Tag: Mental Health

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 25th Anniversary Edition

Written by AbleChild on March 23, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

With over 100 years of mandatory schooling behind us now, we have seen the progression of issues such as illiteracy and learning disabilities in our children. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, which is John Taylor Gatto’s radical treatise on how the formal education system is damaging our children and families, is a true eye-opener. This New Society Publisher’s bestseller was originally published in 1992, had a 10th anniversary edition published in 2002, and the most recent 25th anniversary edition was printed in 2017, with a foreword from Zachary Stayback, who is an Ivy League dropout and cofounder of tech startup career foundry Praxis.

Gatto, who spent 30 years teaching in the public school system before writing this book, is an advocate for education being central to the family, instead of being used to separate children from their families. In the book, Gatto makes a strong case that effective education should promote individuality and privacy instead of conformity. Gatto is an advocate for home schooling, and points out how back in the 1800s children’s skill levels were developed much earlier than they are now, and far beyond what our school systems consider acceptable nowadays. The book also introduces the idea that genius is a very common quality that is being suppressed in our society, and we have been made to believe that genius is a rarity.

Dumbing Us Down, which opens with a speech given by Gatto in 1991 when he was named “Teacher of the Year,” is known to be a fairly easy read. In the book, Gatto explains how the modern public school system is driving out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills children are born with, and replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment. Gatto encourages children to be their own teachers and in charge of designing their own education. And he makes a strong case for why the mass education system that has developed in America does not support democracy or any of the values the United States was taught as a result of the American Revolution.

While Gatto explains how the school system itself is setting children up for failure, he also believes there are many humane and caring teachers in our schools that are just caught in a faulty system. Another key takeaway from this extremely valuable and timeless text is Gatto’s concept that “the teaching function, in a healthy community, belongs to everyone,” and that we should not just be looking to education professionals to define “good teaching.”

About the Author

John Taylor Gatto was born in on December 15, 1935, in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Cornell and Columbia in New York. Gatto then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Fort Houston, Texas. After his military service, Gatto completed graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva, the University of California, and Cornell.

Before and during Gatto’s teaching career, he served in various other occupations, many of which involved writing. He wrote scripts for the film business, wrote for advertising, was an ASCAP songwriter, and eventually founded Lava Mt. Records, which is an award-winning documentary record producer. Gatto’s record company has completed a variety of big-name projects, including presentations of speeches from Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

Gatto’s teaching career garnered him quite a few awards. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year three times, and then held the title of New York State Teacher of the Year. After leaving his teaching career after 30 years, telling the Wall Street Journal that he was “no longer willing to hurt children,” he moved on to become a much-sought-after public speaker on the topic of school reform. His speaking engagements took him across all 50 states in the U.S., and to seven foreign countries.

Gatto had also recieved other awards, such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty. From 1996 on, he has been included in the Who’s Who in America. He has authored a handful of other books, including A Different Kind of Teacher and The Underground History of American Education.

Gatto passed away on October 25, 2018. His obituary on the website for the Foundation for Economic Education stated that after three decades in the classroom, “Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system.”

Reviews

Meryn Callander, author and co-founder of the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children:

“Gatto presents a credible case for his belief that school is an essential support system for a model of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramidal social order, even though such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution.”

Why Your Child is Hyperactive

Written by AbleChild on January 6, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

This book, written by practicing pediatrician and allergist Dr. Ben Feingold, contains sound research and medical advice about how artificial food coloring and flavoring is often the culprit of hyperactivity in children. From this book, the widely renowned “Feingold diet” was derived. And 36 years after it was first published, there are still many parents overflowing with gratitude for the positive effects the book’s diet recommendations have had on their children. In fact, the book is considered by many to be even more relevant today, since there are much more artificial ingredients in foods that make up a large part of peoples’ everyday diets.

While the advice in the book is laid out with simple and clear instructions, these changes are difficult to make, but as many parents have reported, the results make it all worth it. In Stage One of the Feingold Diet, synthetic flavors, preservatives, and artificial sweeteners are removed from the diet, along with salicylates such as aspirin. Dr. Feingold’s research has found many of these products trigger hyperactivity in children. In Stage Two of the Feingold Diet, some of the products removed in Stage One are slowly reintroduced and closely monitored to see if they have an adverse effects on the child’s behavior. With the Feingold Diet, it is important that parents keep a journal of what products have been removed from their child’s regimen and which products have been reintroduced.

