The issue with "Parental rights are supreme" is that there are tons of parents whose demands will make it impossible for your kid to learn much of anything.
In our district, we had to put AP CS on hold because apparently RNGs are too close to gambling and gambling is sinful. You can't even get through the Java standard library without angering the religious right these days.
They threw a huge fit about Common Core Math as well (as a working mathematician -- and one with some amount of passing experience in teaching mathematics at that -- I could never get those parents to articulate what the actual problem was... AFAICT some TV pundit told them to be angry about math).
I wonder if these parents realize that about half of the middle schoolers in Florida not only have seen a penis, but have one of their very own!
BTW, the possibility that this was about inter-personal feuds rather than David just strengthens the point. Giving every parent potential veto power over anything that happens in school is a good way of making sure that nothing will happen in school.
Some teacher makes a valid criticism of your child's classmate during a parent-teacher conference, the parent takes it personally, the spat escalates, the course is derailed. By the time you find out WTF is even happening, your kid is already half a grade level behind in every subject. Rinse and repeat the next school year.
In our district, we had to put AP CS on hold because apparently RNGs are too close to gambling and gambling is sinful. You can't even get through the Java standard library without angering the religious right these days.
They threw a huge fit about Common Core Math as well (as a working mathematician -- and one with some amount of passing experience in teaching mathematics at that -- I could never get those parents to articulate what the actual problem was... AFAICT some TV pundit told them to be angry about math).
I wonder if these parents realize that about half of the middle schoolers in Florida not only have seen a penis, but have one of their very own!
BTW, the possibility that this was about inter-personal feuds rather than David just strengthens the point. Giving every parent potential veto power over anything that happens in school is a good way of making sure that nothing will happen in school.
Some teacher makes a valid criticism of your child's classmate during a parent-teacher conference, the parent takes it personally, the spat escalates, the course is derailed. By the time you find out WTF is even happening, your kid is already half a grade level behind in every subject. Rinse and repeat the next school year.