Holy Crap

Dianna Lightfoot, the woman the McCrory administration wanted to put in charge of NC childhood education, resigned the position a hour ago. But as someone on Facebook just commented, "We may have dodged that bullet, but I guarantee you there's another already in the chamber."

This is the viewpoint of the person the McCrory administration would have saddled our youngest learners with ... Lightfoot was interviewed for an article on "Childhood Depression":

Conservative family groups have grave misgivings about counseling being provided at school, just as they objected to medical clinics being established in schools a decade ago. Clinics, they complained then, were dispensing contraceptives to teenagers without parents' consent. 

School-based counseling services threaten to similarly undermine parental authority and invade family and children's privacy, say critics. They particularly object to methods and questions used by health officials to discover whether a child is being sexually abused. 

“Unless done properly, school health programs have a potential to go too far,” says Dianna Lightfoot, director of the Physicians Resource Council of the Alabama Family Alliance. She and other opponents cite a Pennsylvania Head Start program in which preschoolers and kindergartners were required to undergo genital examinations along with their routine eye and hearing exams. The nurses who conducted the exams said they were looking for signs of sexual abuse. 

“Although the parents had given their consent for a checkup, they had no idea the kids would be asked to drop their pants,” says Moloney. 

Holgate, Lightfoot and Moloney all complained that elementary school children have been sent to school psychologists -- sometimes without their parents' consent -- and have been asked intimate questions about the family. One father in St. Helena, Calif., permitted a school psychologist to test his twin daughters for educational aptitude. The psychologist asked one girl whether her parents were sexually abusing her. The child reportedly suffered nightmares and mental distress afterward, and the father is suing the school district. 

Critics also object to the phrasing of some values-based questions on psychological tests given by schools, such as: Would your parents support you or condemn you if they found out you were having sex with your boyfriend/girlfriend? 

“Such questions raise doubt in kids' minds about the validity of their parents' values,” Lightfoot says. 

Or a child may tell a therapist he is attracted to someone of the same sex. The counselor might tell the kid it's OK to feel that way. “We don't think a school counselor has any business giving that sort of approval to a child,” says Lightfoot.

That last paragraph is a doozy. With attitudes like this, no wonder the incidence of suicide among gay teens has spiked up.