Those who are concerned about the depression that seems to be pandemic among schoolchildren today are looking everywhere except the obvious places to identify the causes. Like the lesson of the famous Edgar Allan Poe story, “The Purloined Letter,” the solution to the mystery is staring them in the face if they would only open their eyes and see.
This obvious place is right out on the desks of the children, put there by the teacher, written by Ph.D. educators, and ordered by the school administrators. We are talking about classroom exercises that consciously teach children to be depressed and even suicidal.
Here is a typical example of the type of psychological lesson often forced on children without the knowledge or consent of their parents. A “Depression Scale” was given to 12,000 high school students in states including Wisconsin, Illinois, Nevada, and South Carolina.
The Depression Scale, called “About Myself,” gives students 30 privacy-invading statements of personal emotional feelings, and tells the child to decide if he feels this way “almost never, hardly ever, sometimes, or most of the time.” The child is required to record his answers and turn them in to the teacher. Here are some of the statements used in one Wisconsin high school: “I worry about school, I feel lonely, I feel my parents don’t like me, I feel like hiding from people, I feel sad, I feel like crying, I feel that no one cares about me, I feel like running away, I feel like hurting myself, I feel that other students don’t like me, I feel upset, I feel life is unfair, I feel I am bad, I feel I am no good, I feel sorry for myself, I feel mad about things, I feel worried, I feel like nothing I do helps anymore.”
The Suicide Ideation Questionnaire is even more depressing. It asks children how often they think about at least two dozen items relating to death, killing, and suicide.
Here are some of the things that children are asked to reveal how often they think about: “it would be better if I were not alive, killing myself, when I would kill myself, people dying, death, what to write in a suicide note, writing a will, telling people I plan to kill myself, that people would be happier if I were not around, I wished I was dead, how easy it would be to end it all, killing myself to solve my problems, if others would be better off if I was dead, I wished I had never been born, ways people kill themselves, having a bad accident, life not being worth living, life is too rotten to continue, the only way to be noticed is to commit suicide, if I killed myself people will realize I am worth caring about, no one cares if I live or die, I wondered if I had the nerve to kill myself.”
And then we wonder why children are depressed, why they show stress, and why we have teenage suicides? Like the “purloined letter,” the answer is right there, in plain view on schoolroom desks. It’s time we recognize it.
After the students fill out the questionnaires, those children whose answers show signs of clinical depression are sent to the school counselor for consultation. Doing this without the knowledge or consent of the parents is defended by the program developers on the ground that parents may be part of the problem.
This particular depression survey was developed by Dr. William Reynolds of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and will be published by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., in Tampa, Florida. The publisher plans to make the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (called RADS) available for use nationwide this month, and the Suicide Ideation Questionnaire available in 1987.
Using schoolchildren for psychological experimentation and manipulation is big business. This survey is reported to cost $2 per student to administer.
If the potential market consists of all high school students, and sales can be made to school administrators without ever consulting the student-consumer, the authors of these scraps of paper stand to make a mint of money.
The marketing plan is so simple. Since the taxpayers foot the bills for what is done in public schools, no one takes clear responsibility to get value received for monies expended, and the seller doesn’t have to worry about default on his accounts receivables. When parents discover and object to what is going on, they are stonewalled, given the royal run-around, and told they have no right to interfere in the school curriculum.
The public schools have an important function in our society, but using children as guinea pigs for those who want to carry on psychological experiments on a captive audience is not part of that function.
