biology Teacher by Randy Moore, on the effect of help sessions in introductory biology classes. Moore found that students going to voluntary help sessions before the tests in an introductory biology class got higher grades. Those attending at least one (of four) help sessions were three times more likely to get an A, and five times less likely to fail. But does that mean help sessions led to higher grades? Not necessarily. Those same students who went to help sessions also came to class more often, had better attendance at labs, and participated in other course-related opportunities. Moore's conclusion is that these are all symptoms of higher motivation and personal responsibility, and those in turn lead to higher grades.

So in the short term, drugs like Ritalin may help students focus more and memorize items better for a test. But in the long-term, this could come at the cost of them learning to motivate, accept responsibility for themselves to study, and other things that will help them succeed. For some classes and jobs, that may not matter. But for most, I suspect it does. And its possible, maybe even likely, that improving some aspects of brain function could come at the cost of making other aspects worse. A.D.D. traits that disappear with ritalin surely have some advantages too. I write that as someone who has to multi-task a lot in my job, which I'm guessing is not aided by a drug that makes you focus. So in addition to other moral issues, before everyone starts jumping on the cognitive enhancement bandwagon, we might want to know the trade-offs between short-term performance enhancement on some tasks, vs. performance drops on others and learning of skills like motivation that might be more important for success in the long-term. In the end, it may be inevitable that students will be popping pills to help answer multiple choice questions better, and that might really be helpful sometimes, but we better not jump to thinking of pills as a panacea for improving learning.