The benefits of the work that goes into the Feingold Diet is that it’s all natural and will likely remove products that were never good for your child (or yourself if you choose to follow the diet). And Feingold recommends that if parents are able to see positive results from the diet, they should consider talking to their child’s psychiatrist about taking them off any medications they have been put on for ADD or ADHD. This should only be done under the supervision of a mental health professional, since many drugs prescribed for ADHD are forms of speed and can be dangerous to withdraw from too quickly. Why put any drug into your child’s body that they may not need and that can cause adverse side effects? The Feingold Diet may be the answer to your child’s behavioral issues that you have been waiting for. And it could be a program that parents themselves, along with the rest of the family, may also want to follow and reap the long-term benefits.

About the Author

Dr. Ben Feingold is a pediatric allergist who taught pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, and then moved to Los Angeles where he practiced pediatrics for 22 years. While in Los Angeles, Dr. Feingold served as chief of pediatrics at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, was an associate in allergy at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, and an attending pediatrician at the Los Angeles County Hospital. His research has been a source of controversy and heavy discussion among certain bodies in government. But much of his research has been of much interest to the U.S. Senate and State of California. Dr. Feingold can be thanked for the removal of certain harmful substances from our food supply, as well as the increased safety in food production around the world.

Feingold’s research led to more research done by others, which suggested in 1980 that artificial food dyes might indeed adversely affect the behavior of children. In 1951, Dr. Feingold married his wife, Helene. Together, they wrote The Feingold Cookbook for Hyperactive Children, which was published in 1979, four years after Why Your Child is Hyperactive.

Dr. Feingold was born in Pittsburgh in 1900 and did his undergraduate and medical work at the University of Pittsburgh. He was an intern at Passavant Hospital in Pittsburgh, and then went on to serve as a fellow in pathology at the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1927, followed by a fellowship at the children’s clinic at the University of Vienna from 1928-1929.

Though Feingold is gone, the Feingold Foundation continues his valuable work and research, and you can find more information on their website.

Why Johnny Still Can’t Read: A New Look at the Scandals of Our Schools

Written by AbleChild on December 10, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

Now that Rudolf Flesch has made the argument that phonics is the most effective way to teach children how to read in his last book, Why Johnny Can’t Read – And What You Can Do About It, this second book further examines the role of phonics in the education system. Thirty years after publishing Why Johnny Can’t Read – And What You Can Do About It, acknowledges how over time the progressive agenda that has been indoctrinated into school faculty has forsaken much of the teaching method of phonics. Instead, teachers now promote a look-and-say method of teaching children to read which uses only a small part of the phonics method of teaching.

Flesch believes this unsound approach to teaching children to read is meant to be detrimental, since it can have a domino effect onto the child’s other studies, and prevent them from reaching their full potential. Knowledge is power, and as years go by, more of our children are being stripped of this power. This book shows parents how to be their child’s best advocate, and see through the education system’s agenda to bypass necessary and extremely important steps in their child’s learning.

About the Author

Rudolf Flesch is an Austrian-born American author, readability expert and writing consultant. He was a major advocate for plain English and the use of phonics rather than sight reading to teach children in the United States. He created the Flesch Reading Ease tests, and was co-creator of the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests.

Flesch is probably known best for Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It. His other books include How to Test Readability (1951), How to Write Better (1951), The Art of Clear Thinking (1951), The ABC of Style: A Guide to Plain English (1964), and How to Write Plain English: A Book for Lawyers and Consumers.

Why Johnny Can’t Read – And What You Can Do About It

Written by AbleChild on November 8, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

This book, written in 1955 by author, readability expert and writing consultant Rudolf Flesch, is all about phonics, which is the method recommended by the U.S. Department of Education for teaching children to read. Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It contains all the materials and instructions anyone would need to teach a child to read at home. The book, which was reissued in 1986, also serves as an exposé on the American education system’s failure to properly teach this method to so many children over the years.

