The answer: Government-approved drug addicts
I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt. – Martin Luther [1483-1546]
It is now becoming a routine news story when a young person walks into his school, killing and wounding classmates and teachers. Each time the question is asked “How could this happen?” but no one is actually listening to the answer or doing anything about it.
There is a strong likelihood the answer is seven million government-mandated and government-approved drug addicts who walk into schools located in officially declared “drug free zones.” They are the children of America who have been diagnosed by teachers and counselors as victims of Attention Deficit or hyperactivity disorders and required, often against their parent’s objections, to take mind-altering drugs such as Ritalin and Prozac.
Almost all of the young men who have been involved in a school shooting incident throughout the 1990’s and now into the new decade has been on one or more of these medications. Drugged into an outward appearance of calm, their real problems are submerged in adolescent dreams of retaliation until they are revealed in a blaze of gunfire. Almost invariably, they are described as “smiling” as they move around looking for their next victims.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AHDH) are complete frauds. There is no scientific evidence whatever to prove either exists. Why then have seven million children been diagnosed as being ADD or ADHD and placed on medications?
Schools have traditionally been safe sanctuaries for children before this outbreak of shootings began. How, in the past, did schools deal with young people who were acting out? Any veteran teacher will tell you it took extra time and teamwork to straighten out often-rebellious young men and women. Sometimes the local police juvenile officers had to participate as well. These young people were seen as a community problem that included the parents, teachers, and others to bring about change.
They got all the Ritalin and Prozac you need
Now, instead, phony mental disorders become a convenient way to avoid the real work of identifying and helping young people to grow into secure adults. Now they can be “diagnosed” by people who are ill-trained and ill-equipped to make such judgements. They are often aided by federally funded clinics in schools, eager to dispense the drugs by way of fattening their budgets.
When did the federal government get involved with determining the mental state of youngsters? You can date these problems from the 1970’s and 1980’s when federally-funded research began to redirect schools from traditional information-based education to “outcome-based” programs specifically designed to determine and shape student’s attitudes and values.
Now, from coast to coast, this nation is awash in failing schools that are failing an entire generation of students. The child is blamed for not being able to learn anything, but the federal programs, the curriculum, the teachers and administrators are never blamed. Something is always wrong with the child and that something, we’re told, can be “cured” by a federally funded drug program to solve the problem.
The problem is the schools. The problem is “outcome-based” education. The problem is the drugging of students as opposed to strict standards of behavior and high expectations for their individual success. The problem is turning teachers into “facilitators.” The problem is the federal government that now controls our nation’s schools. These are schools that used to be under the control of local school boards, accountable to parents and residents. These schools used to be safe places for children.
How could this happen? It has happened. It continues to happen. It will continue to happen until communities take back their schools from federal control. Then teachers can go back to really teaching. Then schools can rid themselves of layers of unneeded administrators and social workers. Then parents can be held responsible for their children’s behavior.
It’s long passed time to start paying attention. Until schools return to local control by independent school boards, until standards of conduct are enforced, until expectations for every child are raised and met, until then, count the dead.
Written by Tom DeWeese for the American Policy Center, and published on DrKelley.info, March 12, 2001. Embedded links may no longer be active (Ed. 12.30.10)
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