Jennifer Berkshire writes powerfully in The Forum about the outraged parents of students at elite private schools who want to squash critical race theory and anything that smacks of liberalism.
Bret Stephens had come to Boston’s historic Copley Plaza Hotel bearing an ominous warning: Illiberalism is on the march, and free speech is under siege. As it happens, his claim was borne out by the growing number of states that have now enacted education gag orders, restricting how teachers can talk about race, but this was not the scourge that the New York Times opinion columnist had in mind. No, Stephens’ ire was trained on the schools—or as he described them, “feeders for woke culture in every part of society.”
It was familiar Stephens fare, dished up in column after column. But attendees at the Parents Unite conference, who’d shelled out $350 a pop to spend a recent fall weekend commiserating over the rising tide of wokeness in the nation’s elite schools, ate it up. After all, Stephens’ ties to the world of top-tier prep schools run deep. Not only did he board down the road in Concord at the Middlesex School as a lad, but he also serves on its board of trustees. These parents want their schools back, and Stephens was happy to help lead the charge.
In the increasingly crowded market catering to parent outrage, the Boston-based Parents Unite stands out for its pedigree. Yes, Moms for Liberty offers $500 bounties for teachers who violate education gag orders, and Parents Defending Education seeks to root out politics in the classroom via anonymous snitching. But Parents Unite, not to be confused with the pro-charter school, anti-union Massachusetts Parents United, aims for higher ground: “diversity of thought.” The group represents parents of children enrolled at top “independent” schools in New England, and according to its official origin story, the homeschooling measures of the Covid pandemic gave those parents a scarifying crash course in the sort of agitprop fare that their hefty tuition checks were underwriting. More specifically, it was what these parents saw as the over-the-top response by many private schools to the murder of George Floyd that launched them into full-scale revolt. For hundreds of years, parents have sent their children off to the elite precincts of Phillips and Hotchkiss, secure in the knowledge that the Ivy League awaits. And now all of a sudden these same schools wanted them to feel bad about their privilege?
But the outrage didn’t end there. As the proceedings at the weekend-long Parents Unite confab made clear, anti-wokeness is a slippery slope. What began as a howl of protest against “critical race theory” has quickly built to include a seemingly endless litany of conservative complaints about what gets taught in schools and by whom. As the conference wore on, grievance piled up upon fresh grievance. Classrooms were being “racialized, sexualized and politicized,” as one speaker put it. Kids were coming home defeated and deflated, charged another. Schools no longer teach real-world knowledge, complained one of the student attendees. The vast majority of his classmates don’t know the difference between a stock and a bond, he reported in astonishment. Wouldn’t they gain more from learning about that than about how to combat racism?
A panel discussion with the rather too-on-the-nose title “DEI: Under the Hood,” quickly moved on from the alleged excesses of diversity, equity and inclusion to fresh outrages, like social and emotional learning (SEL). This brand of instruction, it turns out, was actually brought into schools at the behest of businesses looking to recruit future knowledge-economy workers outfitted with “soft skills,” like team building and collaboration. But in the hothouse culture-war reveries of Parents United, SEL has taken its place alongside DEI and CRT as another sinister form of woke-ist mind control masquerading as sensitivity and empathy.
What began as a howl of protest against “critical race theory” has quickly built to include a seemingly endless litany of conservative complaints about what gets taught in schools and by whom.
Then there’s “gender ideology.” Erika Sanzi, who has herself recently transitioned from Obama-era charter school advocate to parents’ rights crusader, explained from the stage, parents who might be too fearful to speak out about CRT are going to revolt when they realize that the schools are trying to turn their kids trans.
What or whom specifically is carrying out all of this indoctrination? Teachers unions are to blame, naturally, along with graduate schools of education—a perennial source of political ire dating back to the early nineteenth century. (That private schools are overwhelmingly union free, and do not require the credentials dispensed by schools of education seemed to matter not at all here.) Most of all, though, it was young teachers—social justice warriors all—who bore the brunt of the ire. These self-styled revolutionaries eschew not just the classic texts but all texts, one panelist bemoaned. Older, tenured teachers—the same reliable villains who’ve been depicted as the enemy of progress throughout the modern era of education reform—are evidently now the last remaining bulwark against wokeism.
