4 ms·
> it is absolutely never the governments place to tell a parent what they are allowed to teach their child Essentially everyone in America agrees with you. Thi
by burkaman 3y ago
> it is absolutely never the governments place to tell a parent what they are allowed to teach their child
Essentially everyone in America agrees with you. This is written into our Constitution.
> It is not the responsibility of the state, in any way, shape, or form, to dictate information to a child that the parents take issue with
This is an impossible standard. We have to make public schooling available, and we can't provide individual tutors for every student, so they must be taught in groups. This guarantees that some students will be taught things that their parents take issue with. To compensate for this we make some escape hatches available like homeschooling, private schooling, or moving to a different school district, but these are all difficult or impossible for most parents. Some schools have offered to let parents take their kids out of class when certain topics are taught, but this approach can't scale to all subjects and topics. It also can't address parents upset about what their child is NOT being taught.
I'm not aware of any educational model that gives all parents complete control over their children's education.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoOh yes, I didn’t mean that there would be nothing parents take issue with at all. Rather, if a parent is upset enough at the idea of their child learning about evolution rather than creationism, I believe it’s within that parent’s rights to put their child in a school that more closely aligns with their beliefs. No school curriculum will ever be 100% satisfactory to 100% of people, but I believe that the state has no obligation to enforce a certain educational model simply because it is “correct”. That probably sounds a bit silly, but I just believe that people have the right to believe and teach ideas that run counter to the state-approved message, even if the state is empirically correct.
- burkaman 3y agoOk, I don't think that's particularly controversial. Most of the controversy arises from parents (or influential people without kids) trying to influence the shared public school system to match their particular standard, rather than having their kids taught elsewhere as you recommend.
- chmod600 3y agoSo if the shared public school system is teaching something wacky (creationism or whatever), how should that be changed? If not parents or influential people, who would cause the change to happen?
- alexvoda 3y agoTeaching something wacky in homeschooling is far more damaging to the student than teaching something wacky in a public school. School does not occupy all the time of a child. If a school teaches something parents disagree with, parents can debunk that when the kids are home. They can bring arguments and kids will eventually make up their own minds. Homeschooling presents a single view, that of the parents. There is no debate.