In the 1950s, Rudolf Flesch began tutoring a boy named Johnny who was held back in sixth grade because he had such weak reading skills. Once Flesch began working with Johnny, he realized that at age twelve this child still struggled to understand even some of the simplest words. The reason for this was that Johnny had not been instructed using phonics, which teaches children how to sound out or “decode” words. Once Johnny was introduced to phonics, he began to excel at reading.

Phonics is also referred to as the “foundational skills” of reading because while children could learn to read books in kindergarten or first grade by memorizing words, that will not help them once they get older and are assigned more challenging reading materials. So often the negative impact from lack of phonics instruction doesn’t become apparent until the child gets a bit older and is faced with these more complicated reading assignments. The scientific community stands by phonics as the best way to teach children to read. There have been movements to ensure it is used in schools, but as the book reveals, enforcing it has been a whole different story.

About the Author

Flesch is probably known best for Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It. His other books include How to Test Readability (1951), How to Write Better (1951), The Art of Clear Thinking (1951), The ABC of Style: A Guide to Plain English (1964), and How to Write Plain English: A Book for Lawyers and Consumers.

Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People

Written by AbleChild on October 8, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

This provocative expose of the psychology, and in particular the psychotherapy industry was first published in 1996 and was written by Tara Dineen, who has been referred to as a “dissident psychologist” with 30 years of experience. In Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, a wildly popular book which has been cited in both Time magazine and The New York Times, Dineen makes solid, well-founded arguments that focus in on the rise of “victim culture” in the world of professional psychotherapy.

“Victim culture” is basically the idea that these psychotherapists prey on people who may not even need counselling, by convincing them they are a victim of some person, situation or affliction from their past. Then they position themselves to be right there to heal the victim.

By 1995, 46% of the U.S. population had seen a mental health professional – this is one of the interesting statistics which Dineen gives to readers to show the sharp increase in the amount of people influenced by psychotherapy. And there is a glaring lack of scientific evidence to support many of these theories that create these so-called “victims.”

Some of the topics covered throughout the book include Victim-Making, Fabricated Victims, Selling Psychology as a Science, The Business of Psychology, The Technology of Victim-Making, The Rise to Power of the Psychology Industry, and Living in the Shadow of the Psychology Industry. The book shines light on the question of who should be able to determine if a person has suffered enough to require psychological counselling, and when it should be necessary to intervene.

About the Author

Dr. Tana Dineen is a former practicing psychologist who graduated in 1969 with her Honours Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University, and received her Masters (1971) and Doctoral degree (1975) from the University of Saskatchewan. She also worked as a Treatment Director of a large psychiatric hospital for four years, where she established specialized programs that won her an American Psychiatric Association prize for Innovative Programming. Dineen is a Full Member of the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association.

Dr. Dineen began to notice that psychology, which was originally a science dedicated to the curing of serious pathology, had been watered-down into a broad range of pseudo-science and pseudo-therapy. After a period of time, she could no longer stomach the profession, and believed that psychology could no longer reform itself from the inside, which led her to leave her clinical practice. Now she runs a B&B in Victoria, British Columbia. She also writes several monthly columns for Canadian newspapers on various topics.

Reviews

Mark Sauer, San Diego Union-Tribune:

“Renegade psychologist dukes it out with feelings folks.”

LA Daily Journal:

“This gun is not for hire! Clinician slams the expert-witness racket.”

Lynn McAuley, Ottawa Citizen:

“Tana Dineen…the woman who put psychology on the couch.”

Michael Roberts, Denver Westword:

“Tana Dineen…arguably the planet’s preeminent psychotherapy critic.”

The Mail on Sunday (London):

“…argues that psychology has changed from a respectable academic discipline into an industry eager to sell its products…”

Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications

Written by AbleChild on September 1, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

The withdrawal and long-term side effects of many psychiatric medications can cause symptoms that are similar or worse than the symptoms for which the patient is being medicated in the first place. Author Peter R. Breggin, along with David Cohen, Ph.D., were among the first to address these major issues, in this spectacular book which was way ahead of it’s time. Since the book’s first publication in 1999, there have been numerous studies confirming the harmful side effects and withdrawal symptoms of these drugs, and even the FDA acknowledges these problems.

Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications goes into great detail, backed by thorough research, about the particular side effects and withdrawal symptoms for all different kinds of psychiatric medications; from antidepressants to mood stabilizers to stimulants. The book explains how doctor’s often do not take enough time to examine the patient, misdiagnose the patient, and as a result prescribe psychiatric drugs that are not needed, and often do more harm than good. This quick decision made by the doctor can impact years or even decades of a patient’s life. Your Drug May Be Your Problem educates patients and doctors about the correct way to gradually stop taking psychiatric drugs, and outlines the process for withdrawing from the medications. The book has also been fully updated to include new research studies and medications 0n the market.

About the Author

Peter R. Bregg, M.D., is a a psychiatrist who is very well known for helping set the stage for modern criticism of psychiatric treatments and psychotropic drugging. He has promoted so much success in the field of mental health that he has acquired the nickname “conscience of psychiatry.” HIs reform efforts began in the 1970s, and resulted in almost a complete cease in the use of procedures like lobotomy and psychosurgery in the Western World. Then in the 1990s, he and his wife Ginger were able to stop a federal eugenics project that was planned on America’s inner-city children. You can find more details about this in the book he co-authored with Ginger, The War Against Children of Color.

Breggin has been a full-time consultant at NIMH, as well as for the FAA. He has published over 20 books and numerous scientific articles. Some of his books include Toxic Psychiatry, The Antidepressant Factbook, and Talking Back to Prozac. His latest book is Covid-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey. Dr. Breggin is also the founder and director of The Center for the Study of Emphatic Therapy, Education and Living. He attended Harvard, and currently resides in Ithaca, NY. Find out more on his website, www.breggin.com.

Reclaiming our Children: A Healing Solution for a Nation in Crisis

Written by AbleChild on August 20, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

This is another groundbreaking and insightful book from psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin. In Reclaiming our Children: A Healing Solution for a Nation in Crisis, Breggin makes the case that society has, over time, begun to invest less and less in the support and attention that is given to children. Parents have become too busy, and as a result less involved in their children’s lives. Then children begin to seek that support they are longing for through behaviors such as violence, frustration, humiliation and anger.

Breggin felt moved to write this book after the events surrounding the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. He was disturbed by the response of government, which used biological psychiatry as an explanation for mental states that lead to these events, and subsequently pushed psychiatric drugs as a solution. Biological psychiatry attributes a chemical imbalance in the brain as the cause of rebellion, violence and misbehavior in children, as opposed to what is going on in their environment and how they are responding.

Breggin does an excellent job of presenting evidence, through his own counseling experiences, that psychiatric drugs can lead to aggression, and potentially even be the cause, not the solution, to events like Columbine. He says that you cannot fix all these behaviors by trying to fix a child’s brain. Often, aggressive, violent and other unruly behaviors are often a response by the child to being mistreated, by their parents or others in society.

About the Author

Reviews

Douglas A. Smith, from the organization Antipsychiatry.org:

“By giving the reader an understanding of children’s thinking, he illustrates the stupidity of the underlying assumption of biological psychiatry, namely, that children’s (and adult’s) problems are caused by abnormalities of their brains, which in turn, to the ignorant, justifies the use of psychiatric drugs.”

Gwen Broude, in the article Scatterbrained Child Rearing from Reason.com:

“It is trivially true that all of a person’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior are a product of what is going on in the brain. But when people begin to see every inconvenient behavior as a disorder, and when they then propose, on the basis of the so-called new brain science, that we fix the child by fixing his brain, we have got a problem. Breggin targets this recent tendency on the part of educators, psychiatrists, and policy makers to view children’s behaviors as dysfunctions when they depart from the norm and then to advocate medical treatments for those supposed dysfunctions.”

The Ritalin Fact Book: What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

Written by AbleChild on July 30, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is an accomplished zealot for the overprescribing and misuse of psychotropic medications, that come as a result of the misdiagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in children. In the book, Breggin makes a strong case, which he backs up with pharmaceutical research and correspondence files that he has gained access to over the years due to being a medical expert in so many civil and criminal cases involving the drug. His reputation as a go-to medical expert has pegged Breggin as the “Ralph Nader of Psychiatry.”