For parents rebelling against leftist indoctrination in the public schools, politicians have seized on a favorite conservative cure: school choice. This, too, was a baffling refrain at the Parents United conference: private school parents have already exercised that option. Indeed, one striking plaint running through the sessions in Boston was that parents who send their children to elite private schools are uniquely powerless—victimized by the meritocracy itself. To voice their grievances is to risk not just their youngster’s spot at Groton or Deerfield Academy, but also to jeopardize the great brass ring at the end of the prep school carousel: entrée into the Ivy League.
Desperate times, then, call for desperate measures. Kerry McDonald, the senior education fellow at the liberty-loving think tank, Foundation for Economic Education, proposed that instead of continuing to support “school,” parents return to the time-honored tradition of teaching their children themselves. But rather than going into despairing cultural retreat mode, in the manner of many latter-day evangelical homeschoolers, the refugees from the woke prep academies can count on the largess and thought-leading cachet of Silicon Valley. “Marc Andreessen has been talking a lot about homeschooling,” McDonald reported, citing the great market imprimatur of the Netscape founder-turned-venture-capitalist.
Please open the link and finish reading the article. And shed salty tears for the parents of children in elite private schools who think they have no voice.
A Chilling Description Of How They Use Money To Net Wealthy Victims
It’s crucial to recognize the serious and malignant role the Olympics played, one much broader than merely giving Putin prestige or public relations. The Games are part of what Paul Massaro describes as a strategy of “elite capture” through which actors such as Putin and Xi try to co-opt and compromise Western influencers with various forms of financial entanglement.
They’re a cog in “transnational networks that are used by the Kremlin, the CCP and other dictators to pursue their foreign policy goals and exert influence.” Just read Pul Massaro’s breathtakingly prescient argument for severe sanctions in Foreign Policy magazine from December.
it feels as though a tipping point has been reached. The penalties for poor choices will be new and bigger; these revolutionary sanctions make that clear. And as policy advisers such as Paul Massaro seek a total reset of the landscape for American companies that previously profiteered without worry, those that partner with bad international actors will find themselves in a pressure vise.
“One thing our businesses, universities and sports leagues don’t seem to fully understand is that, to eat at the CCP’s trough, you will have to turn into a pig,” remarked Yaxue Cao, editor of ChinaChange.org.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/03/08/olympics-putin-ioc/
Schools no longer teach real-world knowledge, complained one of the student attendees. The vast majority of his classmates don’t know the difference between a stock and a bond, he reported in astonishment. Wouldn’t they gain more from learning about that than about how to combat racism?
This quote says it all. Screw your neighbors – the world is all about attaining wealth.
I didn’t know the difference between a stock and a bond until I was an adult and bought some.
My gosh. Willing to bet those concerned with stocks and bonds are also triggered by discussions on “privilege.”
yup
Stocks and bonds are what Success Academy uses for discipline,
@ Steve Nelson, don’t you mean stocks and pillories?
That too.
And, I bet they would sure feel “uncomfortable” when learning the who/how/why the wall was built to give the street its name.
I think it is incredibly tragic how the extreme right keeps inventing issues that don’t exist and how their ignorant base of voters keeps lapping up up these fake issues like a dog or cat can’t resist drinking antifreeze leaking from a car or truck.
WOKE doesn’t exist.
CRT is not taught in the public schools doesn’t exist.
Parents have al ways been responsible and in charge of their children’s education, if they want to be. The law supports parental rights over what their children are taught. At least it was in California when i was teaching. But in the Charter School industry, parents have no rights over what their children are taught.
Babies and children are not murdered when a woman has an abortion.
Labor Unions are not the enemy. Corporations are.
A livable minimum wage is not going to destroy the US economy.
There is no public school to poverty pipeline.
There is no public school to prison pipeline.
The ocean’s rising, climate change and global warmings are real.
COVID is not a hoax.
Vaccines do not inject nano-robots into our blood to reprogram our brains and turn everyone into liberals.
Liberals do not eat babies.
Who are the evil SOBs that keep thinking up these false flag propaganda campaigns to undermine the United States?
