Posted on 09/26/2002 11:55:18 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Thank you... that is a good suggestion.
Contrary to what you suggest in your article, tape recording is not the issue here. In fact, even whether the boy actually needs counseling is also not the issue. The real issue is whether she will permit the school's psychologist to test and counsel him. The issue, in other words, is one of medical privacy and just who gets to make use of the information learned during any counseling sessions.
If you never do anything else for your friend, please, please, please, tell her to say NO to any such counseling or testing by any doctors hired by, or obligated to, the school district. Have her tell the school both orally and in writing in the most clear and unequivocal language she can muster to keep their stinking paws off her son. Her son needs to be informed of this decision so that he can tell them no also. If they persist, she must get herself an attorney. Either a local pro bono attorney with experience in medical/privacy law or one of the legal associations that I saw recommended to you on this thread. Under the conditions you present here, there is no legal way for them to force her to accede to their wishes to counsel her son.
If after talking openly and honestly to her son, the mother thinks there may be a possibly need for some psychological counseling, then have her retain one privately. There are alternatives available for those whose resources are as limited as you say your friend's are.
And if it is at all possible, have her quiz school officials to find out just how and why they came to the conclusion that her son has "issues" concerning his missing father.
Regards,
Boot Hill
The whole scenario sounds very underhanded. Besides the advice given above (most of it very good), I would find out
* What is the exact reason that prompted the school to request psychiatric visits.
* Who made the recommendation.
* How often has the person making the recommendation actually had contact or discussion with the child. Is this enough interaction to suggest that the person making the recommendation has any grounds by which to conclude that the child needs to visit the psychiatrist.
* Why are 12 visits recommended, instead of one.
* Is there any evidence at all to suggest that the child is in any way disruptive to the studies of his classmates beyond what is typical of boys his age.
Further, I would demand to speak with the school principal, the superintendant and at least one member of the school board before agreeing to any contact between your child and the psychiatrist.
Then, if the parent is satisfied that there is some legitimate grounds to arrange the visits, go forward. If the parent is not satisfied, make plans to provide alternate schooling (which she should be doing starting as early as possible in case it becomes necessary).
In short, make it clear to them that they get no child until the parent is satisfied that the visits are necessary. And be prepared to take this as far as it needs to go even if it means cutting a few classes (both of them) or missing a few days of work.
My two cents. Most psychiatrists I've ever met (and I've known several) are the most f---ed up people I've encountered.
I agree with you.
Back in the early 80's I taught 2nd grade in an extremely poor county in Tennessee (about an hours drive into the farming district from where I lived). Most of the residents there were sharecroppers with no running water or electricity in their homes. I became so frustrated trying to get help for some of my students and the inept stupidity of the school psychologist and social workers were the most frustrating of all.
Noticing huge bruises that never went away on one little boy, I called on the social worker. She informed me that I was to just forget it and keep my mouth shut... that the boy's family (mom, gramma, several siblings including a mentally retarded uncle in his 20's) lived off the government payments they received for the mentally retarded uncle, who they knew beat on the younger kids, but the family could not afford to see him taken away.
Another little girl in my class was being teased by the other kids because of odor. Her clothes smelled so bad (with no running water her mom did very little washing). I called on the social worker to see if she might help the situation in that home. You know what her solution was? She gave this little girl a huge bottle of strong perfume!
Another student (a 12 year old in my 2nd grade class.... parents were migrant workers so she had never been to school before)showed signs of aggression and acting out which I attributed in part to her own feelings of frustration. As bad as the needs of all those kids were, Bonnie's was the greatest. She had worn the same pair of ragged pants, t-shirt and plastic flip-flops everyday (only adding a ripped sweater and socks during the cold winter months). In the spring I bought her some shoes and clothes and discretely sent them home with her. The social worker/psychologist chastised me for doing so, saying if I was not going to give all the kids new clothes then I could not give them to Bonnie.
