This week, the state House Select Committee on Oversight and Reform met to discuss whether Chapel Hill‒Carrboro City Schools, among other districts in the state, were brazenly refusing to implement the 2023 Parents Bill of Rights Act. The bill was specifically passed into law to prevent indoctrination along political and cultural lines, especially regarding sexual and historical topics.
The committee’s chairman, Republican Majority Leader Brenden Jones of Columbus County, blasted Chapel Hill-Carrboro district officials online leading up to the committee by highlighting certain books found in their libraries. The books recommended for young elementary students touched on topics of children becoming trans; how nudity is healthy; and even one on a gay, interracial Mr. and Mr. Santa Claus that feed their reindeer organic, gluten-free grain (a description that seems like it could have been scientifically engineered in a lab to upset those who wrote the Parents Bill of Rights).
Jones brought each of these books to the committee meeting and demanded to know why they were being recommended to children. His comments have since been picked up far and wide, including by FOX News.
Jones and other House Republicans also came armed with ample evidence from recent Board of Education meetings and emails showing the district had no intention of implementing certain parts of the law (the parts that actually mattered). Their comments made clear that they believed that the values and goals of their district — values and goals that were clearly motivated by a left-wing worldview — prevented them from doing so on matters related to pronouns, refraining from encouraging gay and trans identity, and other progressive priorities.
One of the House Democrats on the committee even said that she thinks they did the right thing by not implementing these parts of the law, saying, “If you skirt it just a little bit, I’m kind of proud.”
Republicans, for their part, said they will look into ways of forcing progressive school districts to comply with the law, maybe by withholding state funds.
Nobody should show children sexually explicit material or indoctrinate them into values against the wishes of their parents. If the Parents Bill of Rights can be implemented successfully, great. I love the idea of neutral state-run schools open to everyone, but I’ll admit — I often doubt that ideal can be realized.
Is there really a neutral way of determining which facts to select for history lessons that doesn’t amount to a value judgment based on worldview? Is there a way to teach children sex-ed that doesn’t rely on some theory of sexual ethics that will be common sense to some and an outrage to others? Can you even have a basis for classroom order and discipline without applying certain values?
In their discussions about whether or not to fully implement the Parents Bill of Rights, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro officials were very explicit that their decisions were based on their worldview and its values. That both seems entirely inappropriate and entirely inevitable.
In GK Chesterton’s book “The Common Man,” he said, “Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. Every part of that education has a connection with every other part. If it does not all combine to convey some general view of life, it is not an education at all.”
He’s arguing, rightly I believe, that to teach a child is to teach them what is valuable, what matters, what is worth fighting for. So public schools, even those making an honest effort at neutrality, really operate under certain assumptions and values. They may not even be aware of them and treat them as obvious truths. Private schools do the same, but they at least are more aware of the fact and put their affiliation on their signs.
That’s not to say that there are no objective truths, whether moral, scientific, or historical. There certainly are, and those that pollute the minds of children with sexually inappropriate material should be held legally accountable. But it’s also true that we live in a pluralistic society, and the values of people in Carrboro are probably going to be very different than those a few miles west in Snow Camp.
Of course we should continue to fight to make public schools more accountable and to be places of learning, where the most politically divisive and culturally sensitive topics are left to parents to teach. But it does seem like a pipe dream to think we can ever fully get the extremely progressive NCAE-affiliated teacher in Carrboro to teach subjects like sexuality, social science, and history in an ideologically neutral way.
So in addition to blunting the effects of this natural bias with legislation like the Parents Bill of Rights, we should continue to expand school choice. Being able to choose a school where children are fully taught according to parents’ values saves them from having to worry much about whether the local public school is complying with law and basic decency.