Our local Sinclair TV station has been running a series called “Crisis in the Classroom” in order to exploit the campaign to undermine public education. It started off with story of kindergarten student whose arm was injured in a special education charter school operated by a public school district. Ads for the crisis the the classroom have been running for the past two weeks with a link on the station’s website for parents to post individual horror stories. I have not seen any more stories during this time. Instead of a real crisis, this is a manufactured one from the right wing trying to capitalize on bash public education trend.
key point SINCLAIR TV STATION. All over the nation
My God. This wokeness is out of hand. Next thing you know, they will be teaching that poor people are human.
CRT causes people to go blind, be transgender, and hate Trump.
Haaa! I thought that it was Obama and George Soros who put chemicals in the drinking water and contrails to turn high-school kids transgender. But perhaps you’re right. It isn’t widely known that CRT killed JFK and threw Natalie Wood overboard. And, of course, CRT has been working with Pfizer to put microchips in the vaccines and is funding the Nazi toddler resistance to Ukraine’s liberator, Putin.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go out to the framing shop to have one constructed for the apparition of Jesus that recently appeared on a piece of bread I had toasted for breakfast.
Jeepers, Bob! You’re just like the upper crust asshats in the article!
Who you calling “crusty”? Step outside and say that to my face, Steve.
To inhabit the crust
is only just,
for rich and white
makes right.
These asshats use a few revealing phrases as pejoratives: “social justice warrior,” “virtue signaling” and “woke.” I am pleased to support social justice, I think virtue is good, and the antonym of “woke” is “asleep.” They apparently prefer social injustice, vileness and naps.
I must admit that I occasionally need a good nap.
Steve, well said! The twisting of language is remarkable. It bears the stigma of corporate reform.
Well, isn’t is said that those who control the language, control the masses? (Orwell/1984??). The left has been over using those phrases for a few years now and the right is hurling them back. Personally, I’m tired of both sides and I think most people are tired of the madness. I think we all need to get along, show some respect and stop the name calling. Nothing will change until civility returns.
And saying that both sides are equally uncivil and doing the same thing is the most Orwellian of all.
LisaM, most people don’t know that “identity politics” is a term coined on the left.
So frets about Mr Potato-head and police lynchings are on par.
FLERP!
And Hussy is derived from Housewife. Which in Flerp world would imply that all Housewives are harlots.
It is quite irrelevant that the idea of identity politics was first used by 3 marginalized groups. Coined by a Black, Gay. Feminist. Unless housewives are all tramps than there is a difference between a marginalized economically and socially discriminated group voting their interests and majority using politics to oppress the rights and aspirations of a minority.
LisaM– despite the pushback on this sentiment here, I’m going to be brave and say I don’t like it from the left either. “It” being the overuse of catch-phrases that carry a load of ill-defined baggage which one is peer-pressured to salute, confirming a political position which can be contained in a thimble. That’s the way the left uses “social justice.” I hate even more the right’s “social justice warrior,” because it’s a cloaked epithet. At least when I say rwnj, it’s generally understood I’m talking about the far-right fringe—and it’s clearly an insult! 😉
We have to use some shorthand. Liberal, conservative, progressive, neoliberal, libertarian– these terms have more-or-less agreed-upon definitions, and are not [inherently] insults. But many of the terms used by both sides reflect lazy thinking and lead to heated exchange rather than nuanced discussion.
Well said, Steve. And, of course, you can add to that “Antifa.” As Diane has pointed out here many times, what, exactly, is supposed to be wrong with being anti-fascist?
Let’s reclaim our language. I am against fascism and racism. I support democracy and the joy of learning.
Amen
“social and emotional learning (SEL). This brand of instruction, it turns out, was actually brought into schools at the behest of businesses looking to recruit future knowledge-economy workers outfitted with “soft skills,” like team building and collaboration”
Well, that’s interesting, since SEL is all the rage these days. Would like to hear more about this.
