Bruce Lesley, child advocate, explains in this article in Medium why a democratic society needs public schools. It’s an excellent article and it reviews the current attacks on public schools and even their right to exist. Did you know that one candidate for U.S. Senate has called for the abolition of public schools; he thinks every child should attend a religious school. Does every parent want their child enrolled in a religious school? Are there enough religious schools to admit 50 million children? A generation ago, a proposal this absurd would have turned him into a laughing-stock.
But these days, ridiculous ideas are in the mainstream, polluting civic discourse.
Lesley’s article returns the discussion of education to reason, a rare quality in these troubled times.
Lesley explains why individual parents should not control what happens in school:
For example, imagine an elementary school of 450 students where 15 parents oppose the teaching of evolution, 19 parents believe the earth is flat, 28 are Holocaust deniers, 22 oppose white children learning about slavery, 7 believe in racial segregation, 21 believe in the concept of a school without walls, 49 demand the use of corporal punishment, 18 want to ban Harry Potter books from the school library, 26 want to ban any books that mention the Trail of Tears, 62 believe that parents should be allowed to overrule a physician’s decision that a child with a concussion should refrain from participating in sports, 87 oppose keeping their kids out of school when they have the flu, 9 believe that a child with cancer might be contagious, 29 believe that kids who are vaccinated should be the ones who quarantine, 72 support “tracking” in all subject areas, 32 believe students should not be taught how to spell the word “isolation” and “quarantine”because they are too “scary of words,” 104 don’t like the school neighborhood boundaries, 38 don’t like the bus routes, 71 parents want a vegan-only lunchroom, 4 demand same-sex classrooms, 5 oppose textbooks and want their children only reading from the Bible, and it can go on and on. The vast majority of parents do not agree with any of these things, and yet, parental rights extremists would insist schools must accommodate them, even if they are completely false, undermine the purpose of education, threaten the safety of children, or promote discrimination.
How can a school operate if every parent can decide every aspect of the education of their child, as some are demanding? It cannot.
The parents who want control of every aspect of their child’s education are homeschoolers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is the ed reform group, Parents Defending Education:
https://defendinged.org/
Try to find a single positive idea or proposal for public schools or public school students.
The newest ed reform groups won’t “improve public schools” anymore than the tens of ed reform groups that already exist do- all they do is attack public schools. That’s the sum total of their work.
Yet another group of full time, professional public school critics. Were there not enough of those? We need 7 or 8 more? What’s the max possible employment for the public school critics sector? 10,000? 20,000? Just an unlimited number of adults employed full time in public school bashing as a career choice?
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I don’t agree with how Parents Defending Education are storming school board meetings or that they are attacking public education to drive families toward privatization, BUT, they are uncovering some pretty ugly things that reformers have been doing. It’s worth reading, sifting and researching some of their stuff because it’s not being picked up by left leaning media.
Ex…Fairfax Co, VA….the BoEd destroyed FERPA for a contract with Panorama Education. Panorama Ed is backed by our favorite Tech Lord, Mark the Cyborg Zuckerberg. Panorama Ed is an SEL company that likes to do lots of surveys and questionnaires for data. What will the Cyborg be doing with all of the data from children? It’s already known that Facebook and Instagram are responsible for mental harm to teens/young adults (mainly girls).
The far right and the far left are waging war against each other and the majority of us in the middle are left trying to survive and to figure out “the truth” on our own.
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You will be accused of doing “both sides” here.
No lessons will be learned.
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Far left? What far left? Biden is a centrist, hardly far left. The Democratic party is hardly far left; Bernie and AOC, in my opinion, are not far left but rather sensible progressives. The GOP/Trump party is far right and the House and Senate are chock full of far right wing libertarians including some Democrats like Manchin and Sinema. Who are the far left? Some students in college? Enlighten me.
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@Flerp….yeah, I know….both sider-ism. The fact is that most of the Dems left public ed a long time ago and let a bunch of slick business people come in to ruin it. I know, it was Busch who ushered in NCLB but the Obama admin threw the door wide open. The Dems are stuck with no plan now and a new Secretary of Ed who hasn’t really stepped up to the plate to make change. Why?
The sane parents that went to express concern at school board meetings have graduated out of the system or removed their children (if they could) from public schools. Did anyone listen to the concerns of the sane parents about the CC, over testing, intrusive SEL, data collection, etc??? What’s left of the parental pool are scorched earth, low information parents willing to blow up the system. This has been a festering boil on the butt of public education for a while now and parents are rightly angry about some of this stuff. Parents are fed up and they are tired of being ignored.
