Elitism in Education: Parents are Belittled and Disrespected by Educrats

Maryland father, Robert Small, was dragged out of a Baltimore Public School Common Core Town Hall, because he had the audacity to ask an unscripted question about the new Federal education agenda, the Common Core State Standards Initiative. After he was shoved out of the meeting he was arrested and charged with second degree assault of a police officer and disturbing a school function, which charges carry $5000 in fines and up to 10 years in prison. We might never have known of this audacious abuse of power were it not for another parent who's YouTube video hit the Stop Common Core network online and went viral within hours. Within a few days the story went national.

Governments, and the elites, at every level in this nation have forgotten that they derive their power from the governed. School boards have forgotten that tax payers pay their salaries and they work for the people not the other way around. When schools say they want parental involvement it has come to mean they want parents to surrender their natural rights to direct the education of their children and offer their drone like compliance to any decisions the elitist experts deem worthy and appropriate. When will parents stand up in mass and remind them what it means to be a parent and to exercise that God given right to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

Today I interviewed with the local CBS station in Baltimore as just one more parent like Robert who is seriously concerned about the stealth implementation of Common Core. A half hour before this story aired the Baltimore police department dropped the charges against Mr. Small. In my work advocating for parents and families I have seen this kind of scenario play out over and over. The law is too often used to intimidate parents into being quiet and compliant to the agendas of public education systems. In my experience it is only when they (state officials) get caught that they drop the charges and run. Parents, don't be fooled. This abuse is common place not a once in a while thing. It only gets attention when someone faces the intimidation that keeps everyone else quiet and speaks up, and only when there act of bravery happens to find it's way to YouTube.

Parents have a right to be involved in decision making at the local school level. Common Core threatens local governance of schools and threatens to be the final step in pushing parents out. We could learn something from this father, do we have his courage to stop following like cattle. He challenged parents to do their own research of Common Core and to ask the tough questions. He asks us not to allow ourselves be silenced or our constitutional rights to be trampled on. We better heed his warning and meet his challenge or there will come a day when we will lose all our innate rights as parents to direct the education and upbringing of our children.

When I posted similar comments about the CBS story on the Stop Common Core in Maryland page a teacher commented in a way that I believe sheds profound light on just why a Superintendent feels himself justified in having a father removed and arrested: "While I agree with parents having a right to have a say in education... it has to be an educated right... I can't listen to all parents.... sometimes my soon to be TWO Master's Degree's outweigh your thoughts as a parent." -- AN EDUCATED RIGHT -- Are those rights you only get if you're educated? And who "educates" you and "tests" you to determine your fitness for that right? The government? Sometimes I am just appalled at how some people think.

Even ignorant parents have a constitutional right to direct the education of their children. This is well established. I think it is a dangerous line of thinking to doubt whether one parent is less worthy of this right than another. And what of the one less worthy? Should they then be denied this right which is not only a natural God given right but a Constitutional right? I understand that public school teachers often struggle with absent parents, belligerently involved parents, and yes, even ignorant parents, but I am dismayed how often the existence of so called "bad parents" are used as an excuse to limit or even eliminate the rights of ALL parents. We must not be tempted by this excuse, to say that because some people abuse their human rights, their God given responsibilities, we should divest everyone from them.

One thing is certain, if parents feel belittled and disrespected by the teachers who serve their children, if parents are expelled from the decision making process within their school districts, we will NEVER solve the problems we face. No matter how humble, or ignorant, or how poor a parent may be, the attitude that dismisses parents because they don't hold masters degrees -- or even collage degrees -- the attitude that has a parent expelled and arrested for demanding answers of those he has elected to run his children's school (those he pays to run it), is an elitist attitude that doesn't respect anything but accredited learning. It dismisses the wisdom of life long learning, of experience, of intuition, creativity, the intrinsic wisdom that is born of love for your child. This elitism throughout history has proven dangerous to freedom, it has proven to seed tyranny in society, a tyranny of the type C.S. Lewis wrote of when he said:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies [I would substitute accredited elitist experts]. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

This "torment without end" is exhausting, and more so because those of us who stand against it are so few. Those of us in the ring, those of us who have taken up the fight in our little corners of the world can't hold on forever unsupported. We are getting tired and we need reinforcements. It will take a volunteer army of parents, in numbers much larger than the elitist oppressors. So, If you have casually followed but haven't put your hat in the ring, now is the time.

Our American Story: How Will our Children Discover the Truth?

"At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a vision of history. To human nature (of the sort concieved), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply." -- Walter Lippmann

There may be few things as perplexing as the seemingly opposite versions of America's past that have formed between the political left and right in our nation. It represents as Thomas Sowell has written an abject conflict of visions. With such stark differences between the visions that have emerged from our political struggles and how completely they color the telling of our American story, how will our children discover the truth?

Nearly all American history text books in schools today weave a tale of America's past as the expression of racism, sexism, and bigotry. The tales of the Founders as self interested politicians, brutal white slave owners as the common white man, American industry as robber-baron oppressors, and American foreign policy as imperialistic. Over the past 40 years, people have told the story of this country's past dishonestly and we can no longer afford to ignore this reality. We are reaping what we have sown, for "the classroom in one generation becomes the government in the next." -- Abraham Lincoln

As a parent I teach my children the story of America in a way that is almost completely contrary to what they are being taught at school. I teach them that compared to other nations, America's past is a bright and shinning light. America was and is, the city on the hill, the foundation of hope, the beacon of liberty. It is terribly confusing as they get older, they wonder how can their teachers teach what is so terribly wrong? They begin to doubt whether they will ever know who is right and who is wrong, because one thing they sense all too keenly, they can't both be right.

Thomas Sowell proposes in his book "A Conflict of Visions", that the scientific method might be applied to measure the validity of two very different ideological visions of the world being contested in modern times. He explains how "vision" begets "theory" and theory can be tested by evidence. "What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with what is known factually." The key is for our children to be presented with all the facts. This of course is impossible if a parent relies solely on the public education (or even collegiate education) system to provide a full pucture.

How often we hear, "history is subjective," as if to dismiss the notion that one vision isn't more correct than the other. It is true that visions are subjective and by extension the teaching of history is subjected to the vision with which is is colored, but this does not leave the truth up in the air. We can judge whether one vision or the other is a more correct "theory". We must judge which is truth and which is error, for they cannot both be truth.

The social vision our children choose to accept as truth is vitally important to the future of our nation and world. "Policies based on certain visions of the world have consequences that spread throughout society and reverberate across the years, or even across generations or centuries. Visions set the agenda of both thought and action." For this reason our children must learn the History they don't teach in school at home, they must be vested with all the facts. They must come to understand the very different social visions and moral codes that have led to these two diametrically opposite views of American history. Only then can they apply the evidence to reveal which vision and moral code is more consistent, which is rooted in truth.

Join me and other parents in our study of an America that was committed to both personal freedom and public virtue, to human achievement and respect for the Almighty God. The history that admits what every Founder, pioneer, cowboy, and business man knew; that freedom alone was not enough, that without responsibility and virtue, freedom would become a soggy anarchy, an incomplete licentiousness.

Join me at “American History They Don’t Teach in School” and join the discussions about our history that they aren’t having in American education today.