Social and Emotional Learning is nothing more than what grandmotherly elementary school teachers used to promote when they taught kids to say, “Please” and “Thank you,” to wait their turn, not to talk over one another or to push and shove, not to make fun of the kid whose parents can’t afford expensive sneakers. It’s basically “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Self-awareness, Self-management, Responsible Decision-Making, Relationship Skills, Social Awareness—in a word, Socialization. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be so scary about all this. Do we want kids to be headless, uncontrolled, irresponsible, socially awkward, and oblivious to others? SEL has always been part of instructing the young.
Ofc, most of the “instruction” in these matters needs to be incidental and systemic, so I guess that’s what the debate is about.
cx: heedless [not headless, lol]
You’re correct Bob. People don’t have any problem with teachers socializing children to make them better people in the world. The problems arise when deformers decide to make a curriculum out of it in order to raise test scores or extract data. My comment is in moderation….I guess I offended the tech bots? I just threw away a wad of dittoes on Growth Mindset and Grit from 8th grade ALG I. If they really wanted the kids to pass the stupid test, it would have been more beneficial to teach them the basic math skills that were needed for ALG I. But ofc, the CC ALG I standards were (are) just dreadful and disconnected that the kids just didn’t understand. These dittoes were given before every test, pre test, and pre pre test. Wish I could post a picture of one I found on my phone (I’m not very techie)….it’s just stupid and a total waste of time for teachers and students.
You’re not missing much. I just tossed out all of the Growth Mindset and Grit dittoes that my son got in 8th grade ALG I. They were given before tests, pre tests, and pre-pre tests. The school had low test scores (socio-economics!). Wouldn’t it have been better to actually teach them ALG I? Better yet, they should have taught them the basic math skills that were needed to succeed in ALG I. Common Core is a miserable failure and the stupid tests proved it….or is it the other way around?
In moderation? I said nothing wrong. I guess I offended the bots.
Posted twice and I’m in moderation. So this is a test…again
You are no longer in moderation. And you did not mention Brett Kavanaugh!
SEL is flawed. It has become too commercialized. But anyone who doesn’t recognize that something should be done about a high teen suicide rate and the enormous pressure students feel is deluding themselves. It was never easy to be a teen. Does that mean that we should just do nothing?
I don’t believe it is fair to expect public school teachers with huge class sizes to address SEL along with everything else. However, if there are professional programs that those teachers have to “suffer through” for a few hours that makes even 10% of the teachers more aware of the issues one of their students might have and perhaps how to get them help, that’s still a good thing. And sorry, but I don’t believe there is a huge crisis if 50% or 90% of the other teachers choose to sit in the back and make snarky remarks for a few hours because they are already certain they know it all. Sorry, I have no sympathy if teachers have to sit through a short SEL presentation they don’t like.
And I have little respect for any teacher who blames SEL for the issues schools have. It simply scapegoats something that is – at worst – annoying for a myriad of problems that the right wing does not want to talk about.
If a math teacher is having problems teaching her students math, no longer having to pass out SEL worksheets will not solve it. But pushing that false narrative will make things worse.
nycpsp– I’ll admit to being out of the pubsch loop other than what I read here and at other ed articles, or learn about local BOE mtgs. But my understanding of backlash is that it’s not over PD’s for teachers. It’s about implementing SEL in the classroom in the same way the fed-ed-approved state ‘accountability systems’ measure/ assess/ remedy achievement (and progress toward achieving) mastery of state acad stds.
From what I’ve read over recent years, this is going on in many pubsch systems. Google SEL to find a host of pre-cooked sw packages of everything needed for instruction/ assessment/ analysis/ remediation. It’s basically yet another layer of assessment with stakes attached—and another layer of ppwk/ data entry dumped in teachers laps. Others more in the know than I can affirm or deny whether this happens where they teach or where their kids attend school.
To me, this is similar to DEI programs in the sense that making them part of how you run your acad class [guided by PD] makes sense– but turning them into separate lessons with their own accountability systems is a bridge too far. It happens due to (1)ed-industry consultants pushing product, (2)school and state admins feeling comfortable only if everything is measured/ data-crunched/ ‘accountable,’ and (3)politicians tossing such questionable programs like a bone to constituents demanding pubschs ‘do something’ about teen suicide/ depression, racism, etc.
bethree5,
Those are good questions, and obviously I can only speak from my perspective and the parents all around the country I happen to know.
