Do Parents Have a Right to Dumb Down Education?

Parents’ Bill of Rights? How About One for Students Who Want a Good Education?

Al Quie was elected to Congress from a largely rural Minnesota district in 1958. The fourth generation farmer brought to Washington humility, an eagerness to learn and a generosity of spirit all too rare in politics today.

Typical of Quie was his recognition of what he didn’t know. When he was appointed to the House Committee on Education and Labor, he understood that the schools in his district had more in common with Lake Wobegone than those in the inner city. So on his own, he went to Harlem, and just talked to people on the streets, in the coffee shops and barber shops. No agenda, no staff, just this tall, lanky, very white Norwegian with an affinity for cowboy boots having conversations with parents about the schools their children attended. He found the experience so impactful, that he repeated it a year or two later with a street corner visit to inner city Los Angeles.

Quie eventually became the senior Republican member of the committee and one of the nation’s experts on education. The state of Minnesota marked Quie’s 90th birthday with a proclamation, recognizing him for “setting the foundations of nearly all the education legislation” during his nearly 21 years in Congress.

Today, Quie’s successors take their cues on education from the likes of Glenn Youngkin who was elected governor of Virginia by demonizing teachers. Minnesota Republicans introduced legislation - a parents’ “bill of rights” - that has little to do with quality education and much to do with election-year politics. The initiative isn’t even about Minnesota; it copies bills proposed by national conservative groups.

We all can acknowledge that some school boards are crazy and some teachers overstep boundaries. School board members proposing to rename 44 schools, including those honoring people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln without whom there likely would not be a United States, is the antithesis of critical thinking.

And, for every anecdote of education extremism from the left, there is one from the right. This month’s example comes from West Virginia. Two Huntington, W. V., public high school teachers escorted their entire homeroom classes to a religious revival. According to one news report citing a lawsuit brought by parents, “Students, including a Jewish student who asked to leave but was not permitted to do so, were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer…The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Students said they were told that those who did not follow the Bible would go to ‘face eternal torment’.”

The Minnesota parents’ bill of rights, though, doesn’t address the excesses as much as it proposes to dumb down education in the name of parents’ rights. The legislation is a series of five, vague directives that give parents the right to examine and effectively approve the details of a school’s curriculum and demand alternative instruction if they disagree with the proposed content. The laws would reduce classroom instruction to the lowest standard of the loudest and most strident parents, people who may or may not know anything about pedagogy or content.

Here’s the thing. Parents already have the right to choose. They can send their kids to a private school or educate them at home. What the legislation seeks is not to protect the rights of parents but to enable the demands of some parents at the expense of children.

If policymakers today followed the lead of Al Quie, and spoke one-on-one with parents away from the cameras and signs and provocateurs, they might hear a different story.

• Parents are worried that the best teachers are burning out, frustrated by low pay and long hours. Pay teachers what they are worth and provide funds for the classroom supplies needed.

• Many parents worry less about the teaching of critical race theory - which, in fact, is not part of Minnesota’s K-12 curriculum - and more about critical race exposure. Only 4% of Minnesota teachers identify as people of color or American Indians; 34% of public school students identify with those groups. Attracting more teachers of color takes money (for example, active recruitment efforts and tuition reimbursement programs) and commitment.

• Challenge conventional thinking. In today’s world where every school-age kid knows how to access information on a computer, why aren’t individual learning plans more fully integrated into classrooms. Maybe we don’t need smaller class sizes, we need more avenues for children to learn and master content. Perhaps we should have 50 students in a classroom - five pods of 10 students who are at the same level. Those kids still trying to understand November’s lessons have the time and means to do so, while the students who already have figured out April’s instruction aren’t held back. This classroom, though, needs resources, starting with skilled and trained staff - a master teacher working with several assistants.

Our schools today are in crisis. But improvement won’t come from those who listen only to the angriest voices on YouTube videos, get their information on what schools are teaching from Facebook or see education policy as a way to gain political advantage.

Those supporting efforts like parents’ bills of rights are playing to the basest emotions of parents. What’s really needed is a students’ bill of rights that assures they will be taught by engaged teachers in well-funded schools that make a well-rounded education a priority.