I could go on and on... but you get the picture here. The only purpose these social worker/psychologists serve in many cases is to bring in more Federal or State funds to the school and perhaps in the case of the subject of this thread, the social worker/psychologist needs to justify existence and created a few cases to do so!. Sad situation.
If after the hearing and balance tests prove unhelpful go to a nuerologist who speciliazes in such conditions and have him tested on your own. That docter will write a letter stating your child is fine and nothing more.
My childs doc has a website....
dyslexiaonline.com
He treats all the ADD disorders and there is a ton of information on his www site.
I went through this kind of crap as a child nearly forty years ago, attendant to a custody battle over my brother. I survived it, but I did pay dearly. The family wasn't so fortunate. Nevertheless, I have a few probably controversial things to say.
This is a huge opportunity for this woman to learn and to teach her son about what liberty is really about, and what the price can be. Unfortunately, there is no understanding of the concept without studying or experiencing its converse. It is clearly time for this child's innocence to end and to have the nature of reality spelled out for him in no uncertain or sugar-coated terms. Children are a great deal smarter and more courageous than we give them credit but only if given the chance to express it. To pretend that he can be fought over without taking his role in the battle is destructively erroneous. He needs to find his courage.
To do battle they both need to be intellectually armed. That means they need to understand their enemy. I am going to post a little article below that goes a long way to explaining the mechanics of psychological warfare in the classroom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------I am sorry I do not have more such resources handy nor time to pursue them, but I do have one more offering:Title: Bushwhacking Johnny
Source: Chronicles Magazine
Published: Sep 21, 2002
Author: B.K. EakmanAt dinner, ten-year-old Johnny is sullen and uncommunicative. It has been a bad day. His parents pass off his ill humor as "going through a phase." Actually, it was an easy day--taken up with "another stupid school assembly." Johnny had sat there, bored, listening to people drone on about diversity and tolerance. When a lesbian took the stage, Johnny and his soccer buddies had guffawed. Later, the school counselor cornered him at his locker: "You're a big boy now, Johnny. Your Mom and Dad are from another generation, you know, so it's not surprising they wouldn't be tolerant of gay people. You can make up your own mind. You wouldn't want someone looking at you and your friends as 'dumb soccer jocks,' would you?"
Johnny has been subjected to cognitive dissonance, a tactic often used to mold public opinion. Not only does the technique neutralize unwanted input, it's a nearly foolproof method of manipulating groups for political ends. An adult subjected to it at least has the benefit of maturity and experience. He may recognize, however belatedly, the cause of his annoyance. Johnny, however, is too young to weigh matters, so he broods. His confusion may fester for months below any conscious level of awareness.
Technically, cognitive dissonance is "a stressful mental or emotional reaction caused by trying to reconcile two opposing, inconsistent, or conflicting beliefs held simultaneously." In practice, it is a form of mental coercion. (I ought to know: I sat through enough workshops as a prospective educator and practicing teacher. We learned how to disrupt logic, how to make it difficult for the uninitiated to sustain a train of thought.)
Creating a disorienting psychological environment doesn't require an expert agitator or professional provocateur if you can get gullible third parties--teachers, factory workers, even parents--who don't realize what they're doing to do the dirty work. Educators often think that they are using scientific methodology to transmit "thinking skills" or that they are "empowering pupils to be decisionmakers." Budding journalism students may believe they are perfecting interviewing techniques. Political-science majors typically encounter it as "negotiating tactics," which is closer to the truth. But the goal of cognitive dissonance, as with all surreptitious opinion-molding, is to get the target to respond to contrived "stimuli" (especially hot-button topics or situations) with knee-jerk, emotional reactions, leaving reason behind. In so doing, the victim "internalizes," briefly or permanently, an alternate view of reality.
In today's politically correct schools, this is sold as intellectual and academic freedom. Take any controversial issue--e.g., homosexuality--and examine the method used to bushwhack ten-year-old Johnny.