But, do you really think these programs are pervasive? I suspect they are very similar to the “drug decision” programs I had to sit through in junior high!
To me, the concern with the kind of things that seem to always be a part of school feels like an exaggeration. From my extremely limited view as a parent, I am not seeing SEL take over the curriculum or even affect it at all. Are there really schools where this happens?
Maybe the “drug decision” program – which went on for quite a while, was stupid. But can you imagine if it got politicized! “Public schools are awful for allowing information about drugs. Kids are harmed.”
We heard the same thing about sex education and a lot of things that are such a small part of the curriculum and which I don’t see impacting the curriculum very much. Am I missing something that is new and dangerous happening?
nycpsp– If SEL is nothing more than occasional PD’s and assemblies (like the DARE program in my kids’ era) I agree it’s at worst harmless. I’m OK too if it’s a new wave of awareness taught in PD’s, along with brainstorming on how to embed it in academic classes; the goals seem fine.
But here’s its progress, govt-wise… The fed DofEd’s research arm, IES (Inst of Ed Sci) promotes SEL measurement and assessment. CASEL (ind non-profit SEL research org) backs scripted stand-alone SEL lessons, and an SEL team to collect and analyze evidence (data). Here IES highlights a SECA [Social and Emotional Competency Assessment], developed through a partnership between a NV school district and CASEL via a DofEd grant, now open-source and encouraged for school use as a tool for “continuous assessment”: https://ies.ed.gov/blogs/research/post/measuring-social-and-emotional-learning-in-schools
The field of expertise involved is applied developmental psychology. CASEL’s stuff is fine, really. Their classroom prompts are divided by grade from PreK up and seem wholly age-appropriate. But will states &/or fed DofEds impose as yet another measure of good/bad pubschs [lobbied for & handed off to ed-industry consultants]? What could go wrong with scripted lessons/ assessments in devptl psych funded by the DofEd? That’s my concern. We’ve seen this movie before.
Thank you bethree5. You have the background knowledge to explain it as a teacher or administrator. I don’t think most parents are upset by SEL/DEI occurring in a naturally organic way in the classroom. Children/youth learn through interacting and having conversations/ disagreements and teachers use their expertise to guide those discussions/disagreements. What I am/was opposed to are/were the dittoes, the scripted curriculum and surveys that seem to have popped up that teachers now must implement in order to satisfy some mandate that goes along with the stupid testing.
OK, so today was a SEL day at school today. It’s an all boys private HS. Frosh/Sophs got an inservice assembly on the ills of social media and bullying while the Jrs/Srs got a domestic violence inservice. Each class they had today had a discussion on the topics. My son’s Econ teacher decided to go off script and talk about the evils of Putin. I’m not ticked off and I’m sure there are no other parents at school who would complain about it. It’s part of the reason why we send our kids to private schools….to be better humans. I’ve not encountered one bit of “woke-ness” in 4 years.
in moderation…..and I haven’t mentioned BK or any other controversial person? WordPress doesn’t like me today.
I feel so sorry for extremely wealthy parents who make the choice to pay upwards of $50,000/year for 13 years to send their kid to a private school where the parents are not in control!
But what does it say about all those parents that they want their kid to suffer so much rather than to pull them out? Has anyone asked those parents why they don’t invoke their right to parent choice and pull their kid immediately if they are telling the truth about the great harm their kid is suffering?
Parental choice solves all, so why haven’t those parents left? Their Koch-funded advocates can’t cite those parents being “stuck” in dangerous private schools taught by non-union teachers because those parents could leave at any time.
Those parents are free to choose any school and yet they are choosing one where they aren’t in control?
Most of these parents will put up with anything if it means their kids will have an inside track at entrance to the most prestigious colleges. That’s what they’re paying for — acceptances at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Williams, etc. And no schools feed those colleges like the elite privates.
True. That’s what they are paying for. A conveyor belt to the Ivy League.
So what you are saying is those parents care more about bragging rights for themselves than what happens to their kids? They are choosing to intentionally harm their kids so that their kids can attend a college that they claim ALSO intentionally harms them by being too woke???
How about just admitting that these parents know it is a manufactured controversy that they join in because they get their jollies from it?
