Irate parents at Loudon County, VA, school board meeting. Yahoo! News.
Nearly four decades ago, I produced an educational film entitled Books Our Children Read.1 It documented a constructive approach to resolving parent-teacher conflict over education in a rural Ohio school district, at a time when such conflict was erupting in violence in other American communities.
The film focuses on the study of literature in the English curriculum. But the issues it deals with and the insights it offers are broadly pertinent to other areas of education. And they remain even more relevant today, when American schools are being torn apart by profound disparities between parental values and the “progressive” agenda of the education establishment.
As I wrote in the Study Guide to the film,
What sort of education is possible in an environment of confrontation? Can meaningful education occur if . . . parents feel that their deepest convictions and values may be undermined in the classroom? Can children caught between loyalty to family and identification with school feel other than confused?
In that connection, it is worth remembering the following observations by Thomas Jefferson, quoted in the Books Our Children Read study guide:
To compel a man to [support] the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.
[I]t is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible . . . education of the infant against the will of the father.
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
Who Should Be Teaching Whom?
Recent trends have cast doubt on the assumption that education is exclusively from the top down, because those officially charged with teaching the next generation often seem alarmingly devoid of what Jefferson alluded to as “wholesome discretion.”2
With respect to the issues now roiling American schools—from transgenderism to racism—the view expressed several decades ago by Professor Allan Glatthorn, in the book Dealing with Censorship, remains especially relevant. As further noted in the film’s study guide, he rightly argued that “dialog between schools and the communities [they serve] needs to go far beyond the patronizing condescension and manipulation that too often pass for school public relations.” In his clear-sighted view:
[T]eachers need to show more acceptance and respect for values other than our own. Most of us are intellectuals who see ourselves as liberated, but too often such intellectual independence becomes distorted into a smug conviction that the traditional values of church, country, and family are childish aberrations that must be corrected.
Glatthorn’s sage advice applies equally to today’s school boards and administrators, whose heavy-handed imposition of misguided “progressive” attitudes and policies is being opposed with justified ire by the parents whose children are entrusted to their educational supervision.
Notes
- Readers who would like to view a clearer print of the film than that on Vimeo can search for it in libraries on WorldCat. ↩
- Regarding dubious ideas all too readily embraced and promoted by today’s education establishment, see “Canary in the Coal Mine of America’s Future,” American Greatness, August 21, 2021; and “Poisoning the Well of Art Education,” Academic Questions, Fall 2021. ↩
Contrary to William’s confused claim (see below, at 3:52 pm), transgender females are male at birth and are therefore males biologically. Moreover, they retain some male characteristics even after hormone treatment.
It is reasonable to expect educators to strengthen the moral and ethical values of their students’ communities. But that assumes a basic trust in informed community opinion and knowledge. Today, the conflicts between parents and teachers center on whether or not science, and the scientific method, can withstand attacks from a broad range of anti-science (anti rational) parent-antagonists. When violent solipsistic beliefs oppose rational inquiry, an educational process is impossible. The best education inspires curiosity and provides access to knowledge through rational, critical thinking. It only opposes ignorance.
You’re gravely mistaken in thinking that today’s conflicts center on science and the scientific method, William. They mainly pertain to ethical, moral, political, and social issues such as transgenderism and racism—all stemming from neo-Marxist identity politics.
The takeover of the US Education system was a long and well-defined Plan, based on Marxist philosophy and Saul Alinsky Rules, and it has been horribly, devastatingly, and destructively successful. As termites undermine the very foundation of a building, these miscreants have undermined America. Will we ever recover? Must we first close all the schools?
All too true, Taffy. We can only hope that the recent surge of parental involvement may turn the tide.
All these extremist adjectives tilt any sensible debate! Michelle has a bag full of handy, alarming adjectives. For instance, she says I’m “gravely”mistaken. Taffy uses similar doomsday words. But OK, on the faddish trend to actually encourage transgenderism, this old progressive agrees with the alarmists. There is a tolerant middle ground that facilitates debate and smart, sensible people across the spectrum need to speak up. Screaming and cursing at school boards and teachers is silly.
Gravely = “extremely seriously” and is entirely justifiable in the context, William, given the social consequences of the conflict. Moreover, the “screaming and cursing” are understandable in response to the arrogant intransigence of some school boards.
I add this. I am professor emeritus at a top research university where I never encountered a dumb, gravely ignorant student. If alarmists want to close the schools to keep their kids away from all challenging ideas, then their kids will never get to the top schools where they would have the chance to steer the discourse.
William, your comment here ignores what is actually going on in America’s schools—where woke “progressives” are promoting such as “challenging” (anti-science) ideas as arguing that math standards are racist and denying that biological reality gives trans women and girls an unfair advantage in women’s sports.
I’ll just respond to your comment thst transgender girls have a biological advantage in sports. Until they have hormonal injections transgender girls are still girls in all biological ways.