she put the sugar on my tongue
In my epic, Lord-of-the-Rings-style quest to highlight the kinds of values - fuck, i've really come to loathe that word - the kinds of values 58 million or so of my countrymen and women seem to think the President evidences in his policies abroad, I'd almost completely forgotten about this: an update I did for the New Standard on a comprehensive plan to test the nation's public school children (because, of course, private school kids aren't crazy) and more than likely public school employees via a national mental health alogrithm - a flow chart - that will predict potential mental health issues and what sort of drug should be used to treat it (This whole thing dances around what a nation owes it's children anyway - you want kids to be happy and smart and healthy? Fine. Let's start with some New Deal-welfare-state-type shit, and go from there).
The two main points that came up in the first piece, neither of which seem to be any less worse than the other - first and foremost, of course, is the idea of school-age children being submitted to a kind of cookie cutter mental health test "for their own good." With as many things as there are working against public school students that they can't or won't ever see, much less have any control over - the warp and wood of local politics, brave new underfunded mandates, skin and class differences - a harebrained scheme like this will only clutter up and confuse what's supposed to be some of the least stressful years of a child's life. It boggles the mind that such strenuous restrictions and otherwise fundamentally illogical caveats are placed on funding for the public schools at any and all levels of government, but there seems to be something along the lines of $22 million floating around for this.
Second is the idea that this whole thing is not being done out of some autocratic neurosis (though I'm sure if I dig deep enough, I'd find it...lemme just say, "watch this space"...), but because people in the civic sector are what the bad capitalists in the movies call an "untapped market resource." This is way to sell more widgets, basically, but widgets that could very possibly make you brain damaged or one of those people you find always ends up sitting next to you on the bus. The kids are sitting ducks, beneficiaries of a government program, and if this is all linked up to another government program - a government program within a government program - than they've got no choice to shut up and eat their meds. Allen Jones, featured in my first piece, has quite a story to tell. I didn't end up tackling what's sitting there beneath the surface, but I think it's safe to say this whole thing will end up being big - big, like the Big Tobacco scandals in 1996-97 big.
Anyway, it's sure bet you can kiss Holden Caulfield goodbye if this manages to make it through.
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