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Desperation causes parents to get really riled when it comes to their children and really riled people act on impulse. The GOP decided to stir the boiling pot…and in VA they won.
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LisaM,
What did the parents “win”?
The GOP control of their schools?
They got played by the far right who want the wholesale destruction of public schools, when they could have elected the only party that it actually responsive to change.
Just like the people who didn’t vote for the Democrat in 2016 got played because they fell for the right wing propaganda that having a far right Supreme Court was no worse for the progressive movement than having a Supreme Court that repealed Citizens United.
And flerp’s normalization of this sounds a lot like the Holocaust deniers lecturing Jews about how “both sides” — the Nazis and Jews — are imperfect and we must all acknowledge the fault of both sides in the deaths of millions of Jews because of course, Jews aren’t perfect.
No side is perfect. That doesn’t mean that it is okay to normalize neo-fascism and other appalling stuff because if you dare to criticize the abhorrent stuff done by the right wing too much, you will be accused of not acknowledging that “the other side” is also bad.
And there is something just as repellent that is part of the mindset of people who clearly secretly support the most repellent side and cannot ever call out how abhorrent that side is (i.e. two certain posters who have a lot in common) but pretend that their desire to undermine and attack anyone who criticizes the far right is simply based on their desire to enlighten readers that both sides are equally abhorrent. Just like those who criticized the Nazis were attacked for not recognizing that the Jews were imperfect, too.
The people who can’t see any difference between imperfect Jews and imperfect Nazis were a lot like those who can’t see any difference between imperfect far right neo-fascists and imperfect democrats.
We are all imperfect and flawed. According to the false logic we see here, that means that we should not criticize Nazis since “the other side” is also bad.
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LisaM,
The Republicans in Virginia did NOT campaign against testing or data. They campaigned against Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved.
So the parents who empowered the anti-public school Republicans in Virginia aren’t getting less testing and their kids’ data is definitely going to be monetized under Republican rule, but those parents can feel good about fighting for the “middle ground” of helping Republicans get books that only the “far left” approve of — like “Beloved” — banned from their 17 year olds’ classrooms.
I definitely know why those on the far right are happy, but I have no idea what “victory” those who claim to be in the middle got out of it, except the satisfaction of knowing their high school seniors will never have to read “Beloved”. And if they feel that empowering the far right is a small price to pay for their “victory” to ban Beloved from the reading lists of AP classes for high school seniors, then those in the middle are not like any moderate parents I know.
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scary words: “Yet another…”
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The “director of outreach” at Parents Defending Education was or still is a regular contributor at EdPost. You know, the school choice website
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Another new ed reform group: Moms for Libery, as protrayed in a fawning article in an echo chamber publication:
https://www.the74million.org/article/74-interview-moms-for-liberty-cofounder-tina-descovich-on-her-groups-stunning-growth-facing-threats-herself-as-a-school-board-member-and-googling-koch-brothers/
More full time professional public school critics. No positive ideas of any kind, no contribution to any public school in a positive direction- just another group of ed reformers who criticize public schools.
They know that if they actually succeed in taking over public schools they’ll now be in the group of people they’re criticizing, right? That it will be difficult to conduct careers devoted exclusively to public school criticism when ed reformers are running all public schools? I don’t know- maybe they can do both. Hypocrisy or incoherence is never a big issue in ed reform, so maybe the ideological opponents of public schools can direct what happens in every public school while also working to eradicate them.
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I don’t think Democrats can defend public schools or public education, because they themselves have abandoned public education. They don’t have any core values to impart on it. They see it as “delivery systems” – exactly the same as private education except publicly funded.
Once Democrats decided “public education” could be refdefined (and diminished) to mean “any publicly funded product or service” they abandoned the bigger idea.
One would need an entirely new group of people. The group we have didn’t even attend public schools or public universities, let alone value or understand them. It’s the “sector” they look down on, they see it as inherently inferior.
Once you’re on board with “any publicly funded service or entity is equivalent to a public system” you’re no longer defending public education. You’re defending a system of private contractors.
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There is one state where Democrats DID defend public schools.
In Virginia. Where they got roundly defeated by the Republicans.
Virginia was one of the last states standing where the movement toward privatization and charters was stopped cold.
But now that Republicans are in power, I expect that Virginia will just look like Ohio.
