Schools should not be discouraging transparency and parental rights

Three Christian and Muslim families are suing the Montgomery County, Md. school board over the districts’ inclusion of books featuring gay and transgender content for very young students. The parents argue that Montgomery County Public Schools’ refusal to allow them an opt-out for their children violates their First Amendment rights. 

Some would write this off as a meaningless issue, a part of someone else’s culture war. But these parents have a valid point. So do many others across the country who pay taxes or send their children to schools that they expect to provide an education, not to actively undermine their families’ values and beliefs.

MCPS incorporated six books as a part of a larger supplemental curriculum that includes titles for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. The schools notified parents that they would receive no advance notice when those books would be discussed and that opting out is no longer allowed. 

This was a reversal of a previous practice that actually engaged with parents as partners in education, not as people to be overruled by administrators who insist they alone know what is best for children.

Now, parents who don’t want their children exposed to the controversial material must remove them from the school entirely rather than for a couple of days while the particular books are discussed.

Essentially, MCPS sent the message that parents must accede, without consent or approval, to keeping their children in schools with a politically charged curriculum which, as one of the attorneys involved put it in a local news interview, teaches children out of “books that encourage them to change their genders, or think about what it is to be nonbinary…or have to focus on romance in second or third grade.”

The three families who filed the lawsuit contend that MCPS violated state law and its own policies on religious protections when it eliminated the opt-out provision. They are not trying to get the books in question removed, but they do want the school system to restore the option for them to have their own children not read those specific books.

The primary focus of American public schools used to be reading, writing and arithmetic. As America continues to emerge from the pandemic, public schools are struggling in their mission to prepare pupils for the future. According to some assessments, students lost more than half a school year of learning in math, and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading. Yet, MCPS seems more focused on infusing a gender-obsessed and politically polarizing curriculum — on indoctrination rather than on making up lost ground.

Progressives often lament that religious individuals seek to impose their values on the public. But when it’s the devout forces of secularism and adherents to the LGBTQ faith, they remain hypocritically silent. If these parents want to raise their children according to their own Christian or Islamic values, who are these school board members to tell them otherwise?

Removal of the opt-out clause is corrosive and contrary to the foundations of a free society. Parents, after all, are fundamentally responsible for their children’s education and moral upbringing. The parents bringing the lawsuit are worried that this program of study not only exposes children to inappropriate content for their ages, but also promotes lifestyles that are contrary to their values. 

Surely all but the most ardent progressive education activists would concede that parents deserve to have a voice in what their own children learn, especially with respect to such sensitive, controversial and politically fraught topics.

MCPS wants to impose this new education program against families’ will and without regard for their concerns or objections. In other words, MCPS doesn’t want their consent but seeks to impose its will. Anyone who doesn’t approve of this controversial curriculum, is denounced MCPS’s progressive allies as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, homophobic, or anti-gay.

In a pluralistic society, we should forge cooperation through compromise. Unfortunately, those days are beyond us. The courtroom is the only recourse for plaintiffs looking out for their own children.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it,” reads the book of Proverbs. Parents entrust their children to schools for education. Yet, trust and respect work both ways. Parents and taxpayers have the right to push back against divisive curricula that undermine their core beliefs and values.

Schools need to be transparent about changes taking place in the classroom. MCPS’s actions are more in line with Vladimir Putin’s playbook and inconsistent with the principles of our republic. Students deserve protection from forced speech, and parents must have the opportunity to provide constructive criticism or feedback regarding any changes to the curriculum.

Donavan Wilson is a writer based in Germantown, Md. He focuses on culture, religion, and politics.