Shrink: DOE Heads Need Meds

June 7, 2009 (GBN News): A frustrated NY City parent, astounded that the Department of Education considers the $80 Million ARIS computer system an example of “strengthening community involvement”, wondered “just what sort of drugs they are on”. However, one prominent psychiatrist says that the real question is not what they are on, but what they should be on.

J. Fredrick Runson, head of Psychiatry at the Manhattan University Medical School, told GBN News that Chancellor Joel Klein demonstrates what he termed, “sure signs of delusional thinking”. “Whether it’s the idea that ARIS improves community involvement, that closing schools improves them, that young people with little professional training can perform adequately in a complex field such as teaching, that cell phones are a threat to students’ safety, or that we could somehow manage with 30% fewer teachers, clearly the Chancellor is acting on beliefs that are neither rational nor empirically based. If that’s not delusional, I don’t know what is.”

Dr. Runson went on to say, “If someone out on the street said things like that, they’d surely be labeled as ‘crazy’. But instead, Bloomberg made him Chancellor.” The only hope, he indicated, lies in getting him to take some sort of anti-psychotic drug. “There are some really effective medications out there”, he said. “But who would have thought that, unless they end Mayoral Control, our children’s entire educational future could hinge on a bottle of Risperdal.”