IMPORTANT FACTS

1. The U.S. President’s Commission on Excellence in Education reveals that 40% of children in Special Education were falsely labeled with learning disorders simply because they weren’t taught to read.

2. For minorities, Special Education is covert psychiatric racism; a means of getting millions of children hooked on mind-altering psychiatric drugs.

3. Children who take amphetamine-type or other prescribed psychotropic drugs do not perform better academically.

4. Teenagers who have been prescribed psychiatric drugs have been responsible for many school shootings. The drugs’ side effects include violent behavior, mania and suicidal behavior.

More and more children are being diagnosed with ADHD, a “disease” that has never been clinically proven to exist, but a profitable one for the mental health industry.

CHAPTER THREE Enslaving Children with Drugs

I n March 2003 in the United States, the Goldwater Institute’s Policy Report on “Race and Disability: Racial Bias in Arizona Special Education” reported that, “Of both low-income and African-American fourth graders tested, 60% scored ‘below basic’ on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress Examination.”

According to the Goldwater Institute, “The sheer number of students mislabeled is staggering. Even worse, in predominantly white school districts, minority students are classified as learning disabled at significantly higher rates.”

Black students are three times more likely than white students to be labeled mentally retarded. While black students account for only 16% of the U.S. student population, they represent nearly 32% of all students in programs for mild mental retardation.

A 1993 U.S. News and World Report revealed that African-Americans were over-represented in special education programs in 39 states. A decade later, the U.S. President’s Commission on Excellence in Education revealed that 40% of children in Special Education were being labeled with learning disorders simply because they weren’t taught to read.

In an Internet article, Gary Orfield wrote: “The disproportionate placement of black males into special education classes has created a ‘ghetto within a ghetto.’ For a lot of these kids, this is a direct path to jail. This is taking a bad problem and putting it inside another even worse problem. It’s just unconscionable.”

According to Asa Hilliard, professor of urban education at Georgia State University, “If you call a kid retarded who is not, or say that he is learning disabled and he is not, and you separate him out for special instruction, which isn’t special, that just compounds the problems.”

52 For minorities, Special Education means continued, yet covert, psychiatric racism. It is a means for hooking millions of children onto mind-altering psychiatric drugs by labeling them with “learning disabilities” at a cost of $28 billion a year to the taxpayers of the United States.

Psychiatrists and psychologists use the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and the mental disorders section of the International Classification of Diseases to justify these abuses.

The DSM, according to Professor Herb Kutchins, co-author of Making Us Crazy, is an “unreliable classification system.” “Defenders of slavery, proponents of racial segregation … have consistently attempted to justify oppression by inventing new mental illnesses and by reporting higher rates of abnormality among African-Americans or other minorities.”

Psychiatrists literally “vote” on whether or not a group of symptoms should be considered a “mental disorder” for inclusion in the DSM.

Using the manual, psychiatrists can fraudulently diagnose any child as suffering “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD). The “symptoms” include “has difficulty playing quietly,” “often talks excessively,” “often loses things,”
“fails to complete schoolwork, chores, or other duties...” and “often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat.” In other words, psychiatrists define and label normal childhood behavior as a mental disorder. The prescription is always for a psychiatric drug with harmful, mind-altering characteristics.

Psychiatrists have dreamt up further unproven theories, such as chemical imbalances in the brain, to justify child drugging. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance. Dr. Mary Ann Block, author of No More ADHD , points out, “The psychiatrist does not do any testing. The psychiatrist listens to the history and then prescribes a drug.” There are numerous side effects and risks with the drugs prescribed for so-called ADHD.

A short list of these follows:

Methylphenidate (Ritalin), the main drug prescribed, is more potent than cocaine and classified by drug oversight agencies as being as harmful and addictive as morphine and opium.

The side effects of methylphenidate include blood pressure and pulse changes, angina (heart irregularity), weight loss and toxic (poisonous) psychosis. Suicide is a risk during withdrawal.

Children who take amphetamine-type or other prescribed psychotropic drugs do not perform better academically. They fail just as many courses, and drop out of school just as often as children who do not take the drugs.

It appears that governments are finally seeing through the fraud. In 2003 and 2004, the United Kingdom government told doctors not to prescribe Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants to under 18-year-olds, citing the drugs’ potential to cause suicidal tendencies.

In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a similar warning, as did Australian, Canadian and European agencies. The FDA Public Health Advisory stated, “Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility … akathisia (severe restlessness) … and mania, have been reported in adult and [child and adolescent] patients being treated with [SSRI] antidepressants.”

In October the same year, after parent testimonies of children having killed themselves, the FDA ordered that a “black box” warning of suicide risk be placed on SSRI antidepressant bottles.

The warning is insufficient: Teenagers who have been prescribed psychiatric drugs have been responsible for many school shootings; Columbine was the most notorious one. The drug side effects are now recognized to include violent behavior, mania and homicide.

Fred Shaw, president of the Compton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a former Deputy Los Angeles Sheriff who owns and manages group homes (alternatives to prisons) for boys, says: “I deal with black teenagers who have been labeled as inferior, been given substandard education and told there is something wrong with their brains which requires powerful, mind-altering ‘medication.’ They have no hope and see no future. It’s a recipe for crime and suicide.”

Mrs. Sheila Aus tells of her experience: “The school gave me the option of putting [my daughter] on drugs or placing her in a special education class. I finally relented and allowed the school psychiatrists to prescribe drugs. ... She started experiencing hallucinations, became physically aggressive, mean and uncontrollable. I informed the school that I wanted to discontinue [the stimulants]. They called Child Protective Services and reported that I was being medically negligent because I wasn’t willing to give her necessary medication. Something has to be done to stop this madness. Psychiatrists are getting richer, while my daughter and countless other children may never recover from the damage caused.”

Shaw adds, “The solution is not to further label children, or to give them psychological or psychiatric services, but to provide them with effective literacy programs and empower them with knowledge and the ability to live responsibly.”

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