Standing Up to Agenda-Driven Education

It seems like common sense: parents of school-aged children should know (or at least be able to find out) what their kids are being taught, what kinds of content are being made available to them, and how school officials are using their students’ private data. Even a few decades ago, there would have been a consensus among parents, educators, and legislators that moms and dads, not the public school system, are the primary decision-makers and responsible parties in the lives of their kids. But in the modern, dystopian American educational system, involved parents are now considered a threat to the self-proclaimed experts tasked with teaching our kids.

In the old days, school was where students learned reading, writing, math, geography, history, science, music, and art. Generally, these topics were taught objectively, with teachers communicating the facts and inviting thoughtful engagement. As students were given the tools to think critically by applying logic and asking good questions, they could form their own stances and opinions, rather than having moral judgments presented to them, fully formed and beyond the point where they could be debated.

To be sure, many of us who were educated outside the home (myself included) would willingly say one or several of our teachers played an important role in helping us become who we are, but this happened largely in the context of relationships, not through curricula that teach a new, government-sanctioned orthodoxy on issues of sexuality, race, justice, and politics, to name a few.

Somewhere along the way, administrators and educators began believing they could and should usurp the God-given role of parents to morally shape children. In many cases, federal and state governments affirmed this perspective, pouring taxpayer dollars into agenda-driven programs and curricula. Sadly, many parents also gave their assent by handing their kids over for roughly 35 hours a week, allowing not just their intellect, but also their moral compass to be oriented by the state.

Mary Miller and her grandson Nathaniel.

That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic when many moms and dads found themselves sharing workspace with their students and overhearing what went on in their classrooms. Since then, the groundswell of pushback among concerned parents who are standing up to guard the hearts and minds of their kids has been both a shock to liberals and a rallying cry for conservatives. Parents are re-asserting their rightful place as the primary authority in their kids’ lives, and they’re not the only ones. Now members of Congress are putting on a full-court press, too.

U.S. Representative Mary Miller (R-Quincy) is a mom and grandmother from rural Illinois and Vice Chair of the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee. With other conservative members of the U.S. House of Representatives, she is working to reset the boundary between parents’ rights and the responsibilities of the state. Miller is heavily involved in this multifaceted effort as a co-sponsor of a constitutional amendment (H.J.Res.38) introduced by U.S. Representative Debbie Lesko (AZ-08) affirming parents’ right to function as the final authority on their kids’ education. Miller also drafted two key provisions in the Parents Bill of Rights Act (H.R.5), which passed the U.S. House on March 24th by a vote of 213 to 208 (with 14 not voting).

Of this crucial piece of legislation, Miller said,

“I have strongly opposed every effort by radical elites in DC to bypass parents and push racist Critical Race Theory, perverted sex-ed curriculum, and dangerous transgender policies that harm our children in our schools. The Parents Bill of Rights Act includes two provisions I drafted to protect children’s privacy from Big Tech and affirm a parent’s right to opt their children out of taking surveys regarding sexual orientation, transgender ideology, and woke politics. Congress must pass The Parents Bill of Rights to empower parents and increase transparency in the classroom.”

Naturally, the Biden White House has already made a statement, describing this commonsense bill as putting “LGBTQI+ students at higher risk” and accusing supporters of “politicizing our children’s education.” The democrat-controlled U.S. Senate is not expected to take up the legislation, so as it stands, the Parents Bill of Rights Act will not go into effect. What it will do, however, and what U.S. House Republicans no doubt expect, is reveal to American parents exactly who is politicizing and poisoning the American educational system. It isn’t the lawmakers who are seeking to reduce government involvement in what is the purview of the family, but the radical, leftist activists who see American public schools as an obvious training ground for the next generation, who they wrongly believe belongs to them.

Parents across the nation are saying “no more,” and these legislative efforts on their behalf are just one sign that a sleeping giant has been awakened. There’s a popular t-shirt that says, “I don’t co-parent with the government,” and they are putting a face on the sentiment. From local school board meetings all the way to the U.S. Capitol, these conversations will continue, alerting more and more moms and dads to the agenda that has crept into classrooms, school nurse and counselor offices, libraries, locker rooms, and beyond. Once parents sense their kids are in danger, they won’t stop until they know they’re safe. It’s how good moms and dads are made, and it’s putting American schools on notice.