It's Memorial Day weekend and I have nothing better to do than download music online and watch C-SPAN...

That's because I'm now at an age where my friends and family are dying more often. I'm at the point where I've lost both parents, my older sister (still have my younger), and even my dog died last year. I only have a couple of friends left alive that I have managed to stay in touch with over the years, while hearing of the deaths of others I regretfully did not. On top of that I have no immediate family of my own. So, no bar-b-q here, and I lost interest in professional sports back when they had the first baseball strike. The lust for money took the "sportsmanship" out of it for me. Of course that was even before I understood how corrupt the corporate institutions behind them are.

I also recently learned of a distant family suicide connected to the housing crisis and a potential foreclosure on a home owned by Senior Citizens. A tragedy I wish I had been aware of before it transpired. I believe I could have helped them find public advocacy in their plight. I also may write about this down the road after I am able to learn more. Their being Seniors has me very intrigued.

So, and keep in mind that I have no children of my own and no other involvement with children directly, I'm watching C-SPAN and a congressional hearing begins. Held last Tuesday, May 19, 2009, by the House Committee for Education and Labor, and chaired by Representative George Miller (D-CA).

The title of the hearing was: Seclusion and Restraint of Mentally Disabled Students. Although the hearing was 2 hours, it was anything but boring. To hear about the kinds and frequencies of abuse going on in our Special Education system is shocking. And that word feels weak in description.

I was at once reminded of the 1970's public debate on corporal punishment in our traditional educational system that I always understood was about less physical abuse. Yet here we are, thirty years later, being revisited by yet another ghost from our decaying Democratic past. I get this odd feeling of Deja Vu whenever I hear of another issue that we are currently debating that was originally debated thirty years or more ago. Coming to mind would be "war", "civil rights/human rights", "labor rights", "public housing", "the environment", and on and on with the fact that our leaders prefer to lie to us always at the heart of it. I also get a sinking feeling that we are up against a "monster" that wins more often than not. Particularly when it concerns a subject where, not the corporations directly, but the inhuman influence they infect on the individual's sense of morality causes the individual to commit the immoral act. I mean how could any individual willingly commit an act of such cruelty, whether it is at the policy direction of a higher-up or by their own decision? It's not unlike the torture debate going on that analyzes, tries to justify such despicable behavior from a National Security perspective rather than from a moral perspective, such as the morality that we tried to define with our Constitution. Like most of the Bush era policies, there is still no honest conversation going on between our government and her citizens. Except the corporate citizen of course.

Chairman Miller must have been thinking along the same lines, because after hearing opening statements from the panel of witnesses, which included two parents of abused children, he made the connection between this kind of extreme reaction to child behavior and our government's interrogation policies. He made the very astute comparison between the technique of waterboarding and a method used by these special educators to restrain a child. A method that has resulted in moire than one death...

I'd like to note that both sides of the aisle on the hearing committee were appalled at what they learned was regularly going on. All that is but the committee co-chair Howard McKeon (R-CA). Again, I cannot fathom reacting to something like this in any manner other than outrage, but some politicians seem to ever confuse the challenge as policy driven, when they should be thinking about the right and wrong of it.

Below is the hearing in it's entirety. If your browser does not support this kind of embedded video (you don't see anything), here are two other options for you:

Flash video link.

Page link with video link

Whether you have children or not, you need to know about this. And if you do have children, you should consider what might be going on in our other schools and watch this with a keen ear.