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“Arne Duncan
Youngkin’s education plan was to create fear of… truth and history.
The fact that it worked says a lot more about us than it does about him.”
Arne Duncan wrote a book that had as its entire premise that public schools “lie” to parents. That’s what the book was about. How public schools are run by people who deliberately lie to everyone.
This book was released about a year ago. Apparently he forgot he wrote it.
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Public schools helped build our country and fight our wars. They are an example of democracy in action. While parents should not run our schools, they are essential partners. I have served on many hiring and curricula committees that included parents. In the 90s there was no hostility directed at public education or teachers. Since that time the deformers and conservative politicians have intentionally spread misinformation to undermine trust in public schools. Social media are tools of lies and exaggeration designed to alienate parents from their public schools.
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Well said, Mr. Lesley!
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A majority of voters in Va., similar to those in central states and the south, appear to want a governance structure that is Christian colonialism.
Youngkin attended the oldest private school in Virginia, the Norfolk Academy (about $20,000 tuition). He attends a Christian-centered non-denominational church. He was in private equity before his run for governor.
Democracy had a chance before the merger of U.S. conservative religions backing the GOP.
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Mercedes Schneider’s 9-15-2021 post, ” ‘Best for my child’ Unmasking: Like a No Peeing Section in a Pool”
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Great analogy!
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The Right To Poop
My child has got a right to poop
Contaminate entire pool
The rest will have to fly the coop
To move and find a different school
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Freedom to Poop
Freedom to Poop
In public pool
Like chickens in coop
The Golden rule
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“one candidate for U.S. Senate has called for the abolition of public schools”
The abolition of the US Senate (a decidedly UNdemocratic body that is basically strangling our democracy) would make far more sense (in regard to everything, not just education.)
Of course, it will never happen because the small states would never allow it.
But it would be a good idea nonetheless.
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The Senate has actually become an embarrassment.
Not sure why any serious person would even desire to be a US Senator.
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Other than for personal gain.
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This nation has become close to ungovernable.
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Is, Bob, is. The Virginia results demonstrate that a significant part of the voting population is too ignorant to understand how government functions, therefore they don’t have any educated expectations of how it should. As I once coached my kids: it’s a whole lot easier and tempting to be destructive than constructive.
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Thanks for posting this article. Great look at what is happening across the country.
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The parents who want control of every aspect of their child’s education are
homeschoolers.foolish and shortsighted.Fixed.
Bubble Boy
Johnny’s in a bubble
His parents put him there
To keep him out of trouble
To filter out the air
Johnny’s life is sheltered
To keep him from disease
From Alphas and from Deltas
From covid, if you please
Johnny doesn’t need a vax
Cuz bubble does the trick
And Johnny doesn’t need a mask
And never will get sick
But when the bubble springs a leak
As bubbles always do
The Bubble Boy is up the creek —
Without a paddle too!
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Bubble kids with helicopter parents. The GOP minor league development system. Hitler Youth 2.0.
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I’d like to add something thoughtful, but how can I top the article by Lesley citing the likes of Thomas Jefferson and John F Kennedy? An article so nice I read it twice.
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When my son was young I had him in an after school care that was in a conservative church. He came home asking me why they don’t believe dinosaurs existed. We had a good discussion about the lizards and beliefs of others. Parents who believe the earth is flat or that vaccines change DNA can do the same. They can also run for school board. They don’t get to dictate what is taught based on the “conspiracy of the day”.
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This is purely speculative, but I feel that parents attacking school boards, et al bad feelings toward public schools & increased leaning toward tax-supported charters/ vouchers/ homescholing… has a lot to do with covid. I recognize Reps have zeroed in & are whipping this up into a national movement, perhaps creating something out of almost-nothing. It’s a shrewd move.
For decades in US, the working poor, and increasingly the middle class, have come to understand that when they’re in trouble, they’re on their own. There are some govtl safety nets, but they are spotty, and facts are, the trappings of middle class to which one aspires– secure living wage, decent health benefits, the ability to save for home ownership/ kids’ college—are increasingly out of reach… thanks to govt policy. So: little trust in govt. Which means they can easily be talked into seeing public school– the govtl institution closest to parents’ daily lives, & long hailed as the ladder to upward mobility—as just another fraud.
This is about their kids’ futures. It escapes them that upward mobility in fact ceased to exist in US society some decades ago—something pubschs cannot change, in the main. It offers some hope, but only the unusually talented will be able, with luck, to overcome that hurdle.
