I am anti-authoritarian, pro-homeschool, very much am concerned about the erosion of parental rights (as I am ALL personal freedoms) but I was pretty unimpressed with the movie. IIf you Google the names of the talking heads featured in the movie, they are primarily involved in far right and/or Christianist causes, who have been railing against everything having to do with the UN for ages. The production values of the movie indicate to me that it is trying hard to scare its audience, which makes me not take it very seriously.
Specifically, the families profiled were really done halfway.
For example, the kid who got drug tested at the doctor- they discussed how the parents thought that the boy was having a negative response to his medications, and the doctor sounded like a quack. Then, when the issue became that of drug testing, that's where they stormed out. The reason that children's medical privacy is a matter of law is primarily because of birth control- if a teen girl gets on birth control, she needs an rx. Parents aren't required to give their permission for birth control. This is a kind of a logical extension- under the law, a child that is under 18 but over the age of consent doesn't need parental permission to have sex, so why should a girl need permission to get birth control? Plus, if a girl does get pregnant, she doesn't need parental permission to give the baby up for adoption. Abortion parental consent issues vary by state. The reason that children have explicit medical privacy is largely tied to sexuality and birth control issues, as well as fairness under the law. A boy who goes to a clinic for reversible birth control is just picking up condoms and doesn't need an rx. A girl has a different set of hoops to jump through. There is also the issue of being a mandated reporter. A doc who is afraid that the parents would abuse/assault a child due to medical results- for example, a failed drug test, or birth control use indicating sexual activity that the parents object to- this doctor is protected by the law regarding children and medical privacy. It's thorny, legally, and not nearly as straightforward as the video made it out be. Children's medical privacy doesn't begin at any specific age, and is largely dependent on they type of procedure or rx, and the type of health insurance as well as the doctor/nurse's malpractice insurance.
Another family, the family that requested an opt-out for their kindergartener- what the heck was that? If that did happen the way it was portrayed, then the dad should sue the crap out of not just the school district but the police. My gut feeling is that the dad got upset with the administrators, who called the police as a overreacting "security measure", and then the dad got mouthy with the cop. Police don't care why the get called- neither should they, their job is to show up when requested- but they very much do care when someone doesn't defer to authority. Assaulting an officer can be as simple as yelling- you just have to make someone afraid, legally, for it to be assault. (That's why it's "assault and battery"- battery is physical, assault is mental.)
I have to say that I feel that both these families did not have proportionate or appropriate reactions to their situations. Switch doctors. Call a lawyer. Threaten to yank your kid from school if the district won't let you opt out. Homeschooling is legal in every state, and schools who are threatened with a loss of their state stipend for that pupil usually rush to fix the situation. These are legally somewhat sticky areas, not at all cut and dried. The doctor and principal in this video behaved badly, but there is not law that just because someone works with children means that they will be good at his or her job.
Again, I am not saying that I am unconcerned with erosion of personal freedoms in this country- I very, very much am. I just didn't think this video did much for the cause.
