Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe admitted during a Tuesday debate that he wants the government to have complete and total control over a child’s education, parental rights be damned.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said in response to Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who argued parents should be more involved in the decisions of local school districts. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools, and actually take books out, and make their own decision.”
Someone ought to remind McAuliffe that parents are the ones funding the public school system. Their taxpayer dollars pay for teachers’ salaries and school materials. Therefore, families have every right to weigh in on what public schools are doing with their money. The public school system works for the parents — not the other way around.
Unfortunately, McAuliffe’s desire to restrict parental access to the classroom is becoming increasingly common in leftist circles. Here’s education commentator Jennifer Berkshire expressing the exact same opinion as McAuliffe just a few days prior to his debate with Youngkin:
This kind of thinking – that kids should only be taught what their parents want them to learn – is absolutely anathema to a democracy. And that’s exactly the point. https://t.co/aq9FtYNLYn
— Jennifer Berkshire (@BisforBerkshire) September 24, 2021
None of this should come as a surprise to parents familiar with the public school system and the educators in control of it. These people want to use education as a means to turn impressionable young children into the next generation of leftist activists, and they have become increasingly hostile to any parental attempts to stop it. Parents who protest the teaching of critical race theory in schools have been smeared as “racists.” And parents who oppose the transgender ideology and the way in which it has been implemented into public schools are intentionally kept in the dark by educators and even risk losing custody of their children if they try to push back.
How children are raised and what they are taught is entirely up to the parents, not to the education establishment and its leftist enablers. McAuliffe, if elected, would clearly aim to crack down on parental rights so public schools can fill students’ heads with whatever they wish without facing any consequences. Is that the kind of governor Virginians want?
