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conspiracy of ignorance

The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools

Written by AbleChild on . Posted in Essential Books.

Driven by data, statistics and thorough research, this powerful exposé of the American education system shows how teachers are purposely trained to be academically inferior, so their teaching will follow suit. Most of these teachers are even outscored on SAT tests by their own students that are about to go to college. This is an eye-opening and comprehensive testament to how poorly educated American students are becoming.

In The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools, author Martin Gross exposes how weakened school curriculums have become, with only one in five students taking trigonometry, physics or geography while in high school. He points out noticeable things like how when you drive around town, it seems every parent has a “My Child Made Honor Roll” sticker on their car, alluding to the lowering standards of education that awards every child a trophy. These lower standards of teaching have infiltrated our system thanks to establishment powers-that-be that have slowly nurtured a system designed to promote ignorance. So-called “remedies” the government offers to fix education, such as federal funding and smaller class sizes, are rendered useless because they do not even address the issue of government control and establishment ideals that are the crux of the problem.

Not only does The Conspiracy of Ignorance reveal how teaching has been designed to produce low performing, poorly educated students, author Martin Gross also gives detailed instructions on how to fix the problem. He outlines what can be done to increase public awareness of this issue and see to it our children receive a level of education that will allow them to contribute to society and give them a fighting chance for the successful, happy and healthy life that they deserve.

About the Author

Martin L. Gross has written dozens of books around topics like psychiatry, psychotherapy, the medical care system, government spending and taxation. Several of his books became New York Times bestsellers, including The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, A Call for Revolution, The End of Sanity, The Medical Racket and The Conspiracy of Ignorance. Before all of this, Gross, who has also written novels, was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. Gross has testified before Congress five times, and though he was an active Democrat in the 1950s and 1960s, he has most frequently been a guest on conservative television and radio shows. Gross’s books were very popular in the 1990s and enjoyed a revival after the Tea Party was born. He has also been a member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Science at New York University. He passed away August 21, 2013, and is survived by his two daughters and two grandchildren.

Reviews

Booklist:

“Longtime institutional critic Martin Gross is always fluent, persuasive and uncranky. Now, in one of his best books, he takes aim at the public schools.”

Teachers Trained to Promote Mental Illness?

Written by Able Child on . Posted in Lawmaking, Sandy Hook.

The July 24th article in the Connecticut Mirror, by Arielle Levin Becker, titled Moms of children with mental illness share their pain, tell their stories, push for change, while anecdotal, the article provides little in the way of bolstering the cry for increased spending on mental health services. It does, however, provide three sentences that are at the heart of the mental health debate.

Becker writes “But they also note that there are differences between mental illness and physical conditions.” “There is no x-ray or blood test for most mental illnesses… there is subjectivity in the treatment of mental illness…”

First, it’s important to be clear: there is no x-ray, blood test, urine test, MRI or CAT scan that can detect any abnormality in the brain that is any alleged psychiatric disorder. It is not a case of “most mental illnesses,” there are, in fact, no objective tests to detect any alleged mental illness.

Even Keith Stover, an apparent lobbyist for the Connecticut Association of Health Plans, and was interviewed for the article, is confused about psychiatric diagnosing. According to Stover, “there’s rarely a clear diagnostic test that leads to an exact treatment protocol.”

There’s nothing “rarely” about it. Other than a doctor’s opinion of one’s behavior there are no diagnostic tests that lead to either an exact diagnosis or an exact treatment protocol. Psychiatric diagnosing is completely subjective and the pharmaceutical companies have no idea how the drugs work in the brain to treat any alleged psychiatric disorder.

The fact that insurance companies are required to cover treatment for psychiatric disorders is interesting in, and of, itself. Imagine for a moment that a doctor files a claim on behalf of a patient for heart surgery but provides absolutely no objective tests that an abnormality actually exists. The first question from the insurer would be “where’s the tests to show this procedure is necessary?”

And, adding insult to injury, given that there is no scientific or medical proof that any abnormality in the brain exists for any alleged mental illness, there continues to be an onslaught of demands for increased mental health screening, earlier and younger.

Along with the demands for increased screening comes even greater demands to an already over burdened educational system with training teachers and other school personnel on mental illness and the “stigma” associated with it. Ablechild believes that children should be sent to school to be educated not medicated.

More than that, though, what exactly will these educators, who are not doctors, be taught about mental illness? Will educators be provided with accurate information about the subjectivity of psychiatric diagnosing, which actually leads to the stigmatization when the child is labeled with an alleged mental disorder? Is this “training” intended only to promote the “treatment” of mental illness? More importantly, will educators be taught to identify adverse drug reactions and how to report these drug reactions to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by using the MEDWATCH adverse drug reporting system? And, who bares the cost of all of this mental health educating? The taxpayers?

Since the tragic incident at Sandy Hook, the state has poured millions of dollars into increased mental health services and, sadly, none of that legislation was based on any investigative information that the shooter, Adam Lanza, lacked mental health services.

In fact, based on the information that was made publicly available, Lanza was the poster child of mental health services and, perhaps, it is the services he received that may have contributed to his actions. Lawmakers, though, did not even consider this option.

Ablechild believes that a much greater review of the subjectivity of psychiatric diagnosing needs to be done before more taxpayer funds are allocated for increased mental health services. Because the question that one cannot help ask is if the mental health “treatment” being prescribed to Connecticut’s youth is working, why isn’t anyone getting better?