As a pre-adolescent, Johnny naturally looks to his parents as the primary source of authority. But they have made it clear that teachers and other school staff are also his superiors, requiring obedience.
Enter the school counselor: In one fell swoop, she shakes Johnny's confidence in his parents and himself. At ten, Johnny is not mature enough to understand what homosexuals do, but judging from the counselor's comment, it's apparent to him that his parents oppose homosexuality. (The counselor is sure of this because Johnny has completed untold numbers of questionnaires revealing details about his family--from what they read to how they worship.)
The counselor blindsides Johnny on five levels. First, she provides a justification for not abiding by his parents' values. ("They're from another generation.") Then, she strokes Johnny's ego by implying he is more mature than he actually is. ("You're a big boy now.") Next, she plants the idea that his parents' ethics are shallow. ("It's not surprising they wouldn't be tolerant.") Then, she forces Johnny to choose between two opposing authorities under the pretext of thinking independently. ("You can make up your own mind.") Finally, she legitimizes a lifestyle his parents probably oppose. ("Would you want someone looking at you as a 'dumb soccer jock'?")
How can Johnny go to his parents with this? He probably won't even remember the context in which this conversation occurred. How will Johnny resolve the conflict? He doesn't have the opportunity to do that, because the counselor's question called for a response on the spot.
When cognitive dissonance is employed against an unsuspecting person--or worse, against a captive audience such as schoolchildren--the short-term objective is to prompt insecure individuals to find company, leading to a group (mob) mentality. This makes it easier to reverse values held by the majority. "Truth" can even be turned against itself--for example, "freedom of speech" is now used to legitimize pornography. The very people freedom of speech was designed to protect are left not only vulnerable but suspicious of the principle itself.
What "new values" are educators trying to instill? Here is a seven-point list, given to educators in North Carolina at an in-service workshop:
There is no right or wrong, only conditioned responses. The collective good is more important than the individual.
Consensus is more important than principle.
Flexibility is more important than accomplishment. Nothing is permanent except change.
All ethics are situational; there are no moral absolutes. There are no perpetrators, only victims.
Notice that all of the items on this list involve no particular issue; rather, they reflect ethical "outcomes" that a child is supposed to "internalize." So cognitive dissonance is not quite brainwashing, and it's not quite subliminal advertising, either. It's more like setting somebody up for a psychological fall. It plays with the mind by pitting various perceived "authorities" against one another and exacerbating tensions. After a while, intellectual deliberations shut down, and emotions take over. Only the strongest-willed individuals can hold out--the "troublemakers."
Classrooms are rife with examples of cognitive dissonance. Take The Cry of the Marsh, an environmentalist film shown in many seventh-grade science classes. It opens with an idyllic, rustic landscape--birds singing in the trees, mother ducks leading their young on a pleasant excursion down a creek, rabbits scampering over the ground. The scene oozes fresh air, sunshine, and peace.
Suddenly, a tractor-bulldozer appears. The camera zooms in on the word "AMERICAN" on the side of the yellow vehicle, which is actually the name of the company that manufactured the equipment, though young viewers are left to interpret it as "an American bulldozer." Because of the camera angle, the vehicle looks like a tank. It overturns everything in its path--shrubs, grass, plants. Exhaust fills the air.
A man jumps out of the front seat and goes over to the embankment to drain the creek where the ducklings had been following their mother. Another man brings a can of gasoline, pours it over the surrounding area, and ignites it. As the men drive away, flames leap into the air. Trees catch fire. Living creatures run for cover.
Suddenly, the ducklings--which, by that time, have emerged on the other side of the creek--are overcome by encroaching flames and burned alive. Nests of baby birds come crashing to the ground, and the camera zooms in on what is left. In a final close-up, the tractor-bulldozer is shown plowing under the remains of the nest, the ducklings, and some bird eggs.
