INVISIBLE CHILDREN

No nation will maintain leading status in the world without a workable educational system. No educational system will succeed in meeting even essential goals if a great number of students do not have the basic skills to learn when they begin their schooling.

We must not expect normal graduation or competency rates from a population of children that have lived in very troubled homes without community help.

A seven year old girl in my caseload knew just a few words, been sexually abused (kicked so hard by her abuser that she went into convulsions) when she started first grade. She was representative of many of the fifty children I worked with as a guardian ad-Litem.

Over many years I watched as educators tried diligently to help her succeed, but her underlying lack of skills and mental health issues made it impossible for her to learn or lead a normal life. She was a handful for all who came in contact with her.

She and our schools and community would have been much better served if this child had first been soundly supported from a mental health perspective rather than demanding that teachers manage her outbursts and sometimes terrifying behaviors (and expect her to play well with others).

This child’s traumatic and fearful entry into an unprepared and under-resourced public school system is the tip of the iceberg.

The Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medications being prescribed to very young children is terrifically overused in many child protection systems. Judge Heidi Schellhas shared with me the pages and pages of five, seven, and nine year old children that passed through her courtroom that were heavily medicated on antipsychotic drugs. We read about it often, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1283685929-4vV95VANamU0xapU45ORhg

The disruption from one child with the type of problems I have witnessed is multiplied by the growing number of at risk children in this nation as poverty and disappearing support systems create more troubled families and more child abuse.

When the calls are taken, three million children are reported to child protection in the U.S. each year.

Minnesota is now screening out 2/3′s of the calls coming into child protection under the assumption that making services available will gain better results than bringing children into the court system. Providing services to families is the best answer, but removing children from violence, sexual abuse, and drugs is critical if we expect that child to sit in a classroom and do math, or write a comprehensible sentence.

All children deserve to have the skills necessary for achieving success in school and in the larger community.

Dealing with the deficits at risk children bring into the classroom would make schools successful, our communities safe and healthy, empty the prisons, & lower the rates of early pregnancy & sexually transmitted diseases.

Each one of us can do something positive in support of educating children. Support a bill, tax, or program that enhances a child’s chance to grow. Volunteer as a reader, mentor, or anything that fits your comfort zone (so you will stick at it).

It will take all of us to support those that are doing the work to mend our very troubled schools and communities.

“What we do to our children, they will do to our society” (Pliny the Elder, 2400 years ago) Continue reading ‘Back To School & In Support of Education’

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