Battle lines have been drawn, the war is on, and the great parent awakening of 2021 will have permanent consequences.
By Larry Sand -
Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, my parents could send me off to school and assume I would be taught by people who shared their values. Those days are long gone, however. To be sure, most educators today work hard, and do their best to give kids a balanced education. But there are too many who don’t, and parents are rightfully worried. In fact, according to a Fox News survey, 80 percent of parents are “extremely” or “very” concerned about what our public schools are teaching. Whether it is the sexualization of six-year-olds, white kids being told they are oppressors, or children being forced to chant Aztec prayers, many parents are fed up. A few recent examples:
- In Broward County, Florida, a teacher took her elementary school students to a gay bar as a way to learn about the homosexual community.
- In eastern Kentucky, students gave lap dances to the staff as part of Hazard High School’s homecoming week festivities.
- In Loudoun County, Virginia, a high school boy wearing a dress has been accused of raping a girl in the women’s bathroom, the second time he has been accused. Neither case was pursued by the district superintendent, who, when asked about why he didn’t act, incoherently blamed Donald Trump’s rejiggering of Title IX regulations. One particularly insightful student put things into perspective: “If you can make a child stay home for refusing to wear a mask, you can also make a child stay home for raping another student.”
With parents now awakening, there is a campaign afoot to diminish their input on what children are learning in school. After the National School Boards Association sent a well-publicized letter to President Biden on September 29, in which the organization contended that there is a serious threat to our “schools and its (sic) education leaders” due to a “growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation (at school board meetings) occurring across the country,” the organization was rightly excoriated for it, and on October 22 issued an apology. It seems that the communiqué was the work of NSBA CEO Chip Slaven and president Viola Garcia, with no board input. But apparently, there’s more to the story. According to emails obtained by Parents Defending Education through public records requests, the NSBA was in talks with White House officials for several weeks before sending its letter. For her collusion in the fraud, you might think that Mrs. Garcia would disappear from the scene. But no, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has appointed Ms. Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP tests known as “the Nation’s Report Card.”
