The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the education experience for children across the country, and maybe that’s not a bad thing if you’re the kind of person who sees sliver linings.
School is an essential tool for kids to learn more than curriculum; there’s no question about that.
For some kids, school provides them with much-needed meals and a structure they might not be receiving at home.
And of course learning to properly socialize is essential with regard to helping kids to grow up and become well-rounded adults.
But schools arguably have become centers for indoctrination, where leftist college students graduate and bring their politics to schools as teachers, and then they subtly push their views on defenseless children.
We know at least one teacher is bothered by virtual learning, as classroom activities conducted online now can bring unexpected or unwanted audience members, some of whom are parents.
In one volley of Twitter posts, Matthew R. Kay, a teacher at the Science Leadership Academy, a magnet public high school in Philadelphia, demonstrated why so many parents have reservations about sending their children to schools.
“So, this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators – parents, siblings, etc. – in the same room. We’ll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse. What does this do for our equity/inclusion work?” Kay wrote on Twitter.
“How much have students depended on the (somewhat) secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability? How many of us have installed some version of “what happens here stays here” to help this?” he continued.
“While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse, and remain a concern in this no-walls environment – I am most intrigued by the damage that ‘helicopter/snowplow’ parents can do in honest conversations about gender/sexuality…”
“And while ‘conservative’ parents are my chief concern – I know that the damage can come from the left too. If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kids racism or homophobia or transphobia – how much do we want their classmates’ parents piling on?” he concluded.
A biography for Kay describes him as a “proud product of Philadelphia’s public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy.” Kay also speaks to middle and high school students and “deeply believes in the importance of earnest and mindful classroom conversations about race.”
If you’re grappling to make sense of Kay’s statements, as I initially did, he explained he is bothered that he no longer has the physical walls of a classroom to indoctrinate kids away from listening ears.
He has since made his account private, but his tweets are archived here if you’d like to see them.
Kay sees himself as a person qualified to speak to students about gender, sexuality, racism, homophobia and transphobia.
He also is bothered by the fact that he cannot take a Las Vegas approach to his injection of identity politics into the curriculum.
“What Happens Here, Stays Here,” is a slogan used to make adults feel comfortable when gambling and drinking in the desert.
What possibly could be going on in a classroom that Kay and others would need that mantra for privacy away from parents?
Even worse, Kay wasn’t the only teacher to complain on Twitter about losing the element of classroom privacy, along with how it relates to the teacher’s intention to curb discussions of social issues.
Other teachers chimed in online, but their posts are gone after they were savaged for publicly expressing their annoyance that they no longer can indoctrinate kids in private.
Their responses can be seen with Kay’s archived posts.
Their public conversation drew quite a backlash:
It’s clear the idea of parental oversight is quite distressing to some teachers.
Of course, this highlights one of the major cultural differences between liberals and conservatives with regard to education.
Conservative parents are more inclined to be involved in their child’s learning experience and to be upset when their kids are being fed far-left propaganda about gender pronouns and the belief systems of neo-Marxist revolutionaries.
Parents should have a right to hear what is being told to their children, so distance learning is convenient, as far as that’s concerned.
As a personal testament to validate Kay and other teachers, when my children were sent home to participate in distance learning in March, I listened to every word uttered by their teachers with the volume jacked up so loud I could hear it from across the house.
I no longer had to quiz my kids about what they were being taught, as it was being broadcast in my home.
All parents should have that right — even those who might not work in jobs where it is convenient to eavesdrop from a quiet corner of the house.
Your child’s education should be transparent.
If teachers fear the wrath of a parent who might overhear what they are telling a child, it’s a pretty good indication something isn’t right, and teachers know it.
With so many teachers demanding reforms and special considerations before schools reopen, now is as good of a time as any for parents to demand classroom transparency and reforms.
While there are many wonderful teachers, America’s educational institutions, generally speaking, are broken.
Just look at Portland, Oregon.
Before leftist rioters were rioting, they probably were school children at some point, before they were failed by educators and their parents.
While money, or lack thereof, is a fine scapegoat for what’s gone wrong, it probably isn’t a stretch to assume that American kids are getting a bad education, and bad teachers play a role in that.
Benjamin Franklin didn’t learn to think critically on an iPad in Philadelphia.
Franklin also didn’t have a man named Matthew Kay wasting his time by asking him to spend crucial classroom time learning about the pitfalls of transphobia.
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