June 23, 2019, Oregonian: Opinion: New tax puts Oregon schools, students on stronger pathway to future https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2019/06/opinion-new-tax-puts-oregon-schools-students-on-stronger-pathway-to-future.html These are the stories we heard over and over during the past year on the legislative Student Success Committee. After touring 77 schools across the state, it’s clear there is a mental-health crisis in Oregon, blowing up classrooms with behavioral disorders and emotional outbursts. Why is this occurring? No one knows for sure. Maybe it’s because these kids were born during the recession and were traumatized by their parents’ job losses or families’ home foreclosures. Maybe it’s the explosion of electronic devices. Maybe it’s the fact that drugs –– legal and illegal –– have flooded our communities…. Funding education in Oregon has always reminded me of that story of the old man and the leaky roof. He doesn’t fix it in the winter because it’s raining. He doesn’t fix it in the summer because it isn’t leaking. During the last two decades, we’ve had two bad recessions. We couldn’t pass an education package during those recession years. We couldn’t pass it during the recovery years either. Critics say, ridiculously, when you fix graduation rates, then you’ll get our support. This law has dozens of metrics, including graduation rates, that tie positive outcomes to financial certainty. Oregon young people need help, not excuses. It’s time for us to fix our leaky roof. To make investing in education our highest priority. It’s worth it. Oregon’s brilliance and the ability of her people to prosper is directly dependent on quality education.
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Loss of Brain Trust features over 9,000 news stories published worldwide since January, 2017
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
CHECK OUT MY SUBSTACK:
https://annedachel.substack.com/
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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