“Parents’ Rights” In Public Education
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“Parents’ rights.” Which parents and whose rights?
It seems to be all over the news these days, doesn’t it? Numerous bills around “parents’ rights” have been introduced in legislatures across the country, and some have passed while others have not. It’s the topic of countless, impassioned public comments at school board meetings nationwide, and the pet cause of quite a few individual lawmakers and other elected officials. But what does it all mean, really?
Many “parents’ rights” groups have sprung up around the country in the last couple of years. Just here in Douglas County, we have CPAN (Colorado Parent Advocacy Network), Moms For Liberty (which is getting ready to start a local chapter), and the local chapter of FAIR (formerly known as “Wokebusters of Douglas County”). These groups get an assist from other organizations like the Independence Institute, which bills itself as a libertarian think tank, but like these other organizations, the topics to which it devotes energy and resources are all indicative of an organization with a conservative, far-right agenda. All these groups are clamoring about “parents’ rights,” and their tactics, efforts, and antics are getting a whole lot of attention.
On the surface, what they’re advocating for sounds perfectly reasonable. Of course parents should have a say and a voice in their children’s education. Of course they should know what their kids are being taught. Of course they should be allowed to review the content of curricula. Of course they should be allowed to opt their children out of a specific activity or assignment if they object to the subject matter. No reasonable person would disagree with that.
But here’s the thing that all of these groups fail to acknowledge: parents already have all of these rights. Here in Douglas County, parents of middle school and high school students have access to the Infinite Campus app, which provides plenty of information about assignments, grades, attendance, class schedules, and so on. Class teachers are identified, along with their email addresses. Parents can attend school board meetings when discussions about curriculum standards – or anything else – are on the agenda, and offer public comment. Any parent is not just welcomed but encouraged to attend PTO, SAC and multiple district-level committee meetings, and volunteer opportunities exist for those who wish to get more involved.
Middle school students take a course called “Integrated Health and Wellness,” and there are units that cover sex education, sexual harassment, substance abuse, online safety, and using devices responsibly. Parents are notified in advance (via email) about these upcoming topics, and informed that they may opt their kids out of them if they wish. One middle school in Highlands Ranch sends out a newsletter every week, and it includes a section for each student team, and the teachers on that team give a synopsis of what was covered in class that week, and what will be covered in subsequent weeks. There is already a wealth of information readily available to any parent who wants to know more about what their child is learning in school. And if they don’t know where to find that information, all they have to do is ask.
So why are all these groups and lawmakers devoting so much effort to pass legislation bestowing and granting rights that already exist?
The early days of “parents’ rights”
Debates about “parents’ rights” and education are really nothing new. There is even a case dating back to the 1870s, believe it or not.
There was a time when parents did have more power and control over their children’s education, which was prior to the creation of taxpayer-funded public schools in the 1830s. An episode of the Harvard EdCast on February 17, 2023, featured Jack Schneider, an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“So go back to before the creation of taxpayer-funded public schools, go back to a time before the state exercised much authority, go back to a time where decisions were really being made at the local level by whoever was showing up to town meetings. Yeah. Parents had control over things like what books their kids showed up with. And they could orchestrate the firing of a teacher if they didn't like the fact that teacher got married or if they didn't like the fact that that teacher practiced a religion different from the religion practiced by the majority in that town,” said Schneider. Over time, that power has – rightfully – been diminished, and while parents do still have plenty of rights when it comes to their child’s education, they are balanced against the interests of society at large.
In the 1870s case, parents in Wisconsin wanted their son excused from his geography class so he could have more time to learn how to manage the family business. When he didn’t turn in his homework, his teacher beat him, (remember – it was the 1870s) and his parents sued. The defense argued that when parents send their children to school, they implicitly agree to submit to “the judgment of the teacher.” When the case reached the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in 1874, the Court disagreed, ruling that parents have the right to select what their children will learn. “The parent is quite as likely to make as wise and judicious a selection as the teacher.”
