Proposed Connecticut Bill Mandates Mental Health Assessments for Homeschooled Children

 

(Heather Clark)   A national homeschooling organization is sounding the alarm against a bill proposed in the Connecticut legislature which would require both public school and homeschooled children to undergo a behavioral health assessment at various stages of child development.

Bill 374, proposed in the General Assembly by sponsors Senator Toni Harp and Representative Toni Walker, is likely in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, which took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults this past December. Some believe that the incident could have been better prevented should there have been sufficient mental health assistance for gunman Adam Lanza, and therefore, the women are seeking to ensure that today’s youth are screened throughout their adolescence for any concerning behavioral problems.

Harp, who serves as the chairman of the Connecticut mental health task force, recently told reporters that while she does not want children to be stigmatized over the matter, she feels that lawmakers need to see how to better care for the mental well-being of youth in order to prevent another tragedy.

“The concern we have is that increasing stigma will mitigate against treatment,” she explained. “What we are doing is looking at our own mental health delivery system to see what the gaps are … in case there was some sort of relationship [between mental illness and Adam Lanza's actions].”

Therefore, the bill that Harp and Walker have introduced to the state legislature seeks to have all children regularly analyzed by a health care provider. It reads, “An Act Requiring Behavioral Health Assessments for Children. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened: That section 10-206 of the general statutes be amended to require (1) each pupil enrolled in public school at grades 6, 8, 10 and 12 and each home-schooled child at ages 12, 14 and 17 to have a confidential behavioral health assessment, the results of which shall be disclosed only to the child’s parent or guardian, and (2) each health care provider performing a child’s behavioral health assessment to complete the appropriate form supplied by the State Board of Education verifying that the child has received the assessment.”

While some do not see reason for concern over the bill, others believe that the requirement would be too intrusive for families. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association recently sent out a call to action over the matter, requesting that citizens contact their representatives to urge them to strike the bill down.

“Proposed Bill 374 would essentially authorize the state to conduct regular social services investigations of homeschooling families without any basis to do so,” outlines senior counsel Dee Black. “These assessments would be conducted by an unspecified health care provider and would be conducted even though there was no indication whatsoever that these children had a behavioral problem. The bill states that the results of the assessments are to be disclosed only to the child’s parent or guardian, but that the health care provider must submit a form to the State Board of Education verifying that the child has received the assessment.”

“According to the Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership, a state organization made up of the Department of Children and Families, Department of Social Services, Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and others, a behavioral health assessment is quite comprehensive and invasive,” he continued. “It includes ‘a review of physical and mental health, intelligence, school performance, employment, level of function in different domains including family situation and behavior in the community.’”

“This assessment would constitute an unwarranted, gross invasion of family privacy,” Black said. “This bill should be opposed.”

Other organizations such as National Home Education Legal Defense are monitoring the legislation, but are not as concerned as they state that it is too early too tell what the requirements of the bill will entail.

“NHELD does recommend that all parents should be aware, and keep track of, proposed Senate Bill 374,” stated executive director and attorney Deborah Stevenson. “[However,] we don’t know what the final language of the bill will look like, or whether it will be voted on in committee or on the floor of the House or Senate. We need to be careful in how we approach anyone about this at this time.”

“The bill does not specify anything about allowing any social services agency to become involved in your child’s healthcare. It simply states that the fact that an assessment was done will be provided to the State Department of Education,” she said. “While anything is always possible, right now it is only a proposed bill — that is, an idea that is written down.”

The bill is stated to currently be before the legislature’s Public Health Committee for consideration.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Florence student suspended over picture of gun

(ABC)   A high school student in Florence said he has been suspended because of a picture of a gun.

Daniel McClaine Jr., a freshman at Poston Butte High School, said he saved the picture as his desktop background on his school-issued computer.

A teacher noticed it and turned him in.

The picture shows an AK-47 on top of a flag.

McClaine said the school initially suspended him for three days Friday.

Since the laptop belongs to the school, the district policy states students are prohibited from “sending or displaying offensive messages or pictures,” and cannot access, send, create or forward pictures that are considered “harassing, threatening, or illegal.”

McClaine said he read the guidelines but does not consider the picture threatening to anyone.