Or hey, let’s assume you are right and these parents are really this evil and would happily see their own kids’ suffer tremendously for 13 years plus 4 more if they can get some bragging rights out of it.
I think my view presents those parents as (very flawed) human beings. flerp’s view makes them out to be true monsters.
Let’s face it, this is completely manufactured for the enjoyment of a small handful of entitled right wing parents who get their jollies from it, and that conservative student from Harvard Westlake who made Bari Weiss look like a spoiled 7 year old made a yet to be contradicted argument for why this is manufactured.
The Harvard Westlake student’s presentation of the reality (never contradicted) certainly explains that flerp! isn’t correct that those loud and entitled parents are monsters who would do great harm to their children so they can have bragging rights about what college they go to.
If flerp! wants to make that case about those monster right wing parents, that is fine, but I don’t believe it for a second.
Those right wing parents know this is manufactured and their kid isn’t really harmed at all. They aren’t sending them to a prestigious college where they know their kid will be even more harmed by this!
If flerp! was right and those parents weren’t monsters, those private schools would be big feeders to Liberty University.
I can’t follow this comment. which may or may not have been addressed to me (also unclear).
FLERP! says “Most of these parents will put up with anything if it means their kids will have an inside track at entrance to the most prestigious colleges.”
I am shocked that your statements that most parents at private schools would “put up with anything” — accept great psychological harm being done to their children – to get their kid into college.
Really, that seems like a horribly low opinion of “most parents” who would subject their children to great psychological harm to get them into a prestigious college.
It isn’t true. They would subject their kid to a little annoyances that don’t cause great psychological harm, like wearing a mask.
If those parents really believed their own rhetoric about masks or learning some woke idea did great psychological damage to their children, but they forced their children to experience it for years so they could have bragging rights about what college their kid attends, that says something about those parents’ moral compass.
So I don’t understand why anyone would make such a slur on private school parents rather than to just acknowledge that their concern about the bad effects of their kid being taught too much “wokeness” is very small.
As the former head of a Manhattan private school for 19 years, I beg to differ.. Many, perhaps most, parents at some private schools don’t care at all about the harm of toxic competition and unremitting stress. Eating disorders, anxiety and depression are rampant and the parents accept that as the price of admission they can brag about at “the club.”
I agree with FLERP that the private school parents think they are buying a ticket to an Ivy League college.
Steve, which school?
The progressive Calhoun School
Steve,
But are parents up in arms and speaking out publicly to attack their private school for its’ toxic stress and unrelenting competition that is so damaging to their children? Because if they were doing that publicly – decrying how terrible the toxic stress and unrelenting competition at their child’s private school is – and yet keeping their kid in that toxic environment after proclaiming how their kid was being damaged by it, people would clearly assume they were very bad parents.
I think a few parents speak out about “wokeness” because they know it doesn’t really harm their kids and won’t make them look bad. It’s like Tucker Carlson says when he has to stand by his public opinions when it matters – Tucker says he expects that people know he is lying or exaggerating. If you asked a parent why he is wants his kid to continue to suffer all the psychological and emotional harm he says is caused by their child being in a too woke private school, that parent would probably say “oh I was exaggerating the harm being done by wokeness, of course, I didn’t think anyone would believe me because it was so stupid.”
Thanks, Steve. Yep, you’d know if anyone would.
As part of a debate from a few days ago here, I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last few days, and this is the conversation thread I was looking for just now to express my thoughts. I went to one of the oldest and best teacher education programs in the country at SDSU. In it, I was trained to address parent concerns in a specified way. Four parts: I hear you, I understand your concerns, I agree/disagree with parts of your concerns, and I am dedicated to working with you together to resolve it. That is how I talk to parents, even here on the great blog. If we’re arguing about politics, I’ll argue, but if we’re discussing parents’ concerns, I’ll do my best to adhere to my training.
I think we “woke” “mobsters” can do better in defense of honest education. We can better listen to the concerns of parents upset by CRT propaganda. We can better acknowledge their concerns, justified or not as they may be. We can better explain what is and is not being taught in a manner that is more explicative than defensive. And we can better invite the opposition to join with us in working toward a resolution instead of explaining, however right we may be, how we can move forward without denying the validity of the concerns parents have. We can do this better.
