Have you two heard of Beverly Eakman? She's an ex-teacher who speaks out against the education establishment, as well as comments on societal problems. Here is a little bit from on of her articles:
By 1978, daycare was big business, and, by the mid-1980’s, child experts were aggressively encouraging parents to enroll their children in “early childhood” programs so that the youngsters would be “socialized” and “ready to learn.”
But a strange thing happened. Not only were the offspring of the boomers not “socialized”—in the sense of becoming gregarious, well mannered, tactful, polite, fun, or even able to carry on a conversation—they were nervous, uptight, anxious, and torn by the mixed messages emanating from their various preoccupied guardians. They cried more, threw more temper-tantrums, fell ill when separated from their parents or peers, and were plagued with learning “disabilities.” The more obnoxious they were, the less their parents wanted them.
By the mid-1990’s, long after I had left teaching, the other shoe dropped. Teachers and care givers could not stand these kids, either. Adults were being kicked, bitten, and spat upon by children as young as three. Teachers complained that six-year-olds came to first grade unable to count to ten, name the colors, or recite the alphabet, much less use scissors or sit still for ten minutes—yet most had been “socialized” in nursery programs aimed at making sure youngsters were “ready to learn.”
Few parents were aware of a thousand-plus-page landmark treatise in 1969 entitled the Behavioral Science Teacher Education Project (BSTEP), compiled by Michigan State University, one of the government’s official research centers for teacher training. BSTEP’s purpose was to determine what kind of future world teachers should be preparing. The document predicted that, by the 21st century, drugs would be available to control behavior, alter mood, and even raise intelligence. It forecast that teachers would be “clinicians” and that education would be “based in the behavioral sciences.”
Government quietly began taking steps to ensure this outcome—from its treatment of parents in the courts, to the content of tests and surveys in the classroom, to the placement of psychologists in every public school (via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965). Within 30 years of BSTEP, every quirky conduct, and a few that could not even qualify as idiosyncratic, was remediable with “professional counseling” and a psychotropic drug. All a behavior needed to be was inconvenient or bothersome.
However, there was a catch. The parent who refused such treatments could be cited for “medical neglect.” To child “protection” agencies and the family courts, this was no different from denying insulin to a diabetic on religious grounds. In effect, parents no longer had legal standing.
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