| JuryFury.com
Now Every 15th of the Month ! Online School of Politics |
|||
| Areas of Interest THE USA American Foreign Policy US House and Senate US Presidents State & Local Politics Regional Politics Politics of China The British Commonwealth Indian Subcontinent Middle East The European Union Africa Latin America ASEAN NATO United Nations The Non-aligned Movement Eastern Europe New Nations of the 20th Century General Topics Constitutional Law Human Rights Nuclear Disarmament & Treaties International Warfare Environmental Law Peace Treaties Economic & Social Alliances International Organizations Journalism & Media Racism and Democracy Women in the Workplace Family Law Courts and Practices The Judicial System Higher Education Education and Government Health Care & Insurance Rights of the Disabled Copyright & Working Online Legal Representation Legal Insurance Pornography Domestic Violence Religion & Law Workers Rights Employers Rights Prison & Life after Social Organizations Welfare & Poverty Taxation and Democracy Third World Aid Programs Space Exploration Alternative Energy Petroleum Industry & Cars Nuclear Power Programs for the Arts Sports Education Policing the Internet Privacy and freedom Immigration Food and Regulation War on Drugs War on Pharmaceuticals Public Housing Pollution and Control Sexual Harrassment Discrimination Electoral Process Consumers Rights Investors Rights Abortion Death Penalty Social Security Gender & Sexuality Grassroots Organization ACLU World Watch Oxfam UNICEF United Negro Fund Ford Foundation (suggestions welcome at our chatsite) Law of the Economy Join I-Traderschool, our sister magazine, for debates and news. |
Education
Schooling of Children with Mental Illness: Some Suggestions by Cherrie Lynn Lipsett I had reported before that 1/3 of the children in some schools were on some type of drug for mental illness. That is an alarming rate! These drugs have never been tested for children. Most of these children do not need drugs! Psychological drugs given to children keep the mind from developing properly. There are many causes as to why children are being put on psychological drugs in this country at such an alarming rate. We have to realize the causes before we can fix the problem. If the answers we come up with don't address the causes they will not fix the problem. But let’s see why we have this alarming rate: 1. The pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists. This is part of the problem as stated by the Associated Press article forwarded by James Nordlund. I am usually the first to jump on the band-wagon of how bad the pharmaceutical industry is but it is not the main cause of the problem this time, in my opinion. I think first we have to look to the medical community and how doctors are trained. A psychiatrist is a doctor that specializes in giving the proper medication for a mental problem. He does his internship in psychiatry. A psychiatrist can prescribe medication and learns how to prescribe the appropriate medication. He learns nothing about psychotherapy. This is the main problems in the pharmaceutical-psychiatrist area in my opinion. We have a disconnect in the medical community. The medical schools to not train the doctors correctly. Of course since a psychiatrist is taught only how to detect and then prescribe medication for certain problems that is all he does. He is not trained to give counseling. A psychologist gives counseling but can not prescribe medication. Now the drug companies do recommend drugs for problems that they do not control and are doing research to be able to prescribe medications for even more problems. So the pharmaceutical industry is part of the problem. But the main problem is that a psychiatrist is not properly trained to be a mental doctor. All he is taught to do is prescribe medication for a problem. A psychiatrist and a psychologist should be one and the same person. A psychiatrist should also have had all the same training that a psychologist has had to practice. Study of the mind and treating the mind is still in infancy stages on this planet. But as we progress, if we progress correctly, we will find that study of the mind and treatment of mental problems whether by counseling or medication or some combination there of will be come as important and in many problems we have not gotten control of (such as criminal behavior) more important than treatment of the physical body. Before we can get there the training of a psychiatrist has to be changed to include counseling training. The two are separate because up until about 1960 we had no mental drugs. All we could do for mentally ill people was to counsel them. But we are in a different ballgame now and we should change the medical community to fit the new ballgame. Until psychiatrists are trained to also be counselors rather than just pill pushers we will never see all the benefits that treatment of the mind whether by pill or counseling or some combination of both can offer. The fact that psychiatrists are only taught to prescribe medication is part of the problem for the drastic increase in the number of children on mind altering medication but not the only problem. I fault the medical schools first in their training of psychiatrists and the drug industry second in this case. 2. School teachers are another big part of the problem. For one thing the quality of school teachers in this country has decreased since women's liberation in the sixties. Before women's liberation most women that wanted a profession and went to college either became teachers or nurses. Those were the only two professions open to women unless they wanted to buck the system and take a lot of abuse from men if they went into other fields. So we got some of our brightest women as teachers. Now these bright women become lawyers, doctors, etc. We can't do anything about this. A second problem is that teachers are being pushed to have a certain percentage of their students meet certain criteria or face consequences. This encourages the teachers to talk to the parents of what the teacher deems their problem children to put them on medication. The medication sedates the child and therefore makes the teachers problems less. Of course to get medication you have to go to a psychiatrist and a psychiatrist is only taught to prescribe medication and not counsel so we have a vicious circle here. I think the best way to get out of this vicious circle is to change the training of psychiatrists so they have to also know all a psychologist has to know and then they can make an intelligent and educated decision as to whether the child or parents and children need consulting or medication or both. 3. The third problem is parents. Many parents of problem children do not properly parent. The children do not go to bed at 8 p.m., the children do not get a proper breakfast, there are severe problems in the home life of the child which makes it impossible for the child to focus on schoolwork. Children need a stable home environment. 