Parents as Enemies

The Progressive Campaigners Invade the Classroom

Matthew Kay, English public schoolteacher of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy, tweeted his concern that if schools remain in lockdown during the fall, the progressive, "woke" schoolteacher’s agenda to indoctrinate their values in their students will be threatened by conservative parenting. Such threats come by way of “helicopter” and “snowplow” parents listening in on “honest” conversations regarding gender and sexuality. Clearly in Mr. Kay’s view, parents are evil subversives getting in the way of their children’s true progressive enlightenment.

This is certainly not the first time parents have been deemed the enemy of the “learning” objectives of governmentally-inculcated propaganda. In the spring when we learned of a scathing 80-page critique of those pernicious homeschool parents published in the Arizona Law Review[1] by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet. In this critique, the free-thinking and open-minded professor decried the homeschooling “regime” as dangerous because parents pose an existential threat to their children’s well-being and that of society. Why? Because parents are too inept to teach their children values that are important to the state! Christian, evangelical parents were of particular concern to the enlightened professor.

While Kay’s language was not as inflammatory as Bartholet’s (there’s only so much contempt one can show for unwoke parents in a tweet), his words belie similar disdain and intolerance for parental or familial points of view that are not concomitant with the latest social justice warrior dogma du jour. It seems Kay recognizes that the views he espouses in his classroom towards gender and sexuality just might not find acceptance at the family dinner table, going so far as to acknowledge that he and other teachers have “installed some version of ‘what happens here stays here.’” So much for transparency.

If the “peaceful protests” carried out in many major cities across the country by college educated young people has not yet opened up the eyes of parents, hopefully Kay’s words will (do know, he is not alone). Gone are the days when the arguments in PTA meetings over curricula choice focused on a new way to do math or reading methodology. Gone even, are the days when there are opportunities for arguments at all. Children are being proselytized in ways that parents cannot even imagine. As the role of parents has been marginalized by government educators and teacher’s unions, so too has their influence over curricular decisions. Today more than ever, we need school choice.

Most tragically, at a time when children are most vulnerable, when they need more than ever caring adults who have had a long-term relationship and a significant stakeholder interest in their well-being, the very people holding the stakes (moms and dads) are those whose roles are diminished by others who have no consigned interest whatsoever.

Recognizing the influence that teachers had over pupils, Saint James warned that not many should be teachers, because they will incur stricter judgement.[2] God save those teachers, administrators, and unions who marginalize both parents and the God who created the tender subjects in their charge.