“This gun wallpaper does not show anything that’s violent. It’s not showing anybody getting shot in any way. It’s just a picture of a gun. It’s nothing — nobody getting shot, nobody getting it pointed at them, it’s nothing,” said McClaine.

McClaine said the gun is not his. He’s interested in joining the military and said he found it on the internet.

Dana Hawman, a spokesperson for the Florence Unified School District, released the following statement:

Although we cannot specifically discuss student discipline, we can certainly agree that violence in schools is a sensitive and timely issue. Students, parents and staff are on edge, and the daily news delivers more reasons for caution. All of us must work together to protect our kids and to cultivate an environment that is conducive to learning.

Daniel’s father said after ABC15 contacted the school, the administration backed down and will let his son return to school on Monday instead of Wednesday.

“To me it’s ridiculous. Three days for a picture? It wasn’t like he was standing in front of the school holding the gun,” said Daniel McClaine Sr. “He should have got a warning. He shouldn’t have ever been suspended. Not for something so frivolous.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Georgia elementary school verse: ‘Obama ran so our children could fly’

(Kyle Olson)   Schools have been named after him long before his retirement or death, which is rather unprecedented. Students have been led in organized chants of his honored name. There are lesson plans comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.

But sometimes school employees take the rhetoric a bit too far and wind up in propaganda territory. The latest example comes from DeKalb County, Georgia.

For Black History Month, Livsey Elementary School created a cute display with the lines:

Rosa sat…so Martin could walk.

Martin walked…so Obama could run.

Obama ran…so our children could fly.

The jingle obviously refers to Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the display features their pictures. There’s no questions their actions forged a pathway for many black Americans to have decent lives, and for first-term Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to run for – and win – the presidency of the United States.

But Americans shouldn’t teach children than they need politicians of any stripe to be successful in life. In fact, they should know that President Obama’s is about to hand them – and successive generations – an astronomical national debt that they will have to deal with someday.

This deifying of Obama is unhealthy for our students because we’re teaching them to look to an individual – or government in general – for life solutions. If anything, today’s kids need to be reprogrammed to remember that they are the masters of their own destinies, and they themselves make the decisions that will ultimately determine the course of their lives.

As President John Adams said, we have “a government of laws, and not of men.” The unhealthy tendency to worship the people that temporarily fill government positions is a distraction for young people who should be focused on their own efforts to find their way in life.

Students need responsible parents and high quality teachers and educational options to be prepared for life, not pandering politicians or a nanny state that tells them what to eat for lunch, makes excuses for failing schools and defends sub-par teachers.

The photo of the verse displayed at the school was reportedly taken Feb. 15^th and posted on Planet.Infowars.com.

The school’s principal confirmed the photo was accurate and was taken inside his building.

http://eagnews.org/georgia-elementary-school-verse-obama-ran-so-our-children-could-fly/

Sex Ed For Kindergarteners In Chicago

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New York City teacher’s aide pleads guilty to filming child porn at school

(FOXNEWS)   A teachers’ aide in a Brooklyn elementary school faces up to 50 years in jail after pleading guilty to filming child pornography in the classroom where he worked.

Taleek Brooks, 42, pleaded guilty Friday to charges of producing and distributing the illegal materials before a judge at a federal court in the New York City borough.

Brooks, who works as an aide at Public School 243, was accused of having “regularly downloaded and distributed videos and images depicting child pornography over the Internet through a peer-to-peer file sharing program,” the FBI said.

In December 2010, Brooks accepted a friend request on the peer-to-peer network. That person was an undercover agent who was able to access and download graphic videos and images.

The next month, agents moved on Brooks’ home with a warrant and confiscated a computer and two external hard drives. During their investigation of the equipment, agents found hundreds of video and images depicting child pornography.

A forensic look at the equipment uncovered a folder labeled “special,” where they found a video in which Brooks can be heard giving directions to a young child to perform explicit sexual acts.

Investigators later confirmed that the child was a student and PS 243 and that the video was made on school grounds, the statement said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/08/brooklyn-teacher-aide-nabbed-after-filming-child-porn-at-school/?test=latestnews#ixzz2M02BCh00

Creating a Shooter

 

(LTG)   In the wake of the Newtown Tragedy, Charlotte Iserbyt sent her article that was published in Education Week Magazine after the Columbine High School shootings on April 20th, 1999 to me to be republished for your informational awareness.

