NBC News this week published what may end up being the sloppiest, most poorly reasoned rejoinder to the parents who oppose race essentialism in the classroom.
The fact a professional educator is responsible for this mess of an op-ed is icing on the cake.
“Parents have always tried to interfere with curricula, as I observed when teaching middle school in the mid-2000s,” writes Christina Wyman. “Even then there was no shortage of parental input about the content of my instruction, from books to test questions.”
“Part of the problem is that parents think they have the right to control teaching and learning because their children are the ones being educated,” she adds. “But it actually (gasp!) doesn’t work that way. It’s sort of like entering a surgical unit thinking you can interfere with an operation simply because the patient is your child.”
Except it isn’t like that at all.
Look, fathers and mothers feel entitled to input because, as it turns out, they bear primary responsibility for their children’s formation. Both society and law recognize the parent as the ultimate authority when it comes to the upbringing of their children — as they should. Parents are ultimately responsible for this and can even be jailed for failing in this regard under some circumstances. This responsibility doesn’t end at the school’s threshold either, nor should it.
“Teaching, too, is a science,” Wyman writes. “Unless they’re licensed and certified, parents aren’t qualified to make decisions about curricula.”
Sure, nobody wants parents to stand in the operating room and tell the surgeon what to do. But teaching is not brain surgery. Even if it were like brain surgery, which it is not, parents can still change doctors, seek second opinions, and withhold consent for certain treatments without being treated like domestic terrorists. Any surgeon going behind parents’ backs to perform experimental or forbidden surgeries would be sued into oblivion and likely lose his license.
More to the point, Wyman’s sloppy, nonsense surgeon analogy unintentionally casts both herself and the supposedly superior teachers whose honor she’s attempting to defend in a rather unflattering light. Would you trust your child’s entire formation to a teacher incapable of formulating a decent analogy as part of her argument?
With rare exceptions, Wyman continues, “Parents, community members and politicians who aren’t qualified to teach should keep their noses out of school curricula.”
It’s all nonsense, but what else should we expect from the woman whose history of op-eds includes articles with titles such as, “I’m Catholic and I’ll never regret my abortion. Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t speak for me,” “Wearing a mask has given me a break from my crippling insecurity,” “Why a mental health diagnosis persuaded me to take my husband’s name after vowing I wouldn’t,” and “Confessing to your white privilege is not enough”?
That Wyman genuinely believes she and her cohort are on the same level of specialization and skill as surgeons and that parents should have no say in their children’s formation or even their healthcare choices really says it all. That Wyman argues specifically from the position of being a professional educator makes it all the more ridiculous.