In the 1920s, the United States Supreme Court upheld “parents’ rights” in a pair of landmark cases: Myer v. Nebraska and Farrington v. Tokushige. The Court struck down state laws prohibiting teaching German (Nebraska) and Japanese (Hawaii).
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court struck down an Oregon law that essentially outlawed private schools. This law was intended to mold children into a homogenous Protestant, American culture. A Catholic education was therefore bitterly opposed by white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. That group widely circulated a pamphlet authored by its Grand Dragon, who voiced his hatred for Catholic parents and their school-aged children, saying that, “somehow, these mongrel hordes must be Americanized; failing that, deportation is the only remedy.”
In these early cases, the Supreme Court’s intent was to uphold both the authority of the state’s interest in and responsibility to educate its young citizens, as well as the specific right of parents to direct their own children’s education. For example, states may enforce compulsory school attendance, but parents have a great deal of latitude in choosing where, how, and when their children are educated.
It’s a delicate balance, to be sure, but the underlying consensus in all these cases was that yes, in general, parents know and love their children, and are the ones best suited to make decisions about their education. Their children. Not all children.
And then a step to the right
The “parents’ rights” movement took a darker turn in the 1950s. 1954 saw a watershed moment in American public education, with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that racial segregation in school was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. And of course, much of the 1950s was overshadowed by the Red Scare, when scores of American citizens were targeted by House Representative Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
The HUAC was formed in 1947 to investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities by private citizens and public employees suspected of sympathizing and collaborating with the Communist Party. By the early 1950s, McCarthy had become the public face of the HUAC with his campaign to expose Communists in every corner of the federal government, and blackballing those deemed to be traitorous and untrustworthy. Before long, the net was cast much wider, and celebrities of the time like film director Orson Wells, folk singer Pete Seeger, and actress Lena Horne were called before the HUAC and asked, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” Seeger refused to answer any of the questions he was asked, was charged with 10 counts of contempt of Congress, and sentenced to a year in prison.
Given the level of social unrest stirred up by desegregation and McCarthyism, it is not surprising that educators soon found themselves in the crosshairs as well, with groups of conservative parents scrutinizing schools, ready to spring into action at the first signs of communist infiltration. Those who were targeted worked to desegregate schools, held interracial dances, and taught progressive topics such as sex education. And when they were identified, these parent activists would mount efforts to get them fired, and sometimes they succeeded.
In 1974, the Kanawha County, West Virginia, school board ignited a firestorm when it chose to comply with a state mandate that “school books should portray the contributions of minorities to American culture.” A woman named Alice Moore, the wife of a fundamentalist pastor who won a seat on the school board by campaigning against sex education, led the charge. She decried the new textbooks, excoriating them as “anti-American” and rife with content that “advocated unprincipled relativism, promoted antagonistic behavior, contained obscene material, put down Jesus Christ, and upheld communism.” She was also downright scandalized about white children being exposed to “Black vernacular,” and learning “to speak in ghetto dialect.”
The newly-formed Heritage Foundation saw this as a golden opportunity to insert itself into the controversy, and quickly fanned the flames, telling parents that they needed to flee their public schools, issuing harrowing warnings about the unnatural, debauched, depraved things (like cannibalism) that their children were being exposed to at school every day. This proved to be a prescient move on the part of the Heritage Foundation, as it is now one of the most powerful and well-funded conservative think tanks in the country.
And in the 1990s, new life was breathed into the “parents’ rights” movement when evangelical conservatives pushed to limit sex education in schools. They were quite alarmed by the “morals” being taught in schools, and the growing acceptance of LBGTQ rights. They endorsed and bankrolled like-minded candidates in school board elections. Some of these campaigns were successful, but in general communities rejected their extremist views.
And now here we are in the 2020s. The “parents’ rights” movement is surging to the forefront once again, this time being propelled forward by social media and disinformation, in addition to the righteous indignation that has always supplied the oxygen that these efforts thrive upon.
