Who's in charge of what kids learn?

Who’s in charge of what kids learn?

 

The governor’s race in Virginia pretty much turned on the answer to this question.  The Democratic candidate and incumbent responded to a question that essentially implied parents needed to stay out of the curriculum business.  And he phrased it so poorly.  The Republican candidate was on the comment like a hip pocket and rode it to a victory in the election.  Now that he is in office, he keeps riding that pony.

So, the question is, who is in charge of what students are taught in school?   On one side of the question, the answer is that children belong to their parents so parents get to decide what they need to learn.  But do children really belong to their parents in the same way a house or a car might?  Well not exactly, parents are required by law to provide adequate food, shelter, clothing, medical care and to refrain from physical or emotional abuse or society can and will take the children away.  Your car, on the other hand, can be abused any way you would like.

On the other side of the question is the idea that since the community is footing the bill for public education, the public should have some say in where those funds go.  Most of the funding for public schools comes from people who do not have a fox in the hunt.   They have no children; their children are grown or the children they do have attend private schools.  So, what is the reason for them to invest in public schools?  The basic reason for the investment in public schools is to ensure an educated electorate in a democracy.  That reason has been expanded to include making sure there are educated workers with adequate skills to build the economy.  As our society becomes more and more diverse, those skills include being able to respect and work with diverse groups.

What parents or any other group want their public schools to teach is not a monolith.  One set of parents might want to cleanse the media center of all controversial materials; while another set might want to bring everything in and let kids know and evaluate.   This is the reason trained librarians make those decisions.

Educators have professional education in much the same way a lawyer or a pharmacist has a professional education.  Decisions on appropriate curriculum should be left to trained professionals who are charged within professional responsibility to the funders-taxpayers, most of whom have no kids in public schools. 

Bottom line, parents should provide input to the process but the system belongs to the community who are paying the bills.  Don’t like that system, fine, send your children to private school where you pay the freight and can pick a school that aligns perfectly with your vision of what schools should teach.  Until then, parents get to consult but they should not be the ones driving the train.