“Systems education creates children who are systems-oriented, never doing anything ” outside of the box” they have been trained to live in, whose behavior can be “measured” and remediated until it “fits” the profile designed by the “designers”.  And that profile is horrendous, but useful for the planners.”

Here is an article I wrote published in Ed Week which was reprinted in my book, Deliberate Dumbing Down of America page 319:

An important question should be examined in regard to the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado.
“What was going on inside the brains of the two boys who committed this terrible crime?”
Not only should Americans point the finger at violent television as a reason for copycat violence. They should examine the effects of computers and computer games on the human brain. I am no expert, but the computer is an operant conditioning machine and no less than the late Harvard Professor B.F. Skinner, the father of operant conditioning, referred to it as “his box.” Operant conditioning bypasses the brain with all the important functions which distinguish man from an animal: memory, conscience, imagination, insight, and intuition, functions by which human beings know absolutes and truths and are able to know God.

Use of computer programming (simulation/virtual reality) to train individuals to fly
an airplane, perform surgery, etc. serve a very useful purpose. On the other hand, the same simulation/virtual reality computer war game videos which allow the individual to engage in killing in a bloody and violent atmosphere, played over and over again, desensitize the individual to the evil act of killing, whereby the individual, as a programmed robot, finds it increasingly easy to carry this distorted vision of reality outside into other areas of his life, such as a school building or playground. If that individual happens to be full of hatred, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what “programmed” action he or she may take in order to vent that hatred and frustration.

The use of computer-assisted instruction in school, which unfortunately has been accepted as the alternative to traditional education, should also be of some concern to those seeking an answer to school violence. The same operant conditioning, upon which school programs for all disciplines is based, can be used for training an individual to perform.

Skinner said “I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing (rewarding) it on a
proper schedule” and “What is reinforced (rewarded) will be repeated.” Such “training” is not “education” in the traditional sense since it does not transfer. With traditional academic “education” a student is capable of transferring what he learns to other areas of his life, at some future time. He can store the information for future use; it is in his brain where it is able to be reflected upon, where his soul, memory and conscience are able to influence the information and decisions he makes.
Not so with operant conditioning where no such transfer occurs. Children who spend
their school years “learning” (being “trained”) in this manner can be expected to experience a certain frustration and dehumanization in their behavior since the creative functions of the brain are being constantly cut off. Operant conditioning experiments on animals have caused similar frustration and violent behavior.

If Littleton, Colorado schools are anything like other schools around the nation, they
are using the highly controversial “scientific research-based” Outcome-Based Education/Mastery Learning/Direct Instruction based on Skinnerian behavioral psychology, which is necessary for School-to-Work programs and workforce training. OBE and computer-assisted instruction go together as a hand fits in a glove. The combination amounts to a most lethal concoction for our children.

I fear that unless we examine the use and effect of video games and the use for twelve years of computers in the classroom we may experience more Littletons. Is it too far-fetched to assume that he who is trained like an animal may just end up behaving like an animal?

Note:  The original big book, Deliberate Dumbing Down of America can be downloaded free in pdf format at http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/                   The new updated paperback version is available at Amazon.com

A SMALL SAMPLE OF TOP-SELLING VIDEO GAMES OF 2012

 

Missouri mom outraged after school reportedly tells daughter to get breast reduction to stop harassment

 

(KTVI) — A north St. Louis County mother claims her 13-year-old daughter is being harassed because of her breast size and was floored by the response she got after calling the school district.

Tammie Jackson says her daughter Gabrielle is being sexually harassed because of her large breasts at Central Middle School in Moline Acres. She says the sixth grader has been dealing with bullying since last semester.

Jackson called the Riverview Gardens School District to complain and was shocked by what she was told.

“It makes me feel like now you are telling me it’s my fault, it’s God’s fault the way he made her. The lady on the phone said they could transfer my daughter and said her boobs were so large she will always get teased. And the only suggestion she had for me is to have my daughter get a breast reduction,” said Jackson.

FOX 2 stopped by the school district for a response and we’re told they’re working to counsel students to resolve the bullying issue. As for the claims about the surgery, we’re told they are still looking into it.