4. Our education system which is faulty because of our lack of understanding and proper testing of intelligence and mental age which we don't even test for. Our school system is the same it has been for over a century. We have not changed it even though we have made great advances in the understanding of the mind and the learning process. Just the fact that our school system has not been changed when we know we have made great advances in the understanding of the mind and learning process should tell you our education system is antiquated. We also need to spend more time or some time studying mental age and how to evaluate intelligence. We now know that the mind develops to a great extent up to the age of 6 but that there is another great development of the mind (in some people) in the teens. Children should be divided up and sent to school based on mental age not chronological age. I have talked to many first grade teachers that recognized the fact that some children at 6 are still mentally very immature -- that if you wait till they are 7 they learn to read just fine; that they are of normal or even high intelligence but just mentally immature. Most of these teachers tell me they see this phenomena in boys more often then girls. I used to raise Arabian horses and train them. Some lines mature more slowly mentally than other. Most good trainers never even try to break a horse to ride until it is mentally ready. Now by breaking a horse to ride properly, what I am talking about is more than just how to get on its back. It is to teach it to walk, trot and canter when given certain specific cues. Also to carry its head and body in a certain frame. No horse can learn this if not mentally mature enough. You will damage the horse mentally and it might end of a basket case if you push it before it is ready. Well horses are mammals just like humans and humans also mature mentally at different rates. To send a child to school and pressure him or her to learn when they are not mentally ready can cause psychological problems and if the child is put in a slow class then the child lives with the stigma that he or she is slow for the rest of their lives and does not try. When in fact the child might be of normal or even high intelligence and just mentally immature. Most mentally immature children do have a drastic increase in intelligence (as we say it is just development of the mind really) in the teen age years. However, they have been stigmatized so much by this time they never reach their potential. Many of these children are of high intelligence. Now many of them are being put on drugs and their minds never develop properly. Such a shame and waste of human life. The answer is for the education community and the psychologists and psychiatrist to get together and come up with a test to test mental maturity at the age of 4, 5, 6 and 7, and they should not try to teach a child until it is mentally mature enough to learn what you want to teach it. If horses can be made into basket-cases by being pushed for saddle training before they are mentally mature enough to handle it what in the hell do you think we are doing to the much more complex mind of our children when we push them before they are ready! Think human beings for once in your lives -think! Here is a program I offer for the school systems of the country: 1. Proper testing of children at the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for mental age. Such tests have to be developed. We do not have such tests now. Not starting the child's schooling until it is mentally mature enough to handle it. 2. A questioning of children to find out if they are getting proper parenting. They are getting feed properly, are going to bed at proper times for their age, etc. Kids that are not getting proper parenting should be classified as at risk children. The school can implement programs specifically for these children and counseling for these children. Such programs would be a breakfast program, vitamins, even a nap period so they get some sleep through out the day. Proper education of teachers to notice their children and be aware of what is the cause of falling to sleep in class, hyperactivity, etc. The teacher can be taught to interview the child in a non-threating and casual manner. A teacher can find out what the problem is if she/he has a mind to. The schools are going to have to help in seeing that the child gets the proper care it is not getting at home. These children should be offered a good breakfast at school (children need protein as do all young mammals and most children to not get enough protein in their diets).. Going back to properly cooked from scratch meals at schools and not all this prepared foods which are low in nutritional value. Giving of vitamins or protein drinks to some children. A nap period in a room with nice cots for children that do not get enough sleep at home. Yes the schools have to pick up the slack here. They are the only organization that can for society. 3. Testing of children for raw intelligence and dividing them up into two classes. Test to see who has high intelligence or higher than normal intelligence, and who has medium or lower than normal intelligence and then place these two groups in different classes. That is the high intelligence and normal high will only compete against each other while the medium and low normal intelligence and low intelligence will only compete against each other. 4. Taking all mentally ill children -- including children with Down Syndrome -- out of regular school system. These children do not belong in the school system and put a burden on it which it should not have to carry. These children cannot and will never be able to learn at the rate of average children and put a tremendous burden on the school system which they should not have to carry. Such children can be taught at home or can be put in a special school which the parents pay for with help from the State at the average rate paid by the State to educate a child. Children extremely physically disabled should not be in the public school system, either. Here again they can go to a special school for such children with the financial help of the State. These special schools for such children should be in a or a few large cities of each state. The parents if they do not want to teach the child at home should be required to move to the city where the schools are. Yes, this is a burden on the family but why should society as a whole ( here the public school system) have the total burden and the parents of such children have no burden or responsibility? Life is not fair! All of the most important things in life, who you are born to, what you look like, where you are born, when you die, etc, are all due to chance. We must face that fact and quit trying to compensate individuals for things due to chance. To give all a helping hand, yes. But to say life for all should be equal is something that will never happen and we should stop trying to make life for all equal. To give all a fair chance to reach their potential especially innocent children is what we should strive for. About the Author(s): See under Our Contributors to find out about the Author(s) of this article. |
Yahoo! World News Headlines Our Winners Club Our Contributors Research Links Legal Advice ALL Awards & Internships Become an Activist Join an Organization Get Volunteerism Alert Write Letters to a local Politician Start your own Group Applied Politics Projects Suggest a Project Start your Yahoo Groups Get Internship Credit Funding for Projects Encourage Discussion Join Juryfury Chat Promote Juryfury.com Join online discussion Groups Be In the Spotlight Let us Interview you : Authors of political books Activists Journalists Lawyers Law Enforcement Politicians Politican Scientists Be A Columnist Get Internship Credit Write twice a Month Get Heard Start a Yahoo Group Advertise with Us Books (Free) Political Our Staff & Contributors Our Magazines Quietpoly.com I-Traderschool Juryfury.com The Company Our Address: QuietPoly Inc. 240 W. Saunders. Dr. (#146) Flagstaff, AZ 86001 Tel (928) 214-7365 quietpoly@yahoo.com |
|