As the scene fades from the screen, a sentence flashes: "Man cannot foresee or forestall. He will end by destroying the earth." After the film ends, pupils are divided into groups for a canned discussion activity: "Who Shall Populate the Planet?"
Why does this exercise meet the definition of cognitive dissonance? First, there is subliminal deception and psychological impact--the way "AMERICAN" is depicted, the camera angle, the carnage. The last frame in the film condemns mankind wholesale--we will kill off our own species and, possibly, the planet itself. There is no issue to debate. The film aims for the gut, not for intellectual discussion. For all the children know, the men were creating mayhem in the forest purely for pleasure.
Finally, the follow-up exercise requires immediate decision-making--by consensus and under pressure. By the time the children get home, they can be counted on to have forgotten the relationship of the activity to the film and, therefore, will have no context to bring to their bewildered parents, who, no doubt, will hear impassioned outbursts over the ensuing weeks and months about grown-ups "destroying our world!" Parents aren't likely either to see the film or to hear any description of the follow-up activity that triggered this reaction.
With this curriculum under their belt, youngsters are deemed prepared to weigh in on such topics as urban sprawl, nuclear waste, and global warming, all of which require considerably more advanced study than seventh-graders possess. But these particular seventh-graders, prepped as they are, will be quite full of politically correct opinions that they cannot articulate.
Cognitive dissonance is not so much about skewing questions, interjecting bias, or censoring information as it is about a controlled-stress approach to precipitating conflict and overwhelming rational thought. The tactic relies largely on obscuring the lines between "authority," "loyalty," and ego.
You didn't "brainwash" your child into believing that a teacher, policeman, or minister is an authority figure. That's much too strong a term. You did, however, transmit the notion. What happens, then, when one of those authority figures forces your child to choose among them or tries to marginalize the others? The answer largely depends on which authority figure the child spends the most time with and which one the child perceives as being the greater threat to his pride.
Thanks to a culture that increasingly keeps children with their peers and away from their parents, most youngsters today view their classmates as the authority figures--as the persons having the greatest effect on their ego. Unethical educators capitalize on this; they use children to punish and report on other youngsters, then call it "peer pressure" or "classroom dynamics."
Herbert Marcuse identified adolescents as the perfect targets--eager, always, to become independent of their parents but still needy of approval. A fan of Germany's Kurt Lewin, who conducted the first groundbreaking experiments to induce neurosis on a mass scale, Marcuse combined the anti-authoritarianism of Erich Fromm with Karl Marx's theory of alienation (people will do almost anything to avoid ostracism or ridicule) and put it to work. If you could get impressionable young people to believe they were thinking independently, even while performing mob-dependent acts, you could start a revolution, he wrote.
Marcuse went on to foment and organize (usually behind the scenes) many of the campus riots of the 1960's. He understood that it was easier to manipulate groups than individuals. In dealing with team players, you reduce the chance of "lone rangers" who attempt to solve problems on their own initiative.
The key was to blur the lines between dependence and loyalty. Marcuse's students confused group loyalty with herd approval. "We're all in this together" became a recruitment slogan. Today, it's a rallying cry for every agitator with a cause, especially in the social sciences, which, increasingly, includes education.
By placing "interdependence" over "rugged individualism" and a herd mentality over personal principle, educators have scuttled American ideals about self-reliance and personal integrity. If it is politically correct to accept promiscuous behavior as "normal" and monogamy as "religious extremism," then anyone who balks is a pariah.
Thus was my generation (the Baby Boomers) educated to "need" our peers more than we needed our principles, making us easy marks for such tactics as cognitive dissonance. Our children are now sitting ducks, with civilized norms forever under attack.
Consider the following scenario: A pregnant young woman contracts German measles. After a sonogram and an amniocentesis, she is told her unborn child has serious deformities. Two simultaneous and incompatible messages will plague this woman, both bolstered by the media: First, If I go through with the pregnancy and birth, I am a bad person because I am opting, voluntarily, to commit this child to a tortured existence that I could have prevented. Second, If I terminate this pregnancy, I am a bad person because I have murdered my baby. Conclusion: No matter what I do, I am a bad person.
