In California, even a modest effort to require schools to notify parents when outside groups like Planned Parenthood teach sex education on campus was recently shut down in the state Legislature. That should trouble every parent, not only because of the subject matter, but because it reflects a growing belief within public education that parents should know less, question less, and simply entrust the system with their children. That mindset is part of a much larger problem: too many schools are no longer content merely to educate children; they increasingly seek to shape them ideologically.
The problem is reflected in recent academic results. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that academic scores of public schoolchildren are in alarming decline. Only about one-third of high-school seniors are proficient in reading and just one-fourth are proficient in math. Millions of students are leaving school without the knowledge and skills once considered the bare minimum for an educated citizen.
Instead of teaching students how to write a coherent paragraph, solve basic equations, or understand American history, schools seem to be more focused on pulling students into organized activism on some of the most divisive political issues in the country. Students’ greatest skills are now parroting pre-formulated slogans and protesting on immigration enforcement, gender ideology, race, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court long before they have been taught the intellectual discipline necessary to evaluate any of those issues seriously.
That is not education. It is indoctrination dressed up as “civic engagement.”
A school’s job is not to manufacture junior activists for the causes favored by administrators, teachers’ unions, or one political party. Its job is to teach children how to think critically and reach informed opinions. But, as academic mastery has become secondary to political consciousness, students are no longer being molded into informed citizens so much as into ideological foot soldiers.
We see it in teacher-encouraged walkouts, one-sided “awareness” events, and classroom exercises that require students to affirm contested political beliefs. We see it in disciplinary environments where dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy is treated as cruelty or bigotry. We see it when teachers and administrators celebrate only student activism that runs in the approved direction. And we see it when schools treat parental concern not as a legitimate check on government power, but as reason to hide their actions with parental secrecy policies. These practices should alarm every parent, regardless of political persuasion.
They should also raise an important question: is any of this even lawful?
Often, no.
As government institutions, public schools are bound by the Constitution. School officials may maintain order and teach the curriculum, but they may not compel students to mouth political orthodoxy, discriminate against disfavored viewpoints or hide the life-altering decisions they are making for students without their parents’ consent. Students do not surrender their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, and parents do not surrender their right to direct the upbringing of their children when they send their children to public school.
The Constitution’s limits on government power do not disappear simply because the ideology being imposed is fashionable or institutionally approved. Whenever the state substitutes ideological conformity for genuine education, the constitutional rights of parents and their children are put at risk.
Yet some parents have been conditioned to think they are overreacting when they object to what is happening at their children’s school. Schools insist that what parents are seeing is merely “inclusion,” “social-emotional learning,” “student voice,” or “civic engagement.” But labels do not change the underlying reality. If a school is organizing student political activism, rewarding favored viewpoints, marginalizing dissenters, or treating children as instruments for adult political projects, parents are not imagining the problem. They are seeing it for what it is.
Here is the good news: as parents, we are not powerless. Indeed, we may be the only ones with enough authority and determination to restore schools to their proper role. But that can only happen if we are willing to do more than grumble in private or post on social media. Real change will only come when more of us become active participants in our children’s education, including taking such actions as running for school board, showing up at school board meetings, and, when necessary, suing schools that ignore the Constitution. Some of us are already engaged, but we need more voices pushing back against schools that overstep their bounds if we truly want to protect our kids.
Public education should be about the three Rs and not about recruiting children into ideological campaigns before they are old enough to recognize they are being used. The way to rescue our children is to force schools back into their proper role: teaching students how to think, not what to think. And that will happen only when more parents decide that indoctrination is not something to be endured, but something to be confronted.
Courtney Corbello serves as at the Center for American Liberty.