Parents Need Individual Rights Protection, Not Parental Bills of Rights
Abolishing government (public) education is the only moral solution to the individual rights violating civil wars in education
That didn’t last long. I’m already failing my ambition to keep articles down to a 3-4 minute read with this week’s 6-7’er. Well, two steps forward, one step back… Cheers!
A little over a week ago, U.S. House Republicans passed the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act. The passage is mostly symbolic as the Democrat controlled Senate will not take up the proposed legislation, and the White House has voiced its opposition. Similar legislation is or has been proposed or passed in multiple states, most notably the 2022 Florida Parental Rights in Education bill (HB 1557), commonly referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" Act. A red thread in the Republican sponsored bills, whether federal or state, is an attempt to give parents more control over what their children are taught in government (public) schools by regulating curricula to remove loosely defined “woke” content.
As I wrote last summer, the public education wars are a perfect illustration of “the tragedy of the public square”:
The tragedy of the public square is […] present in most if not all areas that are publicly owned, regulated, and/or financed (with taxes, fees, or with debt to be paid for with future tax revenues). It covers all situations where all of us, as individuals or in groups, have a stake in the game—and a right to a say—in matters that have been deemed a “common good” and therefore unfit for individual ownership. The resulting tragedy is the constant battle between warring factions, each with their own opinions of how a particular part of the public square should be managed.
And I used K-12 education as an example:
Nowhere is the tragedy of the public square more pronounced than in government (public) K-12 education. The pandemic unleashed a civil war between advocates for closing schools and keeping them open, and if keeping open, between mask proponents and opponents, and vaccine advocates and detractors. And as parents got a Zoom lesson in what their kids were being taught (CRT, gender identity, environmentalism) or not taught (reading, writing and arithmetic), new battle lines were drawn between people on either side of the issues. Parents showed up to school board meetings in droves, many pulled their kids out of school, and elected officials were voted in and out of office based on their stance. Most of the actions were initiated by people with the right to a stake in the “common good” game as federal and state income taxpayers, and local property taxpayers (whether directly, as homeowners, or indirectly, as renters)—parents, teachers, administrators, community activists, and others.
The pandemic is over, but the public square that is K-12 education is as tragic as ever. Parental bill of rights acts may at best put a band-aid on certain open wounds, but they will not cure the underlying infection: that public education systemically violates individual rights. This can only be resolved by abolishing government (public) education:
If the current government (public) K-12 education system were replaced by an individual rights respecting private education marketplace, the tragical civil war in this particular public square would end. Occasional localized skirmishes would take place when a certain private education offering didn’t meet expectations. Parents would most likely try to affect change, and the education provider try to accommodate the demands to not lose customers. But at some point, if the parties couldn’t come to terms, the parents would look elsewhere for another school that better catered to their values and wallets.
For the most part, the good fences of a rights-respecting private education system where buyers (parents) and sellers (private schools) trade value for value without forcing others to foot the bill in the form of taxes and other public financing would make good neighbors of everyone, and make the tragedy of the public square […] a distant memory; …
I’m constantly emphasizing the importance of setting a moral groundswell in motion as a prerequisite for affecting lasting change in any area of society. Every successful movement in U.S. history from the abolition of slavery, to gaining women the right to vote, to the fight for same-sex marriage, was fueled by moral conviction. The current fight for parental control of children’s education has strong elements of a moral groundswell, even moral outrage. But it’s a moral groundswell that doesn’t fundamentally question the validity of the K-12 education public square. Fighting for control of your child’s education within the current system will only prolong the civil war. The current backlash against what is taught in public schools is in many cases justified. But modifying the curriculum to satisfy certain parents, as is the case with many of the parental bill of rights proposals, will undoubtedly offend others. It won’t erect the good fences that make good neighbors, only further inflame the issue.
No, the moral groundswell must be based on a rational moral vision of respecting individual rights in education—of thinking right or wrong, not left or right. It would fuel a movement calling for the abolition of government (public) education once and for all. It would put parents and education providers in control based on an action plan including but not limited to:
Repealing all federal education laws and regulations.
Phasing out federal funding of education over a predetermined period.
Phasing out federal income tax deductions for local property taxes funding education over a predetermined period.
Repealing state and local education regulations.
Phasing out public schools through privatization and marketplace competition.
(see the book for details)
Obviously, we’re a long way away from seeing this realized, but a bold, individual rights respecting vision is the necessary start.