Enter the "third party," an advertisement: "Just do it!" "Take control of your life!" "Be a decision-maker!" "Do what feels right!"
Unless this woman can "default" to firm principles one way or the other, she is a candidate for suicide. She has been given a justification for not abiding by an earlier generation's values; her ego is stroked by implying she has more decision-making power than she really has (she can't undo the German measles); she has been taught that life-and-death dilemmas are inconveniences, not moral decisions; she must choose between two opposing authorities, God and "science," under the pretext of thinking independently; and, finally, all choices are equally legitimized.
Today, cognitive dissonance is an institutionalized method used to force-feed whatever is politically expedient. In a climate where fear of alienation vastly outweighs fear of moral corruption, what has happened to "intellectual freedom"?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.K. Eakman, a former teacher and the current executive director of the National Education Consortium, is the author of Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education (Huntington House). Her website is www.BeverlyE.com .
Doe she go to church? Do you know a priest with courage, training in psychology, and integrity? A priest can go to bat for the kid and give him an intellectual home. Heck, if the parish has a school they may even take him in.
God bless you and your friend, and God protect another child in America.
CO Finally
(wisdom)
On 1st glance, the schools demand for privacy is suspect. On 2nd glance, somethings not right in River City here. Is the kid a spoiled brat? What? Some Mom's will defend their kids actions if they burned down a neighbors car as normal boy stuff or he's very creative. On 3rd glance, I would need to know more about the kid and whether the mom has spoiled him or not and whether SHE even believes you can spoil a child. If she does'nt believe you can spoil a child, he probably IS SPOILED. (/wisdom)
(wisdom)
On 1st glance, the schools demand for privacy is suspect. On 2nd glance, somethings not right in River City here. Is the kid a spoiled brat? What? Some Mom's will defend their kids actions if they burned down a neighbors car as normal boy stuff or he's very creative. On 3rd glance, I would need to know more about the kid and whether the mom has spoiled him or not and whether SHE even believes you can spoil a child. If she does'nt believe you can spoil a child, he probably IS SPOILED. (/wisdom)
NO! to all! She has the right to refuse. But she had better get an attorney (I think the school board may furnish one for her!) I have seen them yank kids into private meetings during the day while class is in session. Make sure she writes a certified letter to the Principal and copy the School District Supervisor telling them they do not have her authority or approval to remove him from class, and name a an attorney on the letter. Just my $.02
Have to agree with OWK. The state commies will put the kid on drugs and/or take custody of the kid. This is bad situation. The odds of going to court are not worth the risk or expense. The only thing she can win is the basic right to raise the child as the mother sees fit at the risk of criminal charges or permanent damage being done to the kid by some possible quack.
It has nothing to do with any psych problems. If it's more than the kid just doesn't want to read the stuff, then the teacher's, maybe ma, just can't motivate. The teacher's however are paid to be able to lead the kid to do it.
" he needs TWELVE visits with the school Psychologist to accomplish this."
BS. They are just dreaming themselves and they want the kid to join them. Where'd they get 12 from, the NEA book of job cost estimating?
"Johnny's mother heard one of the administrator say "He needs to address things concerning his father."
If Ma was not actually told this and got it from them 'cause they wispered too loud, they are dangerous crackpots. Ma should absolutely refuse to allow the sessions on the grounds they are b'sers in the first place. The refusal to allow recording acknowledges this.
"Does the school have the authority to send a student to a psychologist?"
No.
"Can they do so without parent assent?"
No. Will they? Probably.
"Can they prevent the parent from being present?"
No.
"Can they legally prevent the mother from recording the session? "
Yes, because that would mean she gave her permission for the session and conditions to it.
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