We Are On The Chopping Block Here In Connecticut

NBC CT - NBC Connecticut 9/27/22

I don’t know if you saw the gubernatorial debate Tuesday but we came up in the debate.

Lamont, Stefanowski paint different pictures of CT in first debate
CT Mirror
By Mark Pazniokas
September 27, 2022


Trailing by double digits in recent polls, Republican Bob Stefanowski repeatedly jabbed at Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday, trying in the first of two televised debates to stoke voter concerns over inflation, crime, police accountability, local zoning and how children are taught sex education in public schools.

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He also repeated his opposition to transgender athletes playing in girls sports, without saying if he would support repealing the the civil rights law that currently allows them to compete. He objected to how sex education is taught in some schools, again without suggesting a course of action by the state.

Though out the debate Stefanowski said many times about “parental rights.” Back in early September he said,

Bob Stefanowski calls for school changes — from transgender athletes competing to sex education
CT Insider
By Julia Bergman
September 6, 2022


With less than two months to go until Election Day, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski is putting parental choice at the forefront of his campaign — proposing ideas intended to energize conservative voters by opposing Connecticut’s policy for transgender athletes to giving parents control over what their children are taught in school.

With a crowd of parents behind them, Stefanowski and his running mate, state Rep. Laura Devlin, R-Fairfield, released a “parental bill of rights” Tuesday — a plan that addresses some of the cultural issues that have angered parents across the country and turned local board of education races into political battlegrounds.

What are "parental rights"? That's a good question. You ask a dozen people and you will get a dozen answers, that is a vague ill defined phrases that they do not want to have defined.

"Parental rights" started on the Christian fringe — now it's the GOP's winning issue

Right-wing Christians have pushed for parental control over education for years. Suddenly it's the GOP's main focus
Salon
By Kathryn Joyce
January 12, 2022


Not that long ago, the notion of "parental rights" as a conservative organizing principle was primarily associated with subcultures of the religious right. In the late 2000s, Michael Farris, founder of the advocacy group Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) as well as Patrick Henry College

That group's primary purpose was to advocate for the passage of a constitutional amendment declaring, "The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right," which no international treaty or law could supersede. Farris's HSLDA published tip-sheets advising parents what to do "when social workers come knocking" (basically, don't answer), and took frequent aim at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Farris claimed would prevent parents from "reasonably" spanking their children and would place decisions about making kids wash dishes or go to church under the purview of an "18-member international panel." He even wrote a novel with an anti-homeschooling villain named after Hillary Clinton, who upends society by signing the CRC.

But as the last few months — and even the last few days — have made clear, parents' rights is a fringe issue no more. This Monday, former Republican senator David Perdue, now running for governor in Georgia, unveiled a new "Parents' Bill of Rights" that would require schools to make teaching materials and other information about educators and school funding available to parents. Perdue's proposal echoed a federal bill, the Parents' Bill of Rights Act, introduced last November by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as well as numerous bills recently passed or proposed in states including Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, and, as of last week, Pennsylvania.

It has become a code word for the Republicans like “Critical Race Theory” that no one also knows what it really is. So that leads to the question: just what is parental rights?

Much of this activity can be traced back to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank whose senior fellow Christopher Rufo helped turn critical race theory into one of the preeminent educational debates in 2021 (and who was present onstage when DeSantis announced his "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" last month). In early January, Rufo tweeted that his "goal this year is for 10+ state legislatures to pass curriculum transparency bills, requiring public schools to make all teaching materials easily available to parents via internet. It's time to get the political predators out of the shadows — and return power to families." 

To that end, Rufo's colleagues have drafted model state legislation requiring schools to make public all teaching and teacher-training materials — with optional language allowing politicians to make clear that they mostly care about materials related to "matters of nondiscrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or bias."

Can you imagine that would do to teachers?

Everything they say or do or handout must pass mustard, the paperwork involved and they must watch every word that they. How many teachers will have second thoughts about teaching.

Does he want to Balkanize education? And just how is going to do that? Will there be a list of classes and the parent picks and chooses which class they want their children to attend? Will there be a town referendum? Or will the group of parents who shouts the loudest  get their way?

Will the school be handing out something like this to every parent? Will the future of education going to look like this? 

I want my child to attend the following classes:

__ Reading & writing classes
__ Reading (but only the classics) & writing classes
__ Reading (but only the Bible) & writing classes
__ English classes
__ Math classes
__ Math (but not algebra) classes
__ Math (but not algebra or calculus) classes
__ Science classes
__ Sciences (but only evolution and that we are not related to monkeys) classes
__ Earth science classes
__ Earth science (but only a flat earth) classes
__ Earth science (but only that the earth is only 3000 years old) classes
__ Human sexuality classes
__ Human sexuality (but only if they do not cover; homosexuals, transsexuals, intersex, and sex) classes

And just think of the number of teachers that they will need? Specially if there are only one or two in each class.

Governor Candidates Face Off in NBC & Telemundo Connecticut Forum