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Opinion

Parents should control what our kids learn in school

Star Parker Founder & President, Center for Urban Renewal and Education
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One of the many polarizing issues that has gotten particularly heated in the past few years is the debate over who should control what our kids learn in school. Many liberals believe schools should expose students to issues like critical race theory, mental health and gender identity. Many conservatives believe those topics should be off limits in the classroom – and the libraries. Straight Arrow News contributor Star Parker talks about how a liberal agenda in education is eroding the values of our children.

In life and love, we hold the grandest space in our hearts for our children. It is our job to ensure that they receive love, care and the tools and skills needed to live a healthy and productive life. It is also our job to protect them. 

Through the confines of COVID, more and more parents are becoming aware of just what that means, as the left continues its assault of woke ideology on our society and perhaps most importantly, in our classrooms. 

You’ve seen the headlines, too many to count. Recently, in California, a high school teacher actually boasted on social media about having a queer library available to students that includes books so dramatic that news stations deemed the details too extremely sexually explicit in nature to include in their coverage. 

So, parents have started standing up against these various extremes. Now, in fact, in our public schools all across the nation, the rights we all have as parents are not ones that are recognized by the government. And in fact, fighting against the government, because the government has tragically moved into places that it shouldn’t be. 

The Department of Justice wasted no time in labeling parents speaking out at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. 

Despite the best attempts by the government, parents continue on in their fight, because the point of education is not just for students to acquire knowledge – critical for going into the world and earning a living – it’s also about acquiring knowledge that clarifies in the mind of the young person, the purpose of his life, and/or her life, the values and the virtues that will carry them through their lives and all of the trials and all of the tribulations that come with it. 

Yet, as this ideology of extreme has come into our schools from the left, we’re continuing to see challenges, simultaneously removing the building blocks of values that matter the most. And parents are fighting back, because this includes the obsession to remove religion from our schools, to the point where a high school football coach had to go before the Supreme Court earlier this year just for leading a prayer after a football game. 

Removing religion from our schools only serves to smother the source of the very oxygen that fuels the essence of what education is about. 

In life and love, we hold the grandest space in our hearts for our children. It is our job to ensure that they receive love, care, and the tools and skills needed to live a healthy and productive life. It is also our job to protect them. 

Through the confines of COVID, more and more parents are becoming aware of just what that means, as the left continues its assault of woke ideology on our society and perhaps most importantly, in our classrooms. 

You’ve seen the headlines, too many to count. Recently, in California, a high school teacher actually boasted on social media about having a queer library available to students that includes books so dramatic that news stations deemed the details too extremely sexually explicit in nature to include in their coverage. 

So, so parents have started standing up against these various extremes. Now, in fact, in our public schools all across the nation, the rights we all have as parents are not ones that are recognized by the government. And in fact, fighting against the government, because the government has tragically moved into places that it shouldn’t be. 

The Department of Justice wasted no time in labeling parents speaking out at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. 

Despite the best attempts by the government, parents continue on in their fight, because the point of education is not just for students to acquire knowledge – critical for going into the world and earning a living – it’s also about acquiring knowledge that clarifies in the mind of the young person, the purpose of his life, and or her life, the values and the virtues that will carry them through their lives, and all of the trials and all of the tribulations that come with it. 

Yet, as this ideology of extreme has come into our schools from the left, we’re continuing to see challenges, simultaneously removing the building blocks of values that matter the most. And parents are fighting back, because this includes the obsession to remove religion from our schools, to the point where a high school football coach had to go before the Supreme Court earlier this year just for leading a prayer after a football game. 

Removing religion from our schools only serves to smother the source of the very oxygen that fuels the essence of what education is about. 

After visiting our great nation, the French philosopher and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, he published a book in 1835, called Democracy in America. And in this great book, he states that in quotes, it is by the prescriptions relative to public education that from the beginning, one sees revealed in the full light of day the original character of American civilization, X quote, 

What does our public education today reveal about our current culture, our current character, our nation as a whole and its character? 

Parents have natural and divine rights given to them as mother and father of that child. And if those rights remain with the parents and are not interfered with, nor threatened by the government and the left wing mob, then the character of our country can still be seen gloriously in the light of day. 

And I think that’s what most parents want for their children. And we certainly do not want barriers to keep them from desiring and obtaining their goals.

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