Back to School Physicals Turn into Parenting Inquisition under New Rules for Abuse Screening

If you're like me, you're scrambling to get physicals done before the first week of school. I had the pleasure of having three school physicals done in one afternoon last week. We've been seeing the same family doctor for over three years now, but this year's screening was weird and invasive. In fact, it took well over two and a half hours while I sat there and listened to this man, who has seen us regularly, ask my children uncomfortable questions about sexual abuse, guns in the house, bullying at school and a myriad of other things that, frankly, aren't any of his business.

Several times he addressed me directly on parenting issues like "are they wearing helmets when they bike ride?" or "have you spoken to them about inappropriate touching?" Well, yes, actually, of course they do and I have spoken to them about abuse regularly, but what that has to do with a school physical is beyond me.

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Very little was done to check them for actual physical health. I think he looked in their ears and listened to their hearts, but no reflexes were checked, no neurological exam or eye exam was given. No hearing test was administered. Mostly, it was an inquisition into my parenting skills. What do you feed them? Are they eating enough vegetables and staying away from processed foods? Do they sleep well at night and have regular bedtimes? Do you and your husband fight? Are you safe at home? Is anyone smoking? I kid you not. This was the tone of the interrogation.

When a physician starts asking about guns in the house it gets really weird. We live in the country, where predator control is a regular necessity. Saying "no" to that question might raise more red flags than not. But saying yes opens a whole other can of worms, too. What is the right response to that totally inappropriate question? What does my Constitutional right to bear arms have to do with my child's physical health? Doctors have the ability to call CPS and have kids taken away by the state, so I felt coerced into answering. I was completely unprepared for the line of questioning I was given and must have looked like a deer in the headlights during most of it. If red-flag laws are enacted, will the state demand medical records that will now contain information on guns in the home? Where is this information being stored? What will it be used for?

Perhaps as bad as asking kids about guns in the home at a physical, doctors are now encouraged to screen more children for abuse (and target them for CPS abduction) backed by nanny-state cheerleaders like Time magazine. In an article titled "Don't Get Mad if a Doctor Says they Need to Screen Your Child for Abuse," Dr. Richard Klasco and Dr. Daniel Lindberg claim that the way forward is less thinking and more screening. This, they say, will catch more abused kids and fight racism... of course.

With “think less, screen more,” screening is based on the child’s examination, rather than their parents’ race, ethnicity, or status. Objective, high-risk criteria—such as bruising of the torso, ears or neck—prompt doctors to perform the testing that can identify abuse.

An uncomfortable byproduct of the new paradigm is that some non-abused children will be screened, and some non-abusive parents will be offended. Challenging as these encounters may be, children must be protected and biases must be rectified. The only way to achieve these goals is by implementing policies based on objective criteria.

The problem with this, however, is that if "think less, screen-more" is implemented and more children are scrutinized for abuse, then more parents will be terrorized by CPS, an organization that already does too much damage to innocent families. The Hill reported on this new technique.

Perhaps as shocking as the plan itself is how nonchalant the essay’s authors, Dr. Richard Klasco and Dr. Daniel Lindberg, are about the life-altering consequences of their proposal. In an apparent attempt to downplay the harm that their plan will cause, Klasco and Lindberg wrongly suggest that the worst that will happen if they get their way is “some non-abused children will be screened, and some non-abusive parents will be offended.”

The real worst-case scenario happened to my friends, Rana and Chad Tyson, and it was far from merely an “uncomfortable byproduct.” While changing their infant daughter’s diaper, Rana and Chad noticed that she was not moving one of her legs and would recoil in pain whenever it was touched. Being the good parents they are, the Tysons immediately took her to her regular pediatrician. After being evaluated by the pediatrician, they were instructed to go to a local children’s hospital where the daughter who displayed symptoms and her twin sister were subjected to the same battery of x-rays utilized by the “think less, screen more” approach.

The Tysons ended up having their children kidnapped by the state while the doctors eventually figured out they had a genetic disorder. Meanwhile, the family had to declare bankruptcy in order to pay for the legal fees.

Who knows what kind of damage the children suffered being separated from their parents for over five months. This story is repeated over and over throughout the nation. Busy-body doctors, nurses, and other "mandated reporters" overreact, causing needless trauma for families. It's so bad, that taking a child to the doctor is anxiety-inducing these days. Parents tell me all the time that they hesitate to take their accident-prone children in for fear of something like this happening to them.

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What we need is not "less thinking, more screening." We need parents demanding their rights in the face of institutions bent on taking them away. Doctors have no business judging parenting. They exist to treat sickness and we pay them a great deal to do so. Setting physicians up to be the supervisors of parents is a bad idea. It will only keep parents from seeking treatment when they should.

The constant infringement on our right to be secure in our persons and families continues almost daily and is snaking into every aspect of our lives. Will the American people push back against this? Or will we just go quietly into the night?

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Teacher sacked for showing pupils explicit film with pornographic scenes and extreme violence

A teacher at one of Scotland’s top school has been sacked for showing first year pupils an explicit film in class.

Jonathan Guetta was a Hebrew teacher at Mearns Castle High School when he screened Israeli war film Waltz With Bashir.

