Wards of the State

Fingerprinting to See Your Child At School: It's all a big mistake, but it shows how easily the government can cut off parents' access to their children in public schools. There are educrats that firmly believe that the children in their classroom are wards trusted to their care, that the parents may not always know whats best for their children and that as their teacher, they have a right to raise these children as they see fit from 8 to 4 in the afternoon. Good luck trying to convince them otherwise.

When I was in high school, I took a make-up course in Speech and Debate. It was not my favorite class! I ended up on the debate team. It was poor going all the way because I had no clue how to debate. That year's proposal to be debated was, "The student's right to confidentiality is greater than the parent's right to know."

Yeah, that's the same reaction I had. First, I had to have some help understanding what the implication was and how that would affect my positions, both for and against this proposal. The implication was that the state should be the ultimate parent and that students should have ultimate control of their lives. What was most troubling to me was that we were even debating this. My only plausible argument for the proposal was to argue to the exception, claiming that some of the students (a.k.a. wards of the teachers) would be harmed if parents had total access to the students' lives. My arguments against the proposal were legion because it was a fallacious proposal.

Yet such a mindset, that the state is the only capable parent, pervades education and this mindset troubles me more than anything else in education. It springs from a worldview that eliminates God in favor of the state. One only need read the following quote to see this in action. It's chilling...

"Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school. " - Melinda Harmon, Federal District Judge [source]