This book will give you the most accurate and detailed information about psychotropic drugs prescribed for ADHD, and the information is presented in an easy-to-understand and straightforward manner. The drugs Breggin addresses that are being overprescribed and misused are Ritalin SR, Adderall XR, Dexedrine, Focalin, Concerta, Metadate ER and Cylert. Nearly 6 million children are taking one of these drugs, supposedly for ADHD. Breggin gives details about all the possible side effects and withdrawal symptoms of these medications. He says that not only do these drugs not help children with their learning and concentration issues, but they can cause other serious physical problems in children. Breggin also lays out different alternative approaches for treating children with hyperactivity or concentration problems that do not involve psychotropic drugs.

About the Author

Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD

Written by AbleChild on July 22, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

In this book, author Peter Breggin, M.D., cuts through the shiny propaganda of the psychiatric and pharamaceutical industries, which tell parents that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is an epidemic that can be easily solved with the use of psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta. The reality is, many of these medications are molecularly similar to drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine. Breggin exposes the harmful side effects that can result from the medications, such as behavioral disorders, growth suppression, neurological tics, agitation, addiction, and psychosis. He also argues that withdrawal from some of these medications can actually create these supposed chemical “imbalances” and insubordinate behaviors these drugs are prescribed to treat. Basically, this book is an overall “red pill” to Americans about the true motivations in the psychiatric community behind the diagnosis of ADHD and prescription of psychotropic drugs.

In Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD, Breggin goes into great detail explaining the condition of ADHD, how it is diagnosed, and gives a corporate and economic background on who financially profits from these diagnoses and the prescription of psych0tropic drugs. The author explains the interactions that take place between the body, mind and environment, that are largely ignored by medical and mental health professionals, which can explain many of the behaviors and symptoms that are misdiagnosed as ADHD.

Breggin calls out the incompetence of medical professionals to properly diagnose physical issues that can cause concentration struggles, such as poor nutrition, neurological impairment and allergies. He also addresses the myth that mental illness is biologically determined. The author discusses non-drug alternatives and improvements in school and family life that may instead address these issues more effectively.

About the Author

Reviews

Psychiatrist Sharon A. Collins, M.D.:

“I am a mother first and a doctor second… The principles in this book help us as parents to empower our children to be successful in life.”

The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation

Written by AbleChild on July 9, 2021. Posted in Essential Books.

This is a book that will really make you think outside the box. In The Necessity of Madness: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation, author John Breeding takes a very different view of psychiatry; one that is seen by many as controversial. Society has certain expectations for human behavior, and one of those basic expectations is that we should be productive no matter what is going on with us mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically. But Breeding believes that a certain amount of unproductivity is actually necessary for optimal spiritual growth. So the very thing most psychiatrists are trying to suppress, is what is often needed the most. Madness refers to spiritual maturity. Every one of us is born with a set of cultural values, beliefs, customs, behaviors. When we begin to explore other values and behaviors that are unfamiliar to our culture, many see this as madness. Basically, Breeding’s book helps us learn to make our own decisions on how we think our children, or any person, should act through different stages in life, as opposed to what society thinks is “normal” or “productive.” This book is an excellent resource for individuals to better understand themselves, parents to more effectively help their children, and for psychiatrists to begin expanding on their ideas about their work and possible solutions for their patients.

About the Author

John Breeding, Ph.D., is a psychologist with over 25 years of experience who counsels adults children and families out of his private practice in Austin, Texas, and also around the world. He is the director of the non-profit organization Wildest Colts Resources, which focuses on helping adults working with young people having a hard time to offer non-drug treatment alternatives. He is also the director of Texans for Safe Education, a citizens group dedicated to fighting the growing role of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs in schools today.

Dr. Breeding is also experienced in other aspects of psychiatric oppression, including electroshock and psychiatric drugging of elders in nursing homes. He received his doctorate from the University of Texas. He has published several other books: Eyes Wide Open: Parenting and Life Mainfestos for the 21st Century, The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses, and True Nature and Great Misunderstandings (On How We Care for Our Children According to Our Understanding).

Reviews

The Washington Post:

“A work of genius! Breeding has a unique understanding of the damage that psychiatry causes society.”