"About 12 months ago we were told to put Christopher on Adderall and that this medication would work better and would last longer. The side effects were same, dehydration, loss of appetite, growth limitations and violent mood swings, and fact is that no one knows what long term effects on your children’s health will be. We did as Doctor advised and he has been on Adderall since."

"Any time Christopher has a bad day in school, teachers want to know if he took his medication for day. You see, once a child is labeled ADD or hyperactive, it stays with them, and it’s locked in teachers’ minds. Thus if child has a problem, it must be that he/she did not take their medication. I am sure this goes on in public schools all over this country and parents like us have no choice or our choices are very limited. If you want your child to stay in school, Ritalin or Adderall is their solution to any and all behavioral problems."

Here we have an example of school authorities not tolerating normal children who might be having a “bad day” or want to express their anger about something. As adults, we all have such bad days and we all get angry occasionally. But because public schools are like mini-prisons that require “order” and “discipline” to function, children are expected to conform to rules. They are not allowed to have “bad days” or express anger. Hence school authorities must pressure parents to drug these children to make them passive.

Christopher’s horror story is repeated again and again in public schools across country. Parents, if public school authorities are pressuring you to give your children mind-altering drugs, alarm bells should be going off in your head. You should immediately consider taking your child out of public school and homeschooling him, for your child's sake.

Joel Turtel is author of “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children."

Still think comparison to communist schools is too farfetched? Albert Shanker, former President of American Federation of Teachers, second largest teacher’s union, once said: “It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everyone's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles communist economy than our own market economy.”

Finally, schools in some communist countries like China seem to give a better, more disciplined education in basics of reading, writing, and math than our public schools. International math and reading test-score comparisons often find American kids lagging far behind children from China.

But what values do Chinese communist schools teach their children? Here is another apt comparison between communist schools and our public schools. In both cases, either a central or local government controls curriculum and values it chooses to teach its students. The Chinese government can and does indoctrinate all school children with its communist ideology and loyalty to communist leaders.

Similarly, in our public schools, left-leaning school authorities control curriculum and values they teach our children. In many public schools, values-clarification programs and distorted American history courses in many public schools now indoctrinate our children with anti-parent, anti-religion, and anti-American values. In both communist schools and our government-controlled public schools, parents cannot (with a few exceptions) stop school authorities from teaching harmful or immoral values to their children.

Question --- Do socialist, compulsory, government-controlled public schools belong in America, land of free?