There are many problems with the parental rights movement in public education.

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If I've got this right, the recent elections in the US highlight, among other things, that the parties must pay attention to "parental rights" when it comes to education in public schools.

Let me draw on my experience as a student, parent, and teacher to suggest why those parental rights might not be such a good thing.

Going back to the 1950s and 1960s when I was a student, I can't imagine my parents or any of my friends' parents marching over to the local school and giving administrators or teachers an earful as to what they thought the school should be teaching. Teachers and schools were the experts and education at school was their bailiwick.

Okay, so times changed, and by the time I was a parent/teacher, parents felt entitled to take a greater part in public education. The era of helicopter parenting arrived in the late 1980s. But, helicopter parents are different breeds of animals than the parental rights folks. Helicopter parents are essentially concerned with only their own child (or children). They became advocates and protectors for their own kids and what they perceived as those kids' interests. The upshot of that era was expanded services for things like special education. While it's debatable whether helicopter parenting improved public education, it's pretty clear that a number of new cooks had decided they had a right to stir the broth.

Parental rights, as now practiced, insists that parents should have a hand in determining what is being taught in the public schools. This is essentially a political/ideological position and is happening independently of parents advocating for their own children. There are several big problems with insisting that parental rights groups should be allowed to help formulate what schools are teaching.

First, and most obviously, parents are not a monolith. What one parent believes should be taught is not necessarily the same thing another parent thinks is appropriate.

Second, squeaky wheels get greased. Even if we ignore the fact that different parents have different interests, it will likely be the parents who most effectively (and loudly) advocate for their positions who win, regardless of whether that creates better education.

Third, given diverse political perspectives, it is likely that no consensus will emerge as to what schools in various locales should be teaching. Today, we have state boards of education and national frameworks that at least provide some assurance that public school curricula will coalesce around some common points. If the functions of state and federal education policymakers are usurped by parents at the local level, we may lose the kinds of common threads that stitch the nation together.

If we cede public education to parental rights groups we may very well be condemning ourselves to even wider fractionalization of citizens.

Authors Bio:
Freelance journalist; fellow, Institute for Analytic Journalism.