The Parental Rights in Education: Who Cares?
GUEST COLUMN
Anyone currently proposing to speak about the parental right in education must face a fundamental reality: to a great extent parents’ rights are denied in theory, violated in practice, and treated with indifference — even by those one might expect to be most active in their defense, I mean parents themselves. If there is a point at which the undermining of a right becomes so systematized that people stop noticing, we may be close to it now as far as the parental right in education is concerned.
I am not speaking of Albania or Rumania. I am talking about the U.S., where the most active defenders of parents’ rights now seem mainly to be members of religious sects, fundamentalists, and a hodgepodge of flat-earth people. Most Catholics and other mainstream religionists appear to have lost interest.
Maybe that is the problem. To the extent that vindicating the parental right is left to the cultural fringes, the secular consensus has an easy time persuading us that the issue need not be taken seriously. It is a pity. Indeed, it is not unlike the state of affairs which would now exist in another area of social justice if 35 years ago most black Americans had decided to settle for separate but equal.
Back to basics is a familiar slogan in the educational reform debate. I want to contribute my mite by affirming that parents are the primary educators of their children — their right as educators comes first. And, as I shall explain, even before their right comes their obligation.
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