The Right to Parental Rights in Education

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By Joe Renfro, Ed.D.

We are observing in our nation at this time that education in many institutions is destroying our culture under the flag of progress, as they define it. In this process there is an attack on parents’ rights to oversee the education of their children

There is the educational concept of “in loco parentis”.  It was once part of our schools, the thinking that schools assumed the responsibility of parenthood to the students, when they are at school. 

However, what was once esteemed is reversing itself and has assumed a different role, not to instill moral teaching once treasured by parents, especially Christian parents in our culture, but to reverse it, something that should deeply concern Christian parents. It is not right to seek to subtract parental input in the education of our children!

In I Timothy 4:12 Paul was writing to young Timothy, and he wrote: “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, and in purity.”  Paul was not a genetic father to Timothy, but he was a spiritual teacher to him.  

In Romans 12:2 Paul wrote the educational directive to be “not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renew of your mind that ye might prove that which is good, and acceptable, the perfect will of God.” This was a directive realize the work of the Holy Spirit in the believers’ lives.  It was to educate the Roman Christians, young and old, to find God’s guidance in one’s mental life and not that of the world, to see the world from the eyes of faith, not faith from the eyes of the world.

John 8:32 points to true freedom in learning as the Lord Jesus said: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And this points to unlimited capacity for learning in Christ, and it is not like that of the world, which is very much evident in the contemporary WOKE thinking pervading the education in our schools.

The movement distort the influence of parents is very much generated from WOKE thinking, and it is a reinterpretation to move learning away from the Judeo-Christian morality that once was basic in America.  Learning and morality is tied together by truth, and truth is centered in true learning and true morality.   But the WOKE thinking is setting and indoctrinating basic changes in who and what will determine the coming generations.

Looking at the situation developing provides disturbing questions for our society. Some of these questions are: “Why is there a seemingly sudden increase in pedophiles and sexual deviants? Why do we have so many amoral or basically immoral educators, school administrators, school board, politicians, community leaders, and even judges who are hell-bent on advancing the sexualization of our youth? Why are they pushing perversion into the hearts and minds of the most impressionable among us?  What are we going to do about it? Why are educational leaders hiding their aberrant “sex education” curriculums from parents of their students, stripping moms and dads of their rights to determine how and when their children are exposed to these sensitive topics?

In an article entitled “School board settles religious discrimination suit against a Christian university after blasting ‘Jesus’ values,” written by Hannah Grossman, Fox News, May 6, 2023, it gives a picture of how the WOKE thinking is working or seeking to work in American education of our youth.

At the Washington Elementary School board member, Tamillia Valenzuela protested the schools use of teachers who had graduated from one school that protested about Arizona’s CU’s agenda to advance the values of Jesus Christ.

Valenzuela described herself as a “bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent queer black Latina, and she said “My concerns when I got to Arizona Christian University’s website advertises that they are ‘committed to Jesus Christ, accomplishing his will and advancements on earth as in Heaven.” She protested any connection to Christianity.  This to her was unacceptable!

The board followed her advice to stop hiring graduates or work students from ACU, but Arizona Christian Union made a lawsuit about it,

The Washington Elementary School District was sued in March for allegedly impugning on the religious rights of Arizona Christian University, which nearby the elementary school, for terminating a partnership that had been ongoing for 11 years after multiple board members attacked them for their religious beliefs.

In the case the Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented the university, they said the school board “showed blatant hostility to ACU’s beliefs” when it questioned how one could “be committed to Jesus Christ” and yet, at the same time, respect LGBTQ students and board members. (“School board settles religious discrimination suit against the Christian university after blasting ‘Jesus’ values”  –By Hannah Grossman, Fox News, May 6, 2023)

In another instance, we can see also that in August 1, 2022 Washington Times and the iPatriot the next day, August 2, 2022, there was an article entitled, “Portland Public Schools defends teaching transgender ideology to kindergartners.”

The articles went: “It seems that Oregon’s Portland Public Schools is defending its decision to teach kindergartners that boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises…  The school district is using a grade-by-grade curriculum to teach children starting at age 5 about transgender ideology, sexual orientation and the role of “white colonizers” in marginalizing LGBTQ people, according to presentation slides…In one PowerPoint slide for kindergartners, the curriculum labels a cartoon image of male and female genitalia as “person with a penis” and “person with a vulva,” instead of “boy” and “girl.”

“Any kid can have any type of body,” the presentation states, adding that boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises. This is false, as sex are the early stages of embryotic develop is not there, detectable, so far as scientific understanding.

Sad, but enlightening is the fact that many colleges and public schools in our nation have been hiding this from parents. But parents have right in parental right to speak up and stand again such teaching.

What is being taught, is to set up a way that seeks to subdue parental influence, basically the thinking that once was held by those parents who support the traditional Judeo-Christian values. This is especially seen in subjects dealing with sexual orientation and behavior.

Even sadder is the fact that some churches are fitting into the practices of this liberal focus in education. This is not just in a publication “ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION & GENDER IDENTITY” it is brought out that:

In 2018, the 223rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to affirm its commitment to the full welcome, acceptance, and inclusion of transgender people, people who identify as gender non-binary, and people of all gender identities within the full life of the church and the world. It went further to lament “the ways that the policies and actions of the PC(USA) have caused gifted, faithful, LGBTQIA+ Christians to leave the Presbyterian church so that they could find a more welcoming place to serve, as they have been gifted and called by the Spirit.” (Stances of Faiths on LGBTQ Issues: Presbyterian Church (USA)

In Deuteronomy, we see the Bible directs that parents are to diligently teach their children at every opportunity. The Bible also says: “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it,” in respect to parental responsibility.   Deuteronomy 6:7 says: “You shall teach them (the ways of the Lord) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you get up/.” Many parents are turning to home school, but the most effective way is to work continually to develop godly discernment in the children. This is vital!

