When American children began remote learning during the pandemic, many parents received the shock of their lives. Rather than a focus on proficiency in reading, maths, and history, many found that lesson content was geared towards issues of race, gender, climate change and other political issues.
In response, groups of protesting parents began raising their concerns in school meetings. They have since been smeared as ‘dangerous authoritarians’ and ‘white supremacists’ by the media - even characterised as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the Biden administration. Despite this backlash, these parents are swinging elections, and forcing schools to change tack on everything from mask mandates to decolonisation.
Is this movement likely to be replicated in the UK? Certainly, groups of parents are now demanding to see the material used in, for example, sex-education lessons, fearful about the promotion of gender ideology. This push led the Department for Education to publicly back parental access to course materials. But are all parental curriculum protests positive? What about those parents who took over the gates at Batley Grammar School forcing a teacher into hiding for showing an image of the Prophet Mohammed in class?
The parent-teacher relationship is clearly under strain. Parents from Boston to Bolton are starting to question how schools are educating their children. But is there a danger that pushy parents, with their own agendas, could determine curriculum content? Or is the lesson from the US that parents should be trusted to safeguard children’s education?
The speakers are:
Yaron Brook
Chairman of the board, Ayn Rand Institute; host, The Yaron Brook Show; co-author, In Pursuit of Wealth: the moral case for finance
Christina Jordan
Commentator on diversity policies; former Brexit Party MEP
Toby Marshall
Film studies teacher; member, AOI Education Forum
Nancy McDermott
Author, The Problem with Parenting: how raising children is changing across America; chapter leader, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)
Jo-Anne Nadler
Political commentator; campaigner, Don't Divide Us
The Chair is
Christopher Beckett
Religious education teacher, Holy Family Catholic School; writer; educationalist