Parental Rights and Public Education Shouldn't Mix - By Patrick Mattimore

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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The author makes an exceedingly weak case for excluding parents from the educational process.

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If I've got this right, the recent elections in the US highlight, among other things, that the parties must pay attention to "parental rights" when it comes to education in public schools.

Let me draw on my experience as a student, parent, and teacher to suggest why those parental rights might not be such a good thing. (The sole evidence presented will be author's own experience, and that as recollected from his childhood experience decades ago.)

Going back to the 1950s and 1960s when I was a student, I can't imagine my parents or any of my friends' parents marching over to the local school and giving administrators or teachers an earful as to what they thought the school should be teaching. Teachers and schools were the experts and education at school was their bailiwick. (50 or 60 years ago, schools taught very traditional things. There would be little cause for parents to "storm" the school, because the school taught the parents' values. 

Compare this to today, where schools teach leftist ideology, false history, agenda-laden science, and exclude [if not impugn and mock] traditional values. 

The author will admit that times have changed, but he doesn't seem to understand that schools have changed. He will go on to write about problem parents and their supposedly unfortunate interventions into the schools, but has nary a word to say about possible shortcomings of the schools themselves.)

Okay, so times changed, and by the time I was a parent/teacher, parents felt entitled to take a greater part in public education. The era of helicopter parenting arrived in the late 1980s. But, helicopter parents are different breeds of animals than the parental rights folks. Helicopter parents are essentially concerned with only their own child (or children). They became advocates and protectors for their own kids and what they perceived as those kids' interests. The upshot of that era was expanded services for things like special education. While it's debatable whether helicopter parenting improved public education, it's pretty clear that a number of new cooks had decided they had a right to stir the broth.

Parental rights, as now practiced, insists that parents should have a hand in determining what is being taught in the public schools. (The author wants us to think this is a recent development. Has he never heard of the PTA? It stands for Parent-Teacher Association. Now what you you suppose the PTA would do if it didn't involve itself in the schools?

Parental involvement is the key attribute of the PTA. Their website mentions parents several times here.

Further, the author might want to acquaint himself with the history of public schools:

The actions of local people coming together “to run their schools, to build schoolhouses, to hire teachers, and to collect taxes” helped forge a sense of community and made people invested in their schools. Once established, public schools often became community centers where people of all ages came together for meetings, exhibitions, entertainment, and other social activities. In some small and rural communities, schools were the only public building suitable for these purposes.

The very idea of public schools is that citizens/parents are delegating their own power to government in order to educate their kids. It is preposterous to suggest that they should have no say in the activity they are funding.)

This is essentially a political/ideological position and is happening independently of parents advocating for their own children. There are several big problems with insisting that parental rights groups should be allowed to help formulate what schools are teaching.

First, and most obviously, parents are not a monolith. What one parent believes should be taught is not necessarily the same thing another parent thinks is appropriate. (Thus the conclusion is that parents should have no input, simply because there are varying opinions. The fact that there are varying opinions within the field of education apparently isn't relevant.)

Second, squeaky wheels get greased. Even if we ignore the fact that different parents have different interests, it will likely be the parents who most effectively (and loudly) advocate for their positions who win, regardless of whether that creates better education. (Well, in actual fact, the author wants parents to be ignored, so they will not "win" for being the loudest. 

Is the author unaware of recent events? We have a contemporary example, Loudoun County Schools, where a shouting match erupted between school board members and parents at a school board meeting. Did this result in those parents' agenda being implemented? No, those parents were silenced, and the subsequent media reports and politicians branded them as domestic terrorists.

This is, in essence, what the author himself is attempting to do, to negate contrary voices, especially those voices who have the biggest interest in the issue, the parents. He wants parents to shut up.)

Third, given diverse political perspectives, it is likely that no consensus will emerge as to what schools in various locales should be teaching. (Notice that the issue is claimed to be diverse political perspectives. It's a political issue. But more to the point, he's making the specious argument that because there are different political opinions, all of them should be irrelevant. Except of course the political opinion that parents shouldn't have a say in their children's' education.

Total nonsense.)

Today, we have state boards of education and national frameworks that at least provide some assurance that public school curricula will coalesce around some common points. (How is that possible, if everyone's opinion is different? What the author means is, whatever the experts say is what should be done, regardless of other opinions. The author values only one opinion, the one he agrees with. 

You can be sure that if the officials were universally recommending adopting the Bible as a text, or the State Board of Education wanted to force students to pray, he would be on the other side of the issue. He's all in favor of forcing an agenda, if it's things he agrees with.)

If the functions of state and federal education policymakers are usurped by parents at the local level, we may lose the kinds of common threads that stitch the nation together. (These policymakers exist at the pleasure of parents, who fund the whole thing. These policymakers are servants of citizens, not superiors. Their task is to implement the educational goals of their constituents. 

This means it is not only the right of the citizen to "usurp" these policymakers, it is their duty, if their interests are not being served.)

If we cede public education to parental rights groups we may very well be condemning ourselves to even wider fractionalization of citizens. (It was parents who originally ceded their power to the government to educate their children. If those parents decide to recover the power they ceded, that is their prerogative. And if such a thing contributes to "fractionalization," [whatever that is], so be it.)