Good comment.
Thank you!
Agree.
So it’s the teachers and educators fault that they didn’t do a better job “listening to the concerns of parents upset by CRT propaganda”?
If they would have done that better, there wouldn’t be all these laws being passed to control what teachers can teach?
That seems like victim-blaming to me, but what do I know? Maybe the big problem is that teachers and educators didn’t acknowledge parent concerns correctly, and were too defensive when they explained what is and is not being taught.
Why don’t you all start doing that better? What took you so long? Why did teachers and educators fail to do what is the most obvious thing and would have cost no money?
If I understand correctly, you want to blame someone. Not talking about blame. Not talking about the past. Talking about the future.
Nycpsp– I take your point and I suspect we would all agree that many of the parents attending Boston’s “Parents Unite” forum last Fall are a vocal minority who are easily whipped into a frenzy, little different from the disruptive Loudoun County VA et al parents disrupting their local Bds of Ed re: curricular ‘indoctrination’ of CRT, DEI, gender orientation narratives.
Reading this article, I thought at first that the group was some venerable old privsch parent/ alumni group, but then I looked up their webpage. Nuh-uh. They are yet another astroturf group, and have barely been existence for a year or two. Maurice Cunningham has their number: https://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2021/07/12/ugh-another-astroturf-fake-parents-group-parents-united/
Don’t be offput by the constant confusion of name (Parents Unite/ Parents United), which even Berkshire does in the article Diane posted. If it’s headed up by Ashley Jacobs, it’s the Parents Unite group that is fighting AISNE [Association of Independent Schools of New England] over the ‘shift’ in ‘shaping’ curriculum.
As you suggest, proof of the pudding will be if these outraged parents actually withdraw their kids from the crème de la crème private academies which they pay $50k+/yr for entrée to the most selective colleges in the country.
bethree5,
yes! I feel like 99% of this astroturf/manufactured outrage. So I guess I may have been too defensive when I read leftcoastteacher’s post that seemed to assume that if teachers and educators took these parents more seriously and listened to them, it would be better.
All that does is LEGITIMIZE astroturf. That’s what got us into this mess. Instead of marginalizing these astroturf folks, we are told we aren’t taking them seriously enough. That message is amplified by the right wing media universe — look how bad educators are, they just aren’t taking these parents seriously. Then other parents think “wow, even the liberal media says the teachers are educators aren’t taking these very important parents seriously enough, so I am inclined to believe they must have a very important point.
Shutting it down means marginalizing these folks. Not legitimizing them. This is manufactured outrage, that increases and gets stronger as folks read constantly about how serious these folks spewing manufactured outrage need to be taken.
What a bunch of poseurs these people are! I bet that most of them can’t even afford their own space planes and launch vehicles.
lol! definitely poseurs.
Perpetuating government by the richest 0.1% through a culture of economic predation and power limited to a select demographic…
Philanthropy Roundtable (about as right wing and social Darwinist as it gets) partnered in 2018 with the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) and Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA) for a 41 page report about Catholic School Choice.
The “conservative” impetus to grow enrollment in and, to tailor curriculum for, private schools (including conservative religious schools) is the desire for inculcation of colonialism (and/or the lesser goal of education’s commercialization, “brands on a large scale”).
Shout out to Melinda Gates
I just want to say that I would challenge any ignoramus who believes that the typical public school student learns very little except wokeness.
The typical pre-college coursework for a high school senior — and what is required to receive a high school diploma — is far more rigorous than it was decades ago.
The science and math requirements – just to be a basic graduate – are very likely beyond most Republicans in Congress. The science and math requirements for selective colleges are even higher.
The few parents who object to having their high school seniors have to read Toni Morrison’s Beloved in an elective english class and are demanding the right – as privileged white parents – to decide what books the school will ban and what no child will be allowed to be taught is simply a reflection of the media elevating the folks who used to be perceived as cranks to speaking for all parents.
Those parents always existed. They just were not given attention that was disproportionate to their number.
