Pushing Parents Around?

We came across this article on a blog by Denis Ian. He has some interesting thoughts….

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It’s all too clear that there are some schools that think they must save your children … from you. 

Yes. You.

Doctrinaire teachers, administrators, and boards of education have become presumptuous and smug.  And their contempt for parents is grounded in their surety that …  in all matters, not just academics. … parents fall short. Way short.

And the new, modern mission of public education … and those extra-enlightened educators …  is to provide the right wisdoms and morals and ideals for the children who arrive lacking.

Lacking because you’re lacking. Because you’re parental dummies.

So they have no qualms … no reluctance whatsoever … remodeling your child’s quaint moralities and passé decencies so that they can be fine-tuned for the new tomorrow that’s already assaulting us today.  A tomorrow that doesn’t feature parents like you.

Some school leaders bully parents outright. 

They argue that lots of parents are socially antiquated … and that it’s necessary to bypass them altogether. That it’s best if culturally-savvy teachers and cutting-edge school leaders simply impose the new realities on the school community because involving parents would only turn the transformation into a slog.

So they lay down new guidelines, issue new edicts, and institute new commandments. Then they sermonize and preachify.

And too often, parents are the last to know that there’s a more vivid sex ed program … or a new co-ed bathroom policy … or a reconsidered approach to the Pledge or the National Anthem. Or that this holiday has been renovated or that tradition abandoned because they don’t meet the new expectations of some noisy fussers.

Parents learn head-shaking stuff through a newsletter … or the grapevine … usually after-the fact.  

Perhaps it’s a menu redesign by the school’s vegan vigilantes. Or that some age-old playground favorites are suddenly too-too touchy. And touchy is bad stuff. Even in a game of tag. For first graders. Other school leaders … in more toney communities … actually nanny parents.

Coax them. Induce them to embrace itchy changes that, at the same time, make them uneasy.

Teachers and school leaders appeal to a certain sophistication that is, in truth, a sloppy tactic to usher in disturbing changes under the flimsy guise of global awareness. Whatever that is.

It’s lookism at its worst.  The whispered warning that to oppose this or that might make the community appear less metropolitan or less secular. And that would reflect very badly.

So parents are smoothly duped with fraudy bullspit.  Principals and superintendents insist that  “progressive”schools must embrace the most startling changes of even the smallest minorities.  That, to do otherwise would exhibit an embarrassing parochialism in a world gone cosmopolitan.

And that’s all followed by the cheesy urgency that it’s imperative for parents to sign on with the new educationalists lest their own children become global stragglers.

In other words, they’d look cornfed. Like social bumpkins. Or hicks. So parents nod each other … and go along with the new weirdnesses. Or just go silent.  

Either choice is a form of surrender.

Then they’re shocked when their own children become enthusiastic evangelicals of principles and ethics at odds with the family culture. Stunned to learn … even with all of the curriculum rewrites … and millions spent …  that their children lag behind in every measure of educational growth.

But then they reason away their convictions … and their shock … by convincing themselves that they cannot ignore the new realities even if they’re personally disturbed by it all because …  after all …  schools of excellence must be at their inclusive and multicultural best, right?

And dopey parents then nod each other because who can argue with that sort of brain soot.

And, no, these are not imaginings.

This great upheaval is not confined to our schools. It’s transformed our politics, crept into our religions, and even oozed into our sports and entertainment.

But there’s no doubt about it … classrooms are the new societal petri dishes that will grow the future of this nation because  … what we see in the classrooms of today, will take root in the America of tomorrow.

So we’d better be careful of what seeds are sown there. And who does the sowing.

That should be easy enough for hayseeds like us, right?