by John R. “Buck” Surdu
Recently House Republicans passed the “Parental Bill of Rights” bill by a narrow 213-208 vote. The Hill reported,
The measure would require schools to publish their curricula publicly, mandate that parents be allowed to meet with their children’s teachers and make schools give information to parents when violence occurs on school grounds.
It would also demand that parents receive a list of books and reading materials accessible at the school library and give parents a say when schools are crafting or updating their policies and procedures for student privacy, among other tenets.
With the same level of accuracy as calling Georgia’s voting laws “Jim Crow 2.0” and Florida Leftists decrying the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Democrats are referring to the Parental Right Act as “the Politics Over Parents Act.”
The Hill goes on to quote Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), saying,
It is not an attempt to have Congress dictate their curriculum or determine the books in the library,” she continued. “Instead, this bill aims to bring more transparency and accountability to education, allowing parents to be informed and when they have questions and concerns to lawfully bring them to their local school boards.
Particularly when parents consider the promotion of Socialism, Leftism, Marxism, CRT, DEI, and other divisive concepts, there is significant appeal to the notion of a Parental Bill of Rights or similar measures to stem political and social indoctrination occurring in our schools.
So what’s wrong with this bill? Other than the fact that neither Republicans nor Democrats have any integrity or stand for anything other than graft and corruption at taxpayers’ expense, who couldn’t get behind such a bill? The spirit of a national Parental Bill of Rights is righteous. The problem is that it is unconstitutional.
The Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This is more than just a good (or bad) idea. It is the law!
Where does the Constitution allow Congressional know-it-alls to inject themselves into the school policies?
The Tenth Amendment tells me that much of what the federal government does is unlawful and should be eliminated. Not with a scalpel, but with a huge, double-sided battle axe! I made recommendations in The Federal Government is the Weakest Link about abolishing whole departments and programs. Other than those things specifically called out as powers vested in the federal government (i.e., the “United States” in the text of the Tenth Amendment), among them the Department of Indoctrination (a.k.a., Education), where does the Constitution grant the Feds the ability to meddle in local and state education systems?
The Manhattan Institute reported,
Over the past half-century, America’s per-pupil spending on K–12 education has nearly tripled, and, despite a dip from decreased tax revenues during the Great Recession, it now stands at an all-time high in most states. The U.S. spends more per pupil on primary and secondary schools than any other major developed nation, and American teachers earn substantially more than their peers in the private sector. Although local school spending relies heavily on property-tax revenue, state and federal spending ensure that a state’s per-pupil spending is comparable across race and socioeconomic status. Spending varies widely between states, but that variation shows little correlation with academic achievement. The challenge for American K–12 education is to provide students with equal opportunity despite significant inequalities of circumstance. Achievement gaps by race, class, and zip code still persist, but inadequate and inequitable school spending are not among the causes.
Despite spending more than most other countries in the world on education, since the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, The Pew Research Center reports that US student educational outcomes continue to lag behind most of the developed world.
How do U.S. students compare with their peers around the world? Recently released data from international math and science assessments indicate that U.S. students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and behind many other advanced industrial nations.
One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.
I have frequently asked, “What problems do we have that weren’t created or made worse by federal intrusion?” Can you name anything the Federal government has touched that is better because of their interference?
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, asserted that as much government meddling in your life as possible should be done as locally as possible. He stated that when done locally, the people are in the best position to judge whether they are getting their money’s worth from the government and can most easily influence how nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats misappropriate their tax dollars. All decisions about education and curriculum, therefore, should be managed at the state and local levels, not by an unconstitutional federal department. I say “unconstitutional” because I do not see where the Constitutional provides specific authority for the federal government to meddle in education. Don’t defund the police. Defund the federal bureaucracies and Congress.
While I agree with the spirit and intent of the Parental Bill of Rights, it is yet another example of federal overreach. Those who voted for it on both sides of the aisle instead should have focused on blocking the Left from passing bills that would limit parents’ rights. Whether it’s gun control, parental rights, or voting interference, instead of legislation to mandate rights we already have from a strict interpretation of the Constitution, right-minded politicians should focus on legislation that prevents the Feds from imposing their will on deplorables and limiting our rights.
It used to be an obvious fact of life, that when your children, emphasis on “your children”, who aren’t past the age of majority, are your responsibility, which used to mean that they were your children to raise, not the stupid people of the Department of Education, otherwise known as the Ministry of Truth, according to George Orwell, which appears to be not so obvious a fact of life, and a matter of law.
My children were my children, until the day they could flap their own wings and fly out of the nest. I can’t imagine the good of having to re-assert parenthood back into the brains of idol brain dead government bureaucrats and union tyrants, can you? That just makes more of a case to destroy an institution or three of our federal government that has gone off the rails, when they aren’t off in a corner reading comic books and sipping on their institutionalized Starbucks mocha crap.
Laws like that are for people who have left their courage and conviction up to others, when they need to just be picking up their torches and pitchforks and storming these fools. who are in ivory tower institutions dreaming up tyranny.
I’m with you, Buck!
Well, as long as the “government can’t interfere in local schools” shipped has sailed with no return voyage visible, Conservatives have to do the right thing to curtail evil gov’t instincts regarding our kids. Government schools are using taxpayer money to fund perversity and hiding it from parents. The bill in question tries to stop that. Unless and until Republicans defund the Dept of (mis)Education, we have to do what must be done to try to protect innocent kids. Dying on the hill of the 10th Amendment while our kids are actually dying, physically and psychologically, in our schools is not acceptable.
That’s fair. I was trying to point out that the poltroons in Congress should be passing laws that emasculate the Department of Education and prevent Federal interference in schools. It seems counterintuitive, but they should be passing laws that limit the power of federal agencies — and perhaps defunding them entirely.
I can’t argue with that, John.
I blame Governors for a lot of the Federal intrusion. The feds extort the states, and the states are willing dupes. When a state takes one penny of federal money for any program (such as education/indoctrination), they become serfs to the Communist state. State Governors need to stop taking education money from the feds. Take away the Feds’ lever of interference. Yes, they will be passing up on “free” money. But nothing is “free.” To get that federal money, the states have to accept federal interference. Since we spend more per student than every other country in the world, I assert that education would be improved if the states stopped taking Federal money and also found ways to limit the reach and power of “indoctrination unions” within their states. Let the feds interfere in blue states, but in Red states, at least, we should be telling the Feds to pound sand. When the department of injustice sues the states, THAT is our time to use the courts to put teeth in the 10th Amendment. As Barbara Bush said, “Just Say No.”
Agreed. It’s an uphill battle, especially with RINO governors like Asa Hutchinson who vetoed legislation to protect girls’ sports by keeping boys out of them. Thank God the legislature overrode his veto and thank God Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now the governor of Arkansas. Unfortunately this loser hasn’t gotten the message, as he announced today that he is running (and losing) for President. What a joke.