The direction here is not to turn them over to their smart phones, to much of the TV content, to the conformity to peer pressure, to the progressive indoctrination of our culture, and on and on.  This requires discernment from the patents and not to have it ignored or attacked much of the progressive thinking does in many of our educational institutions.

Life is rich with lessons, and many of them can be hard to see or understand for children, something that parental wisdom should prove to be the positive guide. To be a parent is the calling and task There is the sacred and the secular, and not every learning opportunity will fit neatly into these categories exactly.  But, parents are called to be part of the learning experiences of their children, seeking to be tasked with educating the children in both schoolwork and in scripture and morality, whereas the Progressive leaning is very much anti-Christian.  

It is important to recognize not just what’s happening around you, but what that means to your children something very difficult in the day when many leaders are looking for more and more factors such the development and progression of artificial intelligence what will alter forming minds and all kinds of other exposures never know to previous generations.  These are times when we need positive parental oversite, and parents should be seen as basic in this, not ruled out.

The Bible teaches parents have the obligation to rear our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Exodus 20:12 speaks to the call to mutual respect for parents to children and in turn from children to parents: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” This speaks to the whole character of the nation.  Proverbs 22:6 says: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  It does not say this from the indoctrination by the state.  Proverbs 1:8-9 says: “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.”  This points to teaching and instruction from both father and mother.  Psalm 127:3 says: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Children are a heritage, pointed not just to the early years, but to all of life. In 3 John 1:4 it declares that: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”  If a child is reared in falsehood, how can a young sibling really learn to live in truth?

Teaching children about the Lord is the parents’ main obligation. Schools have no right to reject this, and to seek to implant the amoral that is really in the long run immoral thinking in the minds of children.

However, teachers, other family members, pastors, and others assist parents in this endeavor, or should in the moral foundation for all! 

As the parent, it’s the job to recognize not just what’s happening around you, but what that means to your children – it may be different than your experience. What was once psychologically classified as a psychological malady is now transferred into being just an alternate lifestyle. This is a sad picture, however, not just for our children in themselves, but schools, families, and individuals.

In the contemporary thinking of many Progressives, it is set up for there to be the so called “historical” but actually from their understanding to move not so much to the recording of the past from what was, but to what is wanted slanted to be a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. This is promoting what is the politically correct thinking that wishes to set up a new social order. In this respect, it is being taught so as the breed a social revolution.

History in this sense is not to explain the facts of history, a total view as to what happened and what is, but to slant history so as to achieve political goals.  This can be viewed, as a type of reverse of the “en logo parentus,” one that destroys and conflicts with building up in youth. The discernment and development of wisdom and taught for example is the Proverbs, and it speaks to all—just good old common horse sense. It is evidenced very much in the WOKE ideology, very much in conflict with the morality taught in the Bible, and especially the teaching of Proverbs is invalid to much educational thinking

The WOKE ideology feels we have and must continue to develop an outgrowth away from the Judeo-Christian values of the past which they wish to categorize as antiquated, so as to move to the what they are developing in Progressive morality, which is not progress, whatever they might with to call it.

Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If our founding fathers had a successful philosophy of government, which obviously they did, then it is very fair that we look back to the classroom to see what they taught.  It was a curriculum of the Classics and the Bible.

LGBTQ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, a queer, and others. Now there have been more extensions of new groups, parading under the flag of “equality,” equating it with “equality.”  They claim with to expand earlier understandings groups fit into in that they can profess to have suffered discrimination so as and be part of what the Progressives foresee new forces, so-called minority groups. They with this group that they wish to see becoming an ever-expanding group. Enough minorities can add up to a majority. We need to see this and speak up, stand up, and get off our rears before it is too late. It is based on slanted truths that really ultimately lead to falsehood.A 12-year-old Liam Morrison, a student at Nichols Middle School, confronted the school board after he was punished for wearing a t-shirt that declared there are only two genders. Two adults removed the boy from gym class and told him that he must remove his shirt before returning to class, claiming it was making some students feel unsafe. “When I nicely told them that I didn’t want to do that, they called my father,” Morrison stated, adding that he received no pushback from his classmates or teachers due to the shirt. “Several kids told me that they supported my actions and that they wanted [a shirt] too,” he explained. “I was told that the shirt was a disruption of learning. No one got up and stormed out of class, no one burst into tears. I’m sure I would have noticed if they had.”Christian Post, by CP Editors, “Preteen sent home over ‘2 genders shirt.” (The Christian Post, May 9, 2023)

These negative factors instituted in our schools to placate many leftist thinkers, and they are real. Many of them say that are offended by Christianity in education, but what about we Christians, that me might be offended by the destructive focus of those who are in attack mode against the religion that is basic to the formation of this nation?

A tree needs roots for a foundation, and so do nations. Once our land recognized very much the Judeo-Christian foundation, a most positive morality and guide. But in contemporary America today there are forces wishing to cancel our culture, so as will destroy the basic nuclear family, the religious underpinning, and true responsible individual freedom through such things, as promoting things such as wok-ism and socialism that won’t do the job or rightly the youth of today for the future of this land. There is the parental right in education of our children, and maybe though this the tide can be turned before it too late.