The backpacks are full, the lunches are packed, and moms and dads everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief that life is returning to back-to-school normal. But the beginning of classes isn’t just about getting kids ready for a new year, it’s about making sure parents are equally prepared to take on the challenges that today’s education throws at them.
Families have plenty to tackle this fall, Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, and Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation, pointed out on “Washington Watch” and the “Outstanding” podcast. And one of the biggest mistakes they can make is thinking their children are safe if they’re in red states or private schools. The reality, these two warn, is that the landmines of liberalism are everywhere. So what words of advice do they have for parents navigating the woke world of education?
Thanks to COVID, moms and dads are more aware of what’s happening behind classroom doors than they’ve ever been. They know where and when their school boards meet, how to make public comments, and what kind of pressure to apply on districts that have overplayed their hands on graphic sex education, gender identity, critical theory, and bathroom, locker room, and sports policies.
And while parents are in a much better position than they were before the pandemic, “The battle is real and needs to be engaged on the regular,” Cobb warns. “Constant vigilance is required no matter what state you’re in, no matter what you think the law is. There’s just so much local and individual control” in the classroom and schools.
“It’s kind of like when you go to the airport,” she explains. “See something, say something. You know, keep an eye out.” On the transgender front in particular, Neily emphasizes, “Parents have no idea that these policies are in place,” whether that’s bathrooms and locker rooms that are open to both sexes or, as families have been shocked to discover, “for overnight field trips, which is also something that’s deeply terrifying.”
In a lot of cases, “parents only find out that their children have been put into a questionable situation after the fact, because schools hide behind student privacy [rules] to not give parents complete information for them to make their own decisions about their own child. And this raises all kinds of problems that, fortunately, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has started to take on.”
Both women’s strong encouragement is for moms and dads to do their research. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It is deeply important for parents to know and ask questions so that they have absolute clarity on these things, so that they are able to say, ‘You know what? I’m not comfortable with my kid going on that field trip. I’m not comfortable with my daughter playing that sport.’ Maybe they’ll do something outside of the school just so that they are able to protect their child, because unfortunately, school administrators do not have our children’s best interest at heart.”
One of the worst things a parent can do is assume their son or daughter is protected from this indoctrination because they’re in a “conservative” town or district. “I think people can sometimes be lulled into a sense of safety when they live in a more rural area or a red state,” Cobb cautioned. “And I think people need to be very aware that that is a false sense of security in many cases because,” when it comes to LGBT extremism, “the reality is there are gender-confused children in all places, and there are schools that overreact to that and make bad decisions around that.”
Frankly, she said, “I don’t care if your child is in a public school or in a private school. If they are not in your home, you have a duty to know who’s forming them. Not just their education, but who’s forming them as human beings and what those policies are.”
The truth is, Cobb added, “the forces of evil are after our children in the school system. They don’t give up. And so I think people need to be very, very aware of what’s being attempted, particularly in public schools. Although lots of parents think, ‘Oh, I put my kid in a private school, I’m done.’ And that is not the case either.”
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Any sort of indifference around your child’s education is costly. Moms and dads need to be heavily invested in everything their kids are being taught — no matter how old they are. As Neily pointed out, “If you don’t know what’s going on in your kids’ classroom, if you don’t know what their books are or what their lesson plans are, ask. And if you don’t get the answers you want, then we urge people to go to the principal — elevate it, go to the superintendent, go to the school board.
You are entitled to all of this information under federal law,” she insists. “And it is important that parents exercise that right, because clearly the mainstream media has fallen down on this and they are not paying attention to these things. They think parents who have the temerity to ask these questions are the villains, not the school systems themselves.”