It is the opposite of how the media portrayed the anti-standardized testing parents. Or the “lower class size” parents. Those parents are either totally invisible — despite the fact that they represented far more folks than the “ban Toni Morrison” parents did. Or they are marginalized and presented as a small voice and the so-called “liberal media” wouldn’t write hundreds of stories about them with this framing: “isn’t this terrible school system bad for not giving these parents control and just ignoring them”. “How much danger are politicians in for not giving parents any right to address what their kid is learning?” But the news media will write hundreds of articles about a few right wing parents that present exactly that right wing framing.
nycpsp– “Those parents always existed. They just were not given attention that was disproportionate to their number. It is the opposite of how the media portrayed the anti-standardized testing parents. Or the ‘lower class size’ parents.“
Well, rightwing media gives them disproportionate coverage for sure, for obvious reasons. And of course there’s the general tendency of all media to cover controversy, which means any anti-public-ed brouhaha is going to make the news.
But I find what we used to call MSM, now considered in many circles as leftwing media, is not so easily pigeonholed. [Full disclosure: I only have subscriptions to NYT & WaPo. I wish I could include Chic Trib & Boston Globe & some CA nwsppr, but budget doesn’t extend that far].
I have always been very unhappy with NYT’s ed coverage. What little they cover toes the neoliberal line, so they basically ignore public ed issues [outside of local mayoral politics] and are over the top on pro-charter articles. OTOH they were better than other nwspprs on covering the anti-stdzd-testing movement, because it was spearheaded by locals.
A glance at WaPo suggests they’re too involved with anti-public-ed issues, but that’s because of general local & suburban debate over DC’s mayoral pubsch policies, plus they have the loudmouth Loudoun County parents featured nationally for BofEd disruption. They also have wkly columnist Jay Mathews who is pro-certain ‘excellent’ charters & pro-AP/IB courses, but he is an oddball who likes to spur debate, gets plenty of pushback from commenters, & actually conducts a conversation. Then there’s the venerable Valerie Strauss, on the same page as Diane, and lots of interesting stuff re: HCBU’s, what’s going on in MD, et al. I recommend WaPo for interesting coverage of ed issues. You’ll also find plenty of commenters bringing up the pro-smaller-classes position.
It strikes me that a lot of the sensitivity to the issues involved here come not from school but from the children in school. They read books that treat the issue of how LGBTQ etc is treated in their milieu. They read books about racism, and what it looks like. They discuss these books among their peers who have read these books, now disagreeing with each other, now agreeing in ways that are pretty sophisticated. They do this without teachers at all. Sometimes their conclusions seem a bit overdone to me, but that is the source of their interests.
Perhaps this is why book banning is proceeding. Maybe those who do not want real discussion on these matters know that teachers really are not doing any of this, so they go after the nude mice in the mix.
Roy, that is a fascinating take. When you see that kids are reading & discussing those books among themselves, what spurred that, if not teachers (or perhaps the school library]? Did their perusal of the internet lead them to controversy over certain books?
Wonderful and frankly hilarious piece by Jennifer Berkshire. I’ll believe the ‘belligerent’ $50K&up/yr private school parents when they withdraw their kids from the hautes écoles and start schooling them at home courtesy of some Marc Andreessen-funded online instruction program. That will happen when hell freezes over, or when prestige colleges start prioritizing admissions for the homeschooled. Whichever comes first.
Great one!
Speaking of legacy admission colleges- Brown U. faculty voted to postpone creation of a new Koch-funded Center on campus. The win for the 90% was the result of efforts by UnKoch My Campus.
Shame that Brown faculty didn’t care about Gates funding of corporatized and privatized public -12 i.e. the taking of Main Street’s assets.
I am always amazed at how these discussions about “parents’ rights” ignore the rights of the 90% of parents who don’t attend these conferences, aren’t at school board meetings yelling about conspiracies to turn their kids transgender, and who are not in favor of having their children fed propaganda and lies.
They also ignored the “rights” of the huge number of parents who were anti-testing or fighting for smaller class sizes!
But if you are a small group of parents whose desires happen to correspond with the right wing agenda, suddenly you can be presented as if you represent most parents.
While the many parents who are anti-testing or want smaller class sizes are marginalized as not important.