OPINION:
Horace Mann, a leading advocate of state-run common schools in the 19th century, wrote: “We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.”
His complaints about “deplorably ignorant” parents who “inculcate false principles” and “establish bad habits” in their “offspring” perfectly capture the mindset of progressive education administrators today. Too many believe they are the rightful architects of every child’s moral education.
Yet not even Horace Mann could have imagined a public educational establishment pushing radical gender ideology on its young student hostages. Schools are putting children on the road to dangerous and irreversible medical intervention. Many have policies in effect that require teachers to lie to parents about their children’s mental health so that they can affirm in secret these minor children’s social transition. All the while, library shelves are overflowing with obscene, even pornographic material.
Object to any of it, and you risk being branded a hateful bigot bent on making schools “unsafe” for LGBTQ youth. One of the country’s largest teachers unions sued a mother in Rhode Island for demanding transparency about the teaching of critical race theory and gender theory in her child’s elementary school. Some parents have even had child protective services called on them for not “affirming” their child’s new gender.
Intimidation tactics generally worked until COVID-19 school closings pushed K-12 lessons into family dining rooms via Zoom. This development helped parents see en masse how little learning happens in public schools that have been reshaped to advance radical political and ideological agendas. Now, concerned parents are a political behemoth.
This week, the House will consider H.B. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights Act. It mandates curricular transparency, requires that parents have regular opportunities to provide feedback to teachers and board members, and ensures public disclosure of school and district budgets. The measure also strengthens privacy protections for children and requires schools to notify parents when violence takes place on school grounds.
That such a bill is necessary speaks volumes about the state of public education today. Whether House liberals vote for it or not, its main provisions should find broad, bipartisan appeal. In April 2022, in a Scott Rasmussen national survey of registered voters, 78% said that “parents should be primarily responsible for passing on values related to sex and gender identity.”
Passing the Parents Bill of Rights Act — and similar measures at the state level — is the essential first step toward reestablishing parental authority in education. But we must also work to rebuild cultural awareness that a child’s education is a paramount parental responsibility and that it is up to mothers and fathers, not the government, to shape the character of their children.
Though federal education bureaucrats are among the worst offenders when it comes to advancing harmful and divisive ideologies in K-12 schools, respect for parental rights and local control over school curriculum are essentially written into the Department of Education’s DNA. The 1979 act of Congress that established the agency begins by acknowledging that “parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their children” and that “in our Federal system, the primary public responsibility for education is reserved respectively to the States and the local school systems.” A future administration should make it a priority to eliminate every office and program that pulls American education in a contrary direction.
The same principles are even more firmly rooted in the American legal tradition. In a 1925 case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court held: “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
The high court has since affirmed its holding, noting in 1972 that the “primary role of parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.”
A case in 2000, Troxel v. Granville, acknowledged that parents’ interest in their children’s education is “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by [the Supreme] Court.”
What will it take for education administrators to internalize these ideas? Meaningful parental involvement in school board meetings, careful attention to school curricula, and collaborative engagement with schoolteachers will help change norms over time.
Reforms that give families the freedom to choose where and how their children are educated are more promising yet.
As states adopt education savings accounts and voucher programs, a true diversity of institutional types will spring up to meet families’ varied demands. When parents can send their children to schools that share their values and general educational philosophy, teachers and families will forge deeper partnerships. Market forces will reward schools that focus on providing a high-quality education — without political indoctrination. And school leaders will take a stronger interest in banishing transgender indoctrination, obscene materials, and critical race theory from classrooms when families are no longer hostages to them.
• Jonathan Pidluzny and Alex Caro Campana are, respectively, the directors of the Higher Education Reform Initiative and Center for 1776 at the America First Policy Institute.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.