Schools Make Lousy Parents

Schools should focus on academic curriculum content. They should NOT become therapy centers.

“We lost this somewhere along the way: the sense that these kids we raise, they’re ours. Our responsibility and our privilege. We are not the subordinates of the school psychologist or the pediatrician or our kids’ teachers. We are more important than all of them combined—as far as our kids are concerned. We gave our kids life, we sustained it, and we are the ones who bear the direct emotional consequences of how those lives turn out. It’s time we acted like it.”

— Abigail Shrier, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up

The Biden Administration is making HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF FEDERAL DOLLARS available to the nation’s school districts to fund the mass installment of an army of novice counselors into our K12 schools, counselors who will provide ineffective mental health treatment to a generation of kids who would benefit from LESS therapy, not MORE.

The K12 Education Industrial Complex is working hand in hand with the Biden administration to expand school-based behavioral healthcare in America’s schools on an UNPRECEDENTED SCALE, creating A DIRECT PIPELINE into schools for radical Left proselytes ready to put to use their shiny new, freshly-printed counselor and social worker certificates.

In Arizona and in states across the nation, school districts’ governing boards right now are rubber-stamping federal grant application proposals in order to apply for more unlicensed behavioral health workers to come into schools and influence children without parental knowledge or consent.

School districts use the broad term “mental health professionals” in these grant application proposals — quite a title inflation for people with wet-ink Masters Degrees but no license from a professional board, no regulatory oversight, and no fear of malpractice lawsuits, but who are certified by the state department of education to work in schools with zero scope of practice limitations.

“If you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And that nail may be your kid’s head.” — Josh Herring

When school starts up again for the 2024-25 school year, parents would be wise to submit a letter to their child’s school forbidding any such counseling to be facilitated for their child or youth.

Abigail Shrier authored the tectonic 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and has recently published Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up. In Bad Therapy, Shrier argues that the mental health of Gen Z—people born between 1997 and 2012—is a mess because of the INFANTILIZING THERAPEUTIC CULTURE which pervades every aspect of their lives.

She writes, “The rising generation has received more therapy than any prior generation. Nearly 40 percent of the rising generation has received treatment from a mental health professional—compared with 26 percent of Gen Xers. Forty-two percent of the rising generation currently has a mental health diagnosis, rendering ‘normal’ increasingly abnormal. One in six US children aged two to eight years old has a diagnosed mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder. More than 10 percent of American kids have an ADHD diagnosis—double the expected prevalence rate based on population surveys in other countries. Nearly 10 percent of kids now have a diagnosed anxiety disorder.”

These kids have received more therapeutic care than any previous generation ever, leading to substantial expansion of the therapeutic industry.

And yet, they are sicker than ever.

It’s no surprise that expansionists have latched onto the rising generations’ apparent failure to cope and are seizing the opportunity to broaden government schools’ role in children’s lives and push parents even further out to the edges of the circle of influence.

And so we stand by and watch as the “therapeutic education model” becomes all the rage in our children’s schools and we obediently zip our lips when they tell us surely, anyone who “truly cares about kids” wouldn’t dare oppose it.

Proponents of this fundamental transformation of our nation’s K12 schools possess study after study purporting to show kids need this. They cite research saying school-based mental healthcare is LIFE SAVING. Even if your local school administrator can’t rattle off academic citations saying such a radical expansion of services in schools is the necessary next step, a good many others can and do….

“At conferences, in training seminars, in education schools, it is in the air they breathe and water they drink… They then use this research to scare legislatures and governing boards to push a massive, historically unprecedented transformation of U.S. schools into something more akin to health clinics with a classroom attached.”

—@alegalprocess

Don’t be fooled.

Most of these studies on the efficacy of school-based mental health services are “unreliable bunk,” and Risk of Bias Analysis reveals it’s highly probable most studies are manipulated specifically for the purpose of advancing school counseling programs.

You can read about that here:

🚨Australian Researchers: Most All US Studies on Efficacy of School-Based Mental Health Services are Unreliable Bunk

In addition, researchers in the UK have confirmed there is “insufficient evidence" that school-based behavioral health services are effective. They also found that 85% of all studies on the efficacy of these programs are unreliable for bias. They write, “Our findings contradict previously published reviews, as we observed little evidence to suggest that school-based interventions are effective for prevention of anxiety or depression.”

Here’s that report:

🇬🇧UK Researchers Confirm:"Insufficient evidence" that school-based behavioral health services are effective

Oh, and this one, too:

🇨🇱Chilean Researchers: School-Based Mental Health Programs Show "No Evidence of Any Clinically Important Difference" in Outcomes

“Bottom line: the therapeutic educational model is not working - and solid, well-funded, scientific research has demonstrated - for over a decade - that these programs do not work. And rather than face up to the loss like these researchers did to their sponsor, public educators just double-down on stupid.”

Will the American taxpayer funding the new “Whole Child” “community schools” and “school-based health centers” see a return on his investment? Remember, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars to make this (pipe)dream happen.

More importantly, will the kids benefit who are subjected to these invasive, ineffective practices?

Not likely, and likely not.

Parents must demand that schools focus on academic curriculum content, NOT therapy for kids who need much less of this kind of thing, not more.

We must not value “expertise” too highly. Parents are the natural stewards of our children. When parents refuse to cede the responsibility that lies with them to the well-meaning, disincentivized “expert,” children have a far greater chance of flourishing.

Every parent should read this.

#KIDSFIRST