Then along comes covid, with devastating economic & health effects hitting lower & middle income hardest. For unprivileged parents– those who cannot just pivot to expensive small-class covid-safe private schools– it is not surprising that outrage and denial will be directed at their most proximate govtl institution, the public schools.
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SOME of those parents may be as you describe…there are plenty of others – mostly white – who are “evangelical Christians’ and Republican activists – who are engaged in a concerted effort to undermine public education, in part through friendly politicians like Glennn Youngkin who will push for more charters and vouchers, in part by threatening and intimidating teachers and administrators, and in part by taking control of school boards to impose their will.
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“At a lunch meeting with my mentor (a former Director of the Indiana Catholic Conference) …I learned interested individuals and groups had been laying the groundwork for a private school choice movement.”
When the state’s school choice legislation was crafted, the author of the preceding quote whose prior work experience was with West Virginia dioceses, describes himself and his mentor as “the voice” for non-public schools. (4-22-2021, Southwestern Indiana Catholic Community Newspaper, “An Insider’s Look at the Evolution of the Choice Scholarship Program”). Readers of the Newspaper’s articles about education can assess for themselves the paper’s intent.
An article in Scielo, March 3, 2021, “The new official contents of sex education in Mexico: laicism in the crosshairs”, makes clear what conservative religious intent is. The article is much broader in content than the title indicates.
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I have made the argument here – over some years – that the central focus of public education could and should be democratic citizenship. In the essay cited here, that’s essentially the point, noting that the Founders (Jefferson) were advocates of public education as the means to promote the common good. It – the idea that public schools should teach democratic citizenship – stretches back to Aristotle:
“… the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole…each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarch creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.”
In fact, the Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the reason people CREATE government –– is to protect their persons through, as historian R. Freeman Butts put it, a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.” The democratic social contract, which is – as we are witnessing – under direct attack by conservative Republicans. At its core, this attack is an assault on democratic values, on equality and “liberty and justice for all.” At its core, it relies on an ugly racism that casts whites as “the victims.”
The attack on public schools — here and elsewhere across the country — isnot some spontaneous “parent rights” outburst. It’s orchestrated. It’s being funded and set into motion by right-wing “Christians” at the Council for National Policy, a far-right group that had outsized-influence with the Trump administration.
Richard DeVos, husband of Betsy, has been president of CNP twice. Ed Meese, who helped Reagan cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, has been president of CNP. So has Pat Robertson. And Tim LaHaye.
Current and former CNP members include Cleta Mitchell, the Trump lawyer who was on that call to the Georgia Secretary of State demanding that he find Trump more than 11,780 votes, and Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA who bragged about bussing tens of thousands of people to the January 6th ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and insurrection. Two of the top peeps at the Federalist Society, Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo, are also CNP members. (Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were high priorities for the Federalist Society and for CNP). Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a member. So is Stephen Moore, the wack-boy economist that Trump wanted to appoint to the Federal Reserve but ultimately didn’t because he owed his ex-wife $300,000 in back alimony and child support, and who is a Glenn Youngkin economic “advisor” even though he’s been dead wrong about virtually all of his economic predictions and who helped Sam Brownback ruin the economy of Kansas.
The Council for National Policy is interconnected to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network and Tea Party Patriots and a host of other right-wing groups. This is – in fact – the vast “right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton complained about. Glenn Youngkin has made himself all very much a part of this.
Did this “new” Republican Southern Strategy work? Well, Youngkin won, and exit polls showed that Youngkin won 62 percent of white voters, and 76 percent of non-college graduate whites. And Youngkin got way more of the non-college white women votes (75 percent) than McAuliffe.
Here’s how the NY Times explained it:
“Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls ‘parental rights’ issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism…Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of white voters, alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America…he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to ‘Beloved,’ the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison…the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams.”
Republicans and racism. Who knew?
Early education reformer Horace Mann viewed public education as a way to “equalize the conditions” of society. Public schools were “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic republic. Mann thought schools should go beyond the inculcation of knowledge and the practice of academic skills; they had to delve into the development of character. Democratic character, the same democratic character cited by Aristotle, reliant on the common good, on the general welfare of the people. As noted, the democratic social contract is what’s really under attack.
University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson subscribed to the idea that purpose of public education in a democratic republic was “the making of the democratic character.”
How to do that?
Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– absolutely essential to the maintenance of a democratic society. This means that citizens can not only think in terms of the scientific method — “collecting, analyzing and interpreting data…constructing explanations and designing solutions and engag[ing] in argument from evidence” — but also they can apply that critical reasoning to a framework based of core democratic values: equality, justice, tolerance, freedoms for all citizens, and promoting “the general Welfare.”
The conservative assault on the pubic schools is a direct and coordinated attack on the democratic social contract itself.
As Trump said after the Youngkin win,
“I would like to thank my BASE for coming out in force and voting for Glenn Youngkin. Without you, he would not have been close to winning. The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before…Thank you to the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia and most particularly, to our incredible MAGA voters!”
Notice…”the Commonwealth of Virginia.” The commonwealth is something that Republicans detest, and plan to undo.
And if you don’t believe that, then take a peek at any major newspaper’s headline on January 7, 2021.
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This argument no longer works for millions of angry and frustrated parents. They don’t see public education as an institution essential for preserving democracy, when it seems more intent on indoctrinating students with left-wing, liberal wokeness. Perception is reality for tens of millions of parents.
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That leaves us with the question: how does one combat a lie? Schools and teachers are not indoctrinating students. This a version of the Big Lie that won the election. A large proportion of Republicans believe Biden “stole” the election even in reed states like Georgia.
What are Republicans teaching our children? That’s its ok to lie in public. That being a sore loser shows strength.
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It is almost impossible to produce a counter narrative when shameless liars prey on the emotions of parents with constantly repeated sound bites. What a mess Trump has left us.
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However, it should be noted that the the “CRT lie” is only a falsehood on a technicality. There are a good number of super-woke teachers spouting their own interpretation of CRT at every level in public schools. Combine the stories that kids bring home regarding white guilt and black victimhood with transgender bathroom issues and the GOP has decent size flame to throw their fuel onto.
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Rage-
There are a ” ? number” of racist, homophobic, sexist white “teachers spouting their” views “at every level” in private, religious (and, public classrooms) and, on Facebook (various media report about the incidents). In some schools, gay people are even denied jobs, courtesy of the St. James Catholic school SCOTUS decision.
“Combine” the aforementioned reports with reports about some number of students who voice white supremacist, ant-gay, anti-woman hate and threats, wherever they want to. Decent people, both Dem and GOP, HAVE A DUTY to start a symbolic counter-fire.
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“Combine the stories that kids bring home regarding white guilt and black victimhood…”
I don’t know any parent – myself included – who has had their kids come home with these “stories” — and that is in “woke” Brooklyn.
On the other hand, I have known parents whose kids have come home talking about teachers who have made (perhaps unwitting) racist remarks in their class.
Read the news today about the 8th grader in Anacapa Middle School in California who recorded his teacher’s rants: (From a story in DailyKos)
“People need to wake up and see the government has way too much power right now,” the teacher can be heard saying in the recording taken by a student in the classroom. The child’s parent apparently told them that if they were ever uncomfortable with what a teacher was saying, they were allowed to take out their phone and record. That’s what the student did when the incident occurred about two weeks ago, and whew, what a great thing that student did.
“Hunter Biden, for example, is doing deals with China and Ukraine where he was funneling money illegally,” the teacher says in the recording that reportedly lasts about seven minutes. “He also had child pornography on his laptop. He was having sexual intercourse with his own niece.” Again, obviously not true, and obviously disturbingly inappropriate to say to literal children.
Sarah Silikula, the parent of the child who recorded the teacher’s bizarre rant, said her child came home very upset and confused by the whole thing. According to Silikula, her child said: “I’m never getting vaccinated,” and declared that they’re not getting any more shots of any kind. It’s no surprise the kid is totally spooked by vaccines, given that the teacher alleged that if you have a baby in a hospital and you choose not to get vaccinated, you don’t get your baby back.
According to Silikula, her child then asked her a question that likely made her stomach drop: “Did you know Trump’s still president?” Yikes.
According to the outlet, the school district has condemned the teacher’s comments. Students in the class have been assigned to another teacher. The teacher involved in the incident is still employed at the school, and the district told the outlet it will apply its “progressive” discipline policy to handle the situation.
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sorry for the duplicate post…
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Fundamentally education should be about learning primary skills in Math, Science, Language and History. Religion should be a family ‘s responsibility. State tests should not dictate prompts before each class to promote standard quotas. Fear has become common place with prejudice towards passing the state exam.
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