Jackson also says her 9-year-old son Elijah has bullying issues. He has a rare heart condition and she says kids make fun of his surgical scars, causing him to make suicidal comments.

Jackson says all she wants is resolution to an issue she says can affect kids for the rest of their lives, “Talk with the kids. Let them know people’s bodies are changing, everybody is different, but God made us all great.”

Jackson says the superintendent called and said they are working on a plan to resolve issues for both of her children.

http://fox2now.com/2013/01/17/mother-school-told-daughter-to-get-breast-reduction-after-harassment/

Reaction to FAU professor’s Newtown conspiracy is misguided and misinformed

(Ryan Cortes)  When I saw the headline — FAU prof stirs controversy by disputing Newtown massacre — I had one thought: James Tracy. Who else?

I’ve taken three of Tracy’s classes in my time at FAU, including one called Culture of Conspiracy. I’m well aware of the man’s ideologies. Hell, I’ve seen more 9/11 documentaries than Tarantino flicks, and damn do I love those. But I also love people who think differently and cause you to see perspectives you wouldn’t ponder.

In a series of blog posts on his site — the first coming on Christmas, the last coming this past Sunday — Tracy made readers ponder plenty, most of it not pretty. He spilled out over 14,000 words, asking questions about the recent Newton, Conn. massacre. Maybe the parents interviewed after were trained actors? Maybe there were multiple shooters? Maybe the whole event was just a setup for more gun-control talk?

The Sun Sentinel picked up the professor’s story and closed its comment section after so much loud noise. The Huffington Post re-ran the story and left its comment section open, giving space to things like “Fire him NOWWWWWWWW” and “this loony tune still has a job at FAU how?” Gawker even picked apart his post.

I understood why. Even asking the question was disrespectful to many. The mere thought seemed to minimize the grief and grimaces many felt after Adam Lanza allegedly shot young and innocent children. My own mother emailed me after she heard about Tracy. “He sounds crazy to me,” she said. “I think it is sad to see what he did.”

Now, mind you, this is someone who has changed my opinion many times before. His theories usually center around a failed national media that didn’t dig deep and ask more questions. It led him to believe Osama bin Laden’s alleged killing was a conspiracy, that the Oklahoma City Bombings were another, and that 9/11 had so many unanswered questions that if you weren’t asking on your own, well, you never were going to ask about anything anyway.

So I come into this discussion having spent a good deal of time with the man. I know how he thinks and I know when he starts asking questions, this many questions, he’s informed on the subject and he’ll cause me to at least think twice. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but I knew what was coming Tracy’s way. Vitriol. Hate. Anger.

All of it.

But none of these people knew the real Tracy. It was a blog post turned into a headline turned into a tweet turned into thousands of angry readers, but it didn’t tell the whole story. I remembered classmates of mine while taking Tracy’s classes who would stand outside during breaks, mesmerized, over what the professor’s opinions forced you think long and hard about before believing.

“I was a little intimidated at first because of how he presents the class,” says Manny Casillas, a senior multimedia journalism major. “But by the end of the semester I felt like I learned more than I had from any other teacher.”

“After I took his class,” says Lorenzo Ponce De Leon, another senior multimedia major, “there’s something that says, well wait a minute, based on the other stuff he’s taught us [maybe he’s right]. There’s a method to his madness.”

The last class I took with Tracy, we had a guest speaker come in one of our last meetings. He called himself Popeye, a 37-year-old with his own conspiracy website and radio show. He was covered in tattoos and came equipped with bold opinions.

“It takes a big brass set of balls to be a college professor and talk about what he talks about,” he told me yesterday. “Unfortunately today, most college professors are brain-washed. They toe the line.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

Truth in the Academy?

(THE CORBETT REPORT)   Tonight we talk to Dr. James F. Tracy of MemoryHoleBlog.com, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University about the academy. What part do academics play in the current slide into tyranny in the developed world? What is the responsibility of intellectuals? What happened to the social activism that was once an integral part of campus culture? Tune in tonight as we explore these important issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMC872hMzJo

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=6422

America is Dead & Law Students are Writing Communist Manifestos While Taught to Ingnore American

(JOSH TOLLEY)   A lawyer and author joins Josh Tolley to discuss how America is really dead/dying and reveals how American law students are taught to ignore American law!

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