WHY LET GOVERNMENT DRUG YOUR CHILDREN?

Now The Law Is Threatening To Come Down Hard On Parents Who Refuse To
Be Sheep

One of the scariest stories in the news is receiving very, little
attention. According to USA Today, parents are being put under pressure
by schools and by courts to have their children drugged with Ritalin.
Some parents have been threatened with charges of child neglect or
abuse - and having the child taken away by the authorities -- if they
do not give their children Ritalin.

All it takes to have Ritalin prescribed is a label of "attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder." And there are lots of little tin gods
in the schools who are ready to put this label on children who are
bored and fretful at the uninteresting and unchallenging material
presented to them. Very bright children are particularly likely to be
frustrated and acting out.

Some parents have seen almost miraculous improvements in their
children's interest and behavior just by finding a more interesting
teacher or a more interesting school. But now that judges are willing
to threaten to take children away unless parents knuckle under to
school shrinks and social workers who want the child drugged, that
option may not be available in time.

It is hard to imagine a stupider or more dangerous way of making
decisions than putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay
no price for being wrong, Know-it-alls in the school system do not lose
one dime or one hour's sleep if their bright ideas turn out to be all
wrong or even disastrous for the child. It is parents and children who
pay the price.

There is not even a record kept as to how often the education
bureaucrats have been wrong. How often are the schools' diagnoses of
various conditions wrong? I could rattle off a dozen examples just from
casual observation. There are kids who were put into classes for
retarded children who later turned out to have lQs way above the
national average.

A professor of neurosciences at the University of Massachusetts has
examined numerous diagnoses of children for numerous conditions. She
says that three-quarters of the case histories she has seen have at
least one diagnosis that is "completely off the mark."

What is even scarier than the error rate and the recklessness with
diagnoses made in the school system - often by people with neither an
M.D. nor a Ph.D. - is the sheeplike parents who simply go along with
whatever. the "experts" say. Now the law is threatening to come down
hard on parents who refuse to be sheep.

This is not just an isolated problem. It is part of a widespread
erosion of parents' rights to raise their own children. Moreover, there
is a whole ideology favoring government takeovers of parents' role.
This ideology has been promoted for decades by people like Hillary
Rodham Clinton and organizations like the so-called Children's Defense
Fund.

Schools have already taken over the decision as to when and in what
manner your child will be introduced to sex. Some schools are teaching
various techniques of homosexual acts, and some have gay activists
visiting the schools, passing out cards giving the addresses of local
homosexual hangouts.

The question is not whether the decisions made by the schools are wise
decisions. The more fundamental question is why they have a right to
take over such decisions from parents in the first place. Still more
basic is the question: Why do we let them get away with it?

This is still a democracy, after all. If parents started voting against
politicians and judges who have been taking away their rights as
parents, it would have to stop. If legislatures started impeaching
judges who punish parents for refusing to drug their children, that
would come to a halt as well.

There is no great mystery as to why people want more power over other
people. There have always been despots, large and small, throughout
thousands of years of recorded history. For at least the past two
centuries, there have also been ideologies that argued for government
takeovers of parents' role in the raising of children. There is nothing
original in Hillary Clinton's notion that "it takes a village to raise
a child" - whether the parents want their child raised by a village or
not.

Claims that "studies prove" the need for Ritalin are far less
convincing when you realize how often studies have "proved" one thing,
only to have later studies prove the opposite. Parents and voters need
to wake up to the dangerous extension of government despotism into the
family.