By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. May 18, 2022
On Tuesday, May 24th, the House Committee on Public Education will meet at 10:00 a.m. to consider a number of issues including:
“3. Examine the impact of COVID-19 on students' mental health, including the availability and workload of mental health professionals across the state and their role in the public school system. Make recommendations to reduce or eliminate existing barriers to providing mental health services in a traditional classroom setting or through teletherapy.”
Examine the impact of COVID-19 on students’ mental health? Why so much concern now over the academic, health, and mental harm from the long shutdown of schools and masking of students? Politicians were warned about the consequences by experts and parents but turned a deaf ear.
“Reduce or eliminate barriers” to mental health services in traditional classroom setting or through teletherapy? What are the barriers? Why do they want more access to children?
This is yet another step to push mental health into public education, allowing total government control over children and their worldviews.
At the federal level, Social and Emotional Learning has been codified as the primary purpose of education.
In 2019, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared, as his “emergency item,” the addition of mental health services on school campuses to “make Texas schools safe from gun violence.” A mental health consortium was created, comprised of psychiatry departments of Texas medical schools which work with pharmaceutical companies.
Last year, the Texas State Board of Education approved new health textbooks that are filled with self-assessments, psychological techniques, mental health advocacy campaigns and prompts for students to seek “professional help.”
In the last legislative session, SB 123 amended the Texas Education Code (Section 29.906) to incorporate SEL and required the State Board of Education to integrate SEL into various State Curriculum Standards for K-12.
Despite the proliferation of school mental health legislation, the suicide rate among teens has continued to climb since 2000. It’s the second cause of death for ages 10-24.
Instead of expanding mental health services and continuing to treat symptoms, why is there not a focus on the causes? Is there a connection between what is happening in public classrooms and mental health issues?
Why are students becoming more destabilized, even though millions of dollars and hundreds of precious classroom instructional hours are spent on Social and Emotional Learning?
We already know there is a connection between student mental destabilization and the radical sex education that is being pushed into classrooms. This was also the subject of the highly acclaimed documentary, “Mind Polluters,” about the deliberate grooming of students.
Some children have considered suicide because of the toxic classroom environment of racism and pitting students against each other.
Instead of morality, public education teaches subjective morality – moral relativism that denies there being a right or wrong. When there is student gun violence, the cause is not traced to the new morality code, but rather serves as an opportunity to demand gun control and more money on mental health in schools.
Secular humanist philosophy dominates all public schools. Progressive behaviorists created a new, humanistic curriculum that replaces the Judeo-Christian worldview. It includes the affective domain where areas of the curriculum dealing with “interests, attitudes, appreciations, values, and emotional sets and biases” can include death education and suicide education.
The National Education Association has played an important and active role in promoting death education. It sponsored the writing and publication of Death and Dying Education, an 18-week syllabus for the death educator.
In 1985 a student from Texas Columbine High School, Tara Becker, publicly exposed that the subject of death was integrated into many of the courses at the school. After one of the students at her school committed suicide, a ”suicide talking day” was held and every class was to talk about death. Students were encouraged to write their own obituaries and suicide notes. They were told to trust their own judgment in choosing whether to live or die. Columbine was the site of the 1999 massacre.
There is an overarching question. Why are lawmakers so eager to push more mental health services into the classroom, instead of solving the underlying causes?
Consider the money trail.
Since the early 1990s the psychiatry profession has been pushing for “mental health screenings” to find new patients. Pushing community mental health providers into public education means a steady revenue stream created diagnosing children with mental disorders which will then be treated with drugs purchased from Big Pharma. Health care dollars, from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research, yield still more revenue.
It is a known fact that pharmaceutical companies spend far more than any other industry to influence politicians. This latest legislative agenda sounds like lawmakers could be creating the next big marketing windfall for profiteers.
Parents are responsible for the rearing of their children and for their health, not the government and not those who are using children to reap huge profits. Perhaps parents need to consider removing their children from the current indoctrination and mental health centers labeled government education. Free market education offers endless opportunities for far better education and parents can be in control of rearing their children.
Stand Up for Your Parental Rights!
Here’s What You Can Do:
1. Testify at the committee hearing on May 24. (prepare for 3 minutes)
(Enter the Texas Capitol Building at the north entrance. Take the elevator to E2. Exit and walk down the long hall to Room E2.026.)
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Talk about your experiences and those of your child. Bring pictures, quotes, or documents, if you have them, to show to legislators. Bring pictures of surveys, screenings, and quotes from the new health textbooks.
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Emphasize that this is not simply a “culture war.” It is a usurpation of your fundamental parental rights.
2. Show your support.
Get your “Parents Know Best” T-shirt. Call or text with your name and size.
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Rachel Hale, Managing Director of Texas Freedom Coalition - (903) 570-7034