So you think No Child Left Behind was the only bad idea George Bush and his band of thieves have foisted upon your children? If so, you aren’t up on what your kids are taught in school. Soj over at Booman Tribune has been doing a little digging. She examined a Holt, Rinehart and Winston Textbook to see what your little scalawags are reading this days and you might just be shocked. Hopefully shocked enough to make sure to keep Republican idealogues off your school board who are feeding your children tripe, and also keep Holt, Rinehart and Winston textbooks out of the school. A short selection of Soj’s findings from a textbook are below, but by all means, go read the rest of what she found. The following little tidbit also might help you understand why George Bush was and is so disinterested in what happens to the citizens of New Orleans.

Chapter 1 is entitled “We the People” which sounds good enough. The subheading says this:

Activity: Conduct research about incidents in which ordinary citizens made a difference in their communities, states, or nation. Then write a series of journal entries from the point of view of one of the people profiled at the Web site. As an extension, explain how the episodes illustrate American ideals, the roles of the citizen, and the qualities of good citizenship.

Ok, sounds pretty good! Let's see who is profiled on the website. Well one is Clifford W. Beers. Ever heard of him? Wikipedia is rather bare but luckily the Holt webpage links to this brief biography:

Clifford W. Beers has often been called the founder of the modern mental health movement. A man who had a mental disorder himself and received deplorable treatment, Beers devoted his life to advocacy on behalf of adults and children with mental illness in the United States and throughout the world. Through the telling of his experience and the subsequent creation of the National Mental Health Association, he revolutionized attitudes about and care for people with mental disorders.

Sounds good. Except right away you might notice that this biography is on a page of other people being honored by the “Points of Light” Volunteer Pathway for going the “extra mile”. That’s Pappy Bush’s foundation right? Indeed it is.

Which isn’t surprising when you understand that Clifford Beers’ original name for his “mental health” organization was the “Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene.” If you ever see the word “hygiene” in the name of a pre-1940's organization, you can pretty much guess that’s one of the codewords for the eugenics movement.

And what do you know? One of the first directors of Beers’ organization was none other than Prescott Bush, George W.’s grandfather and the father of the “Points of Light” George Bush.

Prescott became a member of Skull and Bones in 1916, which just so happens to be the same organization which ran Beers’ “mental health” society and was the same secret society Beers alluded to joining in his biography, which is lauded on the Holt webpage.

Speaking of his biography, essentially he was an upper class white male who went to Yale and then joined a Wall Street firm and then had a bad nervous breakdown. While he was in the mental institution he was shocked that rich men were treated the same as poor ones.

After two years of increasing paranoia and depression he almost “instantly” is cured and becomes inspired to improve the treatment of mentally ill people. From reading through it, it seems he genuinely suffered in these places when he was confined and genuinely wanted to improve how the mentally ill were treated. Unfortunately his belief in “hygiene”:

Elsewhere is an account of how my plan broadened from reform to cure, from cure to prevention—how far, with the co-operation of some of this country’s ablest specialists and most generous philanthropists, it has been realized, nationally and internationally, through the new form of social mechanism known as societies, committees, leagues or associations for mental hygiene.

That and because he was not rich, the donors to the cause and the first supporters were the upper crust at Yale who were avid supporters of eugenics.