Parents vs. the state

While Cardona said that schools “should be partnering with parents on communication,” he also said some issues are “very sensitive.”

“I have spoken to students who shared, whatever situation is at their home, that they felt safe at the school, and we have to be careful not to turn this into something that it’s not,” Cardona said in response to Rep. Jim Banks’s question. “Our schools are safe places for our students, and our teachers are often the front-liners when it comes to supporting our students when they have issues in their lives.”

Schools may truly represent a “safe place” for children in abusive homes. Situations like this do exist, and schools can play a crucial role in identifying and responding to these cases. But that’s not what Banks was referring to.

Banks was clearly getting at school district policies that allow staff to hide a student’s decision to adopt a transgender identity. Schools with these policies begin addressing students by new names and pronouns without informing the parents. Cardona’s inability to answer the question directly speaks volumes.

School policies prohibiting staff from disclosing a student’s decision to transition do not protect against abuse. They defend adults who blindly affirm children in dangerous decisions with life-long consequences. They also create perfect environments ripe for manipulation, such as the case of a California mother who claimed teachers were responsible for her daughter’s social transition. Students receive no questions when they decide they are a different gender, nor do they receive guidance on how to deal with possible underlying issues. Lack of parental input is especially concerning when considering how transgenderism can act as a social contagion among adolescent girls, a trend well documented by researcher Dr. Lisa Littman and journalist Abigail Shrier, who draws on Littman’s work.

Making schools a “safe place” for students to hide their transition from parents simply means shielding them from the possibility of warranted questions about their decisions at home. It silences parents who may be understandably upset that their child has been convinced he or she is a different gender by teachers and staff. There is no equivalence between abusive parents and those who wish to protect their children from gender ideology.

Cardona’s remarks are just the latest in a long string of attacks against parents’ rights to their children.

Parents are often left in the dark when it comes to a divisive and inappropriate curriculum. They’re demonized by politicians who believe that they should not have a say in their child’s education. Basic protections, like those outlined in Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill, which barred students under third grade from being exposed to instruction on gender or sexuality and required parents to be notified about changes in student health, receive outsize backlash.

Children belong to parents, not the education system. It’s an important fact to press — and a right parents do not want to lose. Dividing children from their parents’ care had long been a Marxist tactic to undermine the family structure.

As Soviet revolutionary and politician Alexandra Kollontai wrote, “The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the ‘new person.’ The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognises the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective.”

Using the education system to prevent parents from knowing what is going on in their child’s life is an effective way to weaken family bonds, encouraging the next generation to abandon the values of their parents in favor of the state.

Katelynn Richardson is a Summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.