The controversial animated movie contains pornographic scenes and extreme violence, including children being killed.

It is believed the class watched 20 minutes of the 2008 documentary — with Guetta standing in front of the screen during inappropriate scenes.

The teacher showed the 18-rated film at an after-school class, with some of the children watching it just 12 years old.

Guetta was dismissed in May 2018, faced with a series of allegations including exposing pupils to inappropriate, upsetting material, allowing them access to pornographic material and failing to seek parental consent.

He sued East Renfrewshire Council, claiming they had been anti-Semitic in dealing with him. But, after he took his case to an employment tribunal, the council was found to have acted fairly.

No action was taken against him by the General Teaching Council for Scotland after a fitness to teach hearing.

According to The Herald, a judgment on the case revealed several parents complained to the school after finding out what their children had been shown.

One dad complained “the film was wholly inappropriate for children” as it “contains explicit pornography, children being killed and psychological issues”.

Employment judge Michelle Sutherland described the animated film as being “akin to a graphic novel”. “It contains war violence, including real life video footage of the aftermath of the massacre showing lifeless bodies of adults and children,” she said. “It also has a brief explicit pornographic scene showing an animated man penetrating an animated woman.”

The section of the film shown by Guetta did not show the real-life footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre at the end of the movie or the explicit “pornography”.

But it did show “violence (including dogs being shot), inappropriate language, and male and female nudity”. Waltz With Bashir is a 2008 documentary by Ari Folman, covering the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War.

It is banned in several Arab countries, including Lebanon. It was nominated for many awards, winning a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

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Student Debt — Cost vs. Value

Expense and subsequent debt are skyrocketing, while the value of the investment diminishes.

What a mess! We’ve got Democrat candidates for president promising some government-funded program (remember, government has NO money other than the money it takes from its working citizens) will pay for all the college debt owed to colleges and universities while tuition prices rise and the practice of activism replaces academics in too many of the campuses conferring degrees to the newly entitled, pretentious crowd they’ve crafted.

Once upon a time, the value assigned to higher education — specifically at four-year colleges and universities — was on an ascending trajectory. Not so any longer. Between the rising costs of obtaining degrees, many of which come with very dim prospects for employment, and the proven indoctrination that is epidemic on the campuses of many institutions of higher learner, the reputation and worth of a college degree has taken a hit of late. So says the Pew Research Center’s latest survey.

Released last week, the report showed that only half of those surveyed viewed colleges and universities as having a positive impact on our country, down 10 points from seven years ago. Meanwhile, almost 40% deemed higher education as having a negative impact, an increase of 12 percentage points over that same window of time.

In both the Pew and a separate Gallup study, costs and indoctrination are cited as the driving factors devaluing institutions, yet, the value of a functional degree remains high. A full 91% surveyed in a 2018 Pew publication identified that a college degree is important or essential in the success of the younger generation. But America has at least one generation of college-educated individuals, carrying degrees like gender or interdisciplinary studies with little pay or functional value or they’ve been instructed that being malcontented Millennials is acceptable and, oh, by the way, we’re going to pay off your school debt.

The forgiveness of school debt is one of the key drivers of the Democrats’ platform. A great deal of focus is on their primary corral of candidates and, while “free stuff” is grossly irresponsible, it’s also appealing to their demographics.

The magnitude of that promise is astonishing. According to Credit.com, as of June 2019, there’s $1.52 trillion in unpaid student debt. Loans have been taken under the premise that these men and women would exit the college classroom prepared for employment, create wealth, and repay the institutions of lending for services provided.

Elizabeth Warren wants elimination of this debt through some redistribution scheme of taking from those who have money to pay for the debt of others who have less. Essentially, she’s saying let’s just print some more money and borrow another trillion or so from China — or whatever her conjured up logic is to deal with the debt held by 45 million student borrowers.

Please remember that the famed minority-wanna-be-Warren enjoyed favored status as a “Native American” while on faculty of Harvard, which charges between $47,000 to almost $68,000 annually for tuition, and is the driving force behind easing the access to loaned money and now wants all who hold the debt to walk away from their responsibilities. Both she and Bernie Sanders are unashamedly luring our next generation into the lie of socialism and government dependency.

As government subsidies increase for the purpose of defraying the burden on students and parents attempting to pay for college, it makes a market distortion. Prices charged by colleges and universities are not forced to reflect consumer ability to pay or demand for a range pricing. With subsidies, institutions of higher learning can also be institutions with ever-increasing costs that reflect a subsidized market.

The 2018-2019 average tuition for college is $21,370. That’s an 145% in tuition costs compared to 1971 prices while wages have increased only 28% over that same window of time. Bottom line, the easier it’s been to borrow money and obtain educational funding subsidies, the higher costs have risen on campus.

Just like it sounded good to give easy access to loans for mortgages in the mid-2000s but the ability for individuals to repay that debt was removed, and now in the student-loan arrangement, creating a crisis, not from any free market force but because of a manufactured scenario that was logically unmanageable.

As Warren predicts a crisis of student debt, she helped create it — just as the mortgage market failures were created by a government interference that, while rooted in good intentions, constructed a situation that had a predictably poor outcome.

We’re learning that education has a value, but its costs are inflated by government interference. Wise up.

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