BACKGROUND TALKING POINT
ON SAMPLE PRECINCT CAUCUS RESOLUTIONS

February 8, 2006

THE DANGERS OF UNIVERSAL MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING:

• Mental health (social & emotional) diagnoses have sometimes been the result of screening for  politically incorrect attitudes and values.
• Using drugs to control behavior is dangerous and wrong, especially when study after study has shown these drugs to be ineffective and dangerous.
• Prescriptions for psychotropic drugs for children have increased by 300% in ten years.
• Wealthy special interest foundations, social activist organizations funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and the federal government frequently offer grants to school districts to have them develop mental health (social & emotional) screening and treatment programs in K-12 schools, pre-schools, and in early infancy.

UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL:

• Corporate business interests are promoting universal preschool as their current suppliers of women in the workforce and refer to pre-school children and school-age children as business commodities like ěhuman resources.î
• Taxpayers should not be supplying universal pre-school for business interests in order for business to have access to both parents in the workforce. This constitutes expensive corporate welfare at the expense of working families.
• Current research identifies a significant number of children whose preschool attendance hinders their development of social skills and motivation to learn.
• Government policies should be designed to allow families a realistic option of being the primary care-givers of their preschool children. These policies include lower taxes and restraints on the growth of expansive government oversight of early childhood learning.

GOVERNMENT EARLY CHILDHOOD OUTCOMES:

• Wealthy special interest foundations attempted to pass legislation in 2005 that would have assessed and categorized all Minnesota children, childcare facilities, early childhood development programs, and children at home according to these controversial social and mental health outcomes.
• Legislation almost passed in the 2005 legislature to grant state tax money to private, religious, and public child care facilities and early learning programs which adopted these government social and mental health outcomes.
• Imposing government-defined social and mental health outcomes on private caregivers and families violates the autonomy of parents to raise their children according to their own values and belief.
• Wealthy special interest groups and foundations are working toward a system of universal early learning for all children using government social and mental health outcomes that are non-academic, subjective, and controversial.

 
INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE (IB):

• IB has contracted with the United Nations to produce IB teaching materials about UN global issues.
• IB does not align with the state academic standards adopted by the Minnesota legislature.

 
INVASIVE SURVEYS:

• These non-academic, invasive surveys introduce many students to activities and behaviors that violate their moral principles and are an invasion of their personal modesty and self-respect.
• Parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and parents bear the first responsibility to protect their children from what they consider emotionally, mentally, or spiritually harmful.
• These non-academic, invasive surveys are frequently administered without the knowledge or permission of the parents, sometimes in the very early years of school.