What the parents' rights debate misses: the kids' right to learn to be free thinkers

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“Parents’ rights” have been widely discussed in local, state and national debates around education in recent years. Here in Indiana, Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office has released a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which specifies that parents “have a constitutional right to direct the upbringing and education of (their) child in the manner (they) see fit.”

Many of these bills and discussions, however, crucially forget that the higher obligation in education is not to the parents but to the children themselves.  

We have a collective community responsibility to ensure that children’s education is not determined by or dependent on the whims of a few, but instead is truly preparing children for a future as independent, free-thinking citizens in a world beyond their parents’ control and vision. In our communities, we need to work together to collectively ensure that children's rights to education are what is privileged in our schools and laws.  

Democracy needs educated Americans

Public education that could enable independence has been a priority in our country since its very founding, as many of the Founders recognized education’s valuable role in equipping people to navigate the complex challenges and competing interests that would face the commonwealth. Education was essential to their vision of how power would be balanced and distributed.  

In his 1778 “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large.” 

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He later described this as one of the most important bills he had written, noting that other than public education, “no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.”  

Elsewhere, enabling broad access to education and simultaneously broadening education’s relevance and subject matter were seen as profound advances unique to the American system. In my research on early American science education, I have seen how the push to better equip the next generation to navigate a world of new social and technological developments drove innovation in every arena of education throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries.  

No longer would education be the privilege of certain classes of society and only a few traditional career paths. Instead people pushed for an education that would open new avenues for businessmen, farmers, housewives and more. Good education was expected to make for a rich, robust country where everyone was better equipped to pursue both their own purposes and to contribute to the public good. 

While education has not achieved all of the lofty goals and ideals placed before it, what stands out in so much of U.S. educational history is the pursuit of education that seeks to equip rather than restrict and to enable rather than to control. 

This tradition is one now threatened by new efforts to narrow education’s scope and content to only what is approved by particular individuals.  

They won’t be children forever

Certainly, the parental impulse to protect, guide and nurture is an important one, and one that strongly benefits children and their education. 

However, we must remember that impulses can lead even the well-intentioned astray. Protection can be stifling, guidance can seep into control, and forms of nurturing that were once age-appropriate must transform and transition into different varieties of love and respect as children mature.

Furthermore, we are sorrowfully aware that not every parent has their children’s best interest at heart.  

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For some children, a parent’s right to control their education can become another area of abuse, one that limits and destroys not just their childhood but also their future. Just as we bear a community responsibility to watch out for abuse and intervene when necessary, we have a community obligation to ensure that education remains ultimately about equipping children for their own future.

Allowing children to grow is an exercise in letting go, in learning where your rights and control over their lives begin and make way for them. When we educate them, whether in the home or in the school, it should not be to make them into copies of ourselves, our knowledge and our views, but rather to equip them to navigate a world that will require them to formulate thoughts and beliefs of their own.  

Although parenting, caregiving and mentoring can have its own temptations toward tyranny, we recognize that the best parents, mentors and leaders are those who allow those in their charge the freedom to grow and change, even when such changes may eventually lead them away.

As with democracy, there can be a profound risk in this process, that in allowing the opportunity for independence and self-determination we may find that others do not fulfill our own vision for their choices. 

Our children, just like our neighbors, may not choose to be like us in the end, but our commitment to freedom and independence requires of us that we ensure their rights even when the result may differ from our own desires.

Whether you are a parent, an aunt, a grandfather or simply a community member, please consider how you can advocate for a rich and robust education that equips children to navigate the challenges of recognizing and responding to multiple voices in society, to confront hard truths about our history and in our world, and to be capable of forming and defending their own opinion rather than yielding to the pressure of peers, friends or family.

They won’t be children forever, and even now, they deserve to have rights of their own.  

Sarah J. Reynolds is an assistant professor of physics and Earth-space Science at the University of Indianapolis. She is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. This column first published at the Indianapolis Star, part of the Paste BN Network.