March 7, 2008

Your Children Are Not Your Children

In California not long ago a judge ruled that California parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children. It can't happen here, right?

Well, Tennessee's governor and a group of Democrat lawmakers in the state House believe that public schools ought to be able to engage in intrusive mental health testing of children without the parents' knowledge. David Fowler of Family Action Tennessee reports in his weekly email newsletter:

We learned this week that the Governor and the majority of the Public Health Subcommittee in the House think that intrusive mental health testing of children is none of a parent's business (HB 1419). For several years a bill to require school officials to get parental permission prior to conducting mental health tests on their children has passed the Senate and died in a House Subcommittee.

The bill, championed by Bobbie Patray, President of Tennessee Eagle Forum, would have required school officials or the testing companies they allow into the schools to get the permission of parents prior to administration of these tests. And this is not just testing of a child whose behavior exhibits some kind of problem. No, we are talking about universal health screenings - screening every child regardless of any apparent need.

Schools won't let children go on field trips without a permission slip from a parent, but conducting subjective mental health screenings and diagnosis without permission is apparently fine. Schools complain about a lack of parental involvement, but then when given the chance to allow parents to be involved in something that could follow their child for the rest of his or her life - a diagnosis of some mental disorder - they kick the parents out!

Interestingly, this bill had been worked on by all the various departments and was apparently acceptable to them. But, at the hearing, Dr. (Tom) Catron, Director of the Governor's Office of Child Care Coordination waltzed in with no prior notice to the bill's sponsor (Rep. Beth Harwell, R-Nashville) and said that "they" - presumably the Governor for whom he works - did not want the parents to know about the tests until after they had been conducted. His words were:

"It is very important that we engage parents once children are identified in early identification to allow them to make the important choices about what should happen and what kind of service their children should be involved in."

In other words, when the government is through testing your children we'll let you in on it.

This policy and Dr. Catron's statement reek of liberal arrogance. In other words, "Parent's cannot be trusted to make good decisions for their children. The government needs to step in because the government really knows better than parents what is best for their children."

Never mind the government's track record in nanny care results and the lackluster administration of the Department of Children's Services compared to the otherwise stellar record most parents have in looking out for their children.

These mental health diagnoses, made on the basis of tests that parents will know nothing about, will go into a child's file. These diagnoses could possibly follow that child for the rest of his or her academic career and possibly into their adult life when they apply for jobs or health insurance.

Dr. Catron made an analogy to universal hearing and sight tests. But hearing and sight tests are objective tests. There are no questions that might be misunderstood by a child that could result in a "false positive" - a diagnosis that is wrong. In fact, three states are now being sued over the very issue of false positives made in conjunction with tests parents did not know were being conducted.

"Public welfare," according to Dr. Catron, dictates that tests be administered without parental consent. Public welfare is too important. But parental rights are important too. But respecting parental rights Dr. Catron said would impose an "economic burden" on the state and would interfere with the "timeliness" of the tests.

Waiting a week or two to test every child is not a threat to the public welfare. These are grade school children we are talking about here, not suspected terrorist threats! Parents need to take back their schools. They also need to find people to serve in Nashville who will respect them and their rights. Clearly, the Governor and a majority of the members of this Subcommittee do not.

And, I should note, Gov. Bredesen's kid went to private schools - where the governor's "test without notice" policy would not have applied.

Imagine that.

My second child enters kindergarten this fall. Private school is expensive. I pray daily that God will help us find a way to keep him out of the public school system. His education and well-being are too important to turn over to the state.

Update: HB 1419 (PDF file), the legislation that would places restrictions on universal mental health testing, or psychiatric or socioemotional screening of juveniles, by the public schools, and require consent by a juvenile's parent, guardian, legal custodian, or caregiver before such testing can occur, had a bipartisan list of 21 co-sponsors in the House and a bipartisan group of 18 co-sponsors in the Senate, where it ultimately passed by a 30-1vote.