Who Has Control?
Virginia is just the beginning of the battle for parental control in education.
We are just going to ignore how long it’s been since the last newsletter.
RON MACARTHUR PHOTOS
Virginia Gubernatorial Race
This past Tuesday night the unthinkable happened. By unthinkable, I don’t mean that nobody had dreamt that it was a possibility, but the odds were seemingly low. There were some who predicted that it would happen but they were typically mocked for being naive or grossly misinformed. Nonetheless, the results could not lie and it was clear that a world-changing event had taken place. Obviously, I am talking about the Atlanta Braves winning the World Series.
In other (and less important) news, the Virginia Gubernatorial election was held that same night and the Republican Party completed a statewide sweep after failing to win a single statewide election in 12 years. There will be a million different analyses written about what these results tell us about the state of the American voter, Republican party, and politics writ large. One issue that will almost certainly come up is the role that education played in the Republican party’s ability to seemingly rise from the ashes in the Old Dominion State.
People will discuss whether the debate over Critical Race Theory or the refusal of many school districts to go back to in-person learning was more important (I tend to believe it was the latter). Regardless, the moment that will be looked back on as an inflection point will be the debate gaffe of a lifetime from Democratic Candidate Terry McAuliffe when he said that he doesn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” One of the reasons that this moment was so significant is the sheer truthfulness of McAuliffe’s statement. This is obvious in that there was no backtracking or correcting from McAuliffe after the debate was over and his comments made all of the headlines.
It would be great if resistance to parental involvement in education was merely an idea amongst Democratic politicians that could be rejected at the polls like in Virginia and die a whimpering death. Unfortunately, these are not merely partisan ideas that can be electorally rejected like a Lebron chase-down block because they have been percolating from the education intelligentsia into mainstream thought. Rejecting a politician pushing such ideas is like treating a symptom without curing the underlying disease coming out of the colleges of education across the country.
Parental Control Isn’t Optional
First, I want to say that parental control is not, nor should not, be optional when it comes to educating children. The education/training/raising of children is the primary responsibility of every parent according to God. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” In Ephesians 6:4 God commands, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
These verses make clear that God expects and commands parents to educate or train their children in the ways and knowledge of the Lord. Notice, that God does not demand that parents make sure their children turn out a certain way or act a certain way. The results belong to the sovereignty of God, but the process of education and training is used by God to achieve his purposes of redemption. In other words, parents are not given an option by God to “control” their child’s education or not “control” it. Rather, they are expected and commanded to take responsibility for and prioritize how their children are being educated/trained.
This is true not just because it’s a biblical mandate but it’s practically true as well. Parents know and care about their children (on average, not including extreme cases of neglect and/or abuse) more than any educator possibly could. It is foolish to believe that someone else, educator or not, could possibly have a better idea about what is best for a child than their parents would.
On the flip side, educators, whether that means teachers or administrators, should not view parental control as optional either. Yes, there are skills and/or knowledge that educators have in how to best educate children that parents do not possess, but that does not, therefore, give educators sole responsibility for the education of children. While parents all across the country (unless they homeschool) entrust the education of their children to trained educators, that does not absolve them of their responsibility to ensure that their children are being educated properly. As my school’s mission statement says, part of an educator’s role is to “partner with parents” in the education of their children, not subsume total control.
While this sounds great in theory, I know that very often parental involvement in their child’s education can look a lot less appealing in practice. Parents can attempt to micromanage how teachers teach, what they teach, and everything else about a teacher’s job. They often disagree not just with pedagogy but have different ideas about the purpose of education and the goal of a class. For example, a parent can be focused on grades because their children must get into a particular college. Meanwhile, the teacher can be focused on a student’s mastery of a subject and/or ability to think. These contradictory goals can lead to conflict that makes the life of an educator (and parent) harder than it would be otherwise (at least that’s how I usually feel about it).
Thus, educators will often default to their “expertise” as the trump card when faced with conflict from parents. While not outright saying it, very often an educator will cite their expertise as justification for wanting to educate without parental involvement. Educators will praise parental involvement up until the moment when that parental involvement starts to make life harder, then cite the ignorance of parents as a reason that they should be ignored.
Educational Intelligentsia
Obviously, I am painting with broad strokes in my description of educators but I believe that the theories propounded by many professional educators and educational theorists prove my point. These are the supposed “experts” in education and yet they get the basic understanding of education, that parents are primarily responsible for the education of their children, wrong.
For example, the current Secretary of Education for the Biden Administration, Miguel Cardona, refused to say that parents should be in charge of their child’s education as the primary stakeholder.
This obviously is not the whole clip because I have been unable to find the complete questioning so it’s understandable if you take it with a grain of salt. However, I still think it is telling that the immediate reaction of Secretary Cardano was to pivot away from acknowledging parents as primary stakeholders to parents as “important” stakeholders. This pivot is important because it demonstrates the educational intelligentsia’s unwillingness to concede control to parents.
While Secretary of Education can be a rather political position, a professor at the University of Washington is not usually political. Walter Parker, according to UW’s website, is “a professor emeritus of social studies education and (by courtesy) political science at the University of Washington, a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics in Education at the University of Wisconsin, a member of the National Academy of Education, and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association.” I was first introduced to Walter Parker in my undergraduate social studies education program when I was assigned to read an academic article by him. In the article, Parker wrote the following:
Parents may claim they have a natural right to exclusive education authority -- natural because, first, the children in question are ‘their’ children (the ownership assumption), and second because parents are naturally concerned to maximize the welfare of their children (the altruistic assumption). Both assumptions are specious, as both educators and citizens are quick to point out. Parents may have given birth to or adopted children, but that does not establish possession. Children could be and have been imagined to ‘belong’ to the gods, the state, or the village, for example. The propensity of at least some families to teach racist, ethnocentric, sexist, and other values that contradict the democratic ideal, particularly the bedrock values of civic equality, popular sovereignty, tolerance, and freedom, undermines the second assumption, as does the frequency of child abuse and neglect.
While lengthy, Parker clearly argues against the idea that parents have “exclusive education authority” over their children. He goes on to write,
Neither professional educators nor democratic citizens are inclined, as parents sometimes may be, to claim exclusive educational authority, because that would be obviously undemocratic. Rather, both groups claim a seat at the deliberative table alongside parents where curricular policy is developed in a democratic society.
This may sound like the “partnership with parents” idea I discussed above; however, there are some marked differences. Most notably, the parent does not relinquish “exclusive educational authority” when they partner with teachers. In fact, if a conflict arises between teacher and parent then the parent should absolutely have the last say what happens with their child, not the teacher. The parent’s will, as stupid as it may be according to the teacher, should absolutely be the ultimate authority. The partnership exists only as long as the parent is willing to continue with it.
I could continue to provide examples of where the education intelligentsia has gone awry, but I would write forever. My only desire now is to convince people that voting for or against politicians and/or school board members will only continue to be a treatment of a symptom when a much more serious disease is left ignored. If parents are serious about retaking control over their child’s education, then they must look beyond the ballot box to the colleges of education and the educational intelligentsia that fills them.
God Bless,
Hunter Burnett