The Parental Breach

formychildren
Feb 11, 2015
4 min read

On February 3, 2015 I watched Senator Lamar Alexander’s Fixing NCLB roundtable in its entirety. Participating in the roundtable was a panel of professionals working in or on the periphery of education. One panelist, Dr. Kessler, Executive Principal, Hunters Lane high School, in Tennessee held my attention each time she spoke. She was articulate and pointedly stated that there is an “over reliance” on testing and “in some states being used as a weapon against teachers.” She said, “What is the most important thing we do with children is we teach children.”

Dr. Kessler impressed me as an educator whose priorities were aligned with mine and most parents interested in their children’s public education – right up to the point where she stated she would like “access to more mental health professionals” for students. Her reasoning for this is as she stated, “There are estimates that 20% of the children in our public schools, K12, who are suffering from a mental illness.”

That was the moment Dr. Kessler and I parted ways. I’m not dismissing Dr. Kessler as I believe, from the many comments she made during the roundtable, she is truly interested in public education and has genuine concern for our nation’s public education students. Senator Alexander noted she is an award winning teacher. I’ve no doubt. However, she breached the parental line with both feet. Mental health may fall within the circle of concern for government employees but it is not in their circle of responsibility or control. A child’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health are the responsibility of that child’s parents or legal guardians.

Those of you who know me and have read previous articles know that this is my line in the sand. Social and emotional learning, whole child, wrap-around services, student wellness, and other slick sounding titles are all code for government intrusion into private lives.

But I digress…back to Dr. Kessler and her comment regarding students and mental health. Missing from Dr. Kessler’s comment was the WHY 20% of public school children suffer from mental illness.

The answer to that question came from local Clark County, Nevada, homeschool mom, Amy Bauck.

February 10, 2015, the Nevada Senate Education Committee held a hearing on Senate Bill 25. The bill has something for everyone to dislike but the biggest red flag was Section 2 that stated, “This bill requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to coordinate educational programs for children from birth through prekindergarten.”

Reprinted here with Amy’s permission is her testimony:

Over the past 30 to 40 years, there have been several studies done to determine whether time in non-parental group care is better for young children than time with their parents. Statistics have been gathered and studied but for the most part ignored in order to further the advancement of women in the workforce. Studies like the one done by the National Institute of Child Health and Development which clearly found that there was a high correlation between children who spent a high number of hours in non-parental group care and aggressive behavior (defined as non-compliance, talking too much, arguing a lot, temper tantrums, demanding a lot of attention, disrupting class, discipline, cruelty/meanness, BULLYING, explosive behavior and getting into a lot of fights). In fact, the study found that children that spent 30 hours or more in non-parental group care were 3 times more likely to assert aggressive behavior than kids that spent 10 hours or less. In addition, physicians report that children in care facilities are 18 percent more likely to become ill than other children. Infants in care have twice the rate of inner ear infections and 100 percent higher rate of respiratory illness. Influenza, diarrhea, dysentery, bacterial meningitis and hepatitis A are also much more prevalent among children within group settings.

Although these statistics have been grossly ignored over the decades, time has allotted another set of statistics that correlate with our nations obsession with allowing strangers to raise our children. Babies form their first human attachment only ONCE and it is that human attachment that make children thrive. Many are unaware that the United States has the highest rate of child homicide and child suicide in the world. The childhood murder rate has tripled since 1950, 7.7 million children suffer from emotional disorders; 50% of girls and 55% boys report some form of sexual experience before the age of 18; and rates of sexual abuse of children are up 350% in the last 20 years. (Day Care Deception – What the Child Care Establishment Isn’t Telling Us. Brian Robertson).

These statistics have all clearly risen with the rate in which children are entering the non-parental group care setting – AND THAT WILL NOT CHANGE WHETHER IT IS RUN BY THE STATE OR A PRIVATE INDUSTRY. As G.K. Chesterton once stated, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

One could argue it is the public schools causing the mental illness but I won’t go that far. Evidence supports that children thrive when in the care of their parents – not a public institution.

When parents hear that the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, wants public school to be “12, 13, 14 hours a day,” they need to gather their children and run.

The parental breach, as I refer to it, is there for a reason. Parents take care of the upbringing of their children; it is their right, it is their duty, it is their joy. The institution of public education, or what it may have started out to be, is in place to offer students knowledge in specific subject areas and even then those subject areas are not outside the parent’s circle of concern or responsibility. There are, and will continue to be, issues that cause concern for both the schools and the parents, however, the challenge for the government is to recognize when that concern is not their responsibility. Furthermore, it is our responsiblity as parents to remind the government when it is getting to close to that line in the sand - the parental breach.