Iowa's children deserve better
These conservative activists seem to believe that their families’ faith, morals, and values are so weak that they will not survive scrutiny or comparison.
Parents’ rights have been in the news a lot lately. Some conservative activists think that parents (well, conservative parents) need more control, that they should choose which schools public funding goes to, which lessons their children — and everyone else’s children — can learn, and which books children can read at school.
Iowans who both support parental involvement at school and recognize teachers’ expertise disagree.
But missing from the conversation has been this: Children are people. They are not props or tools, fully under their parents’ control, and they are not empty vessels, mindlessly absorbing the words of their teachers.
One of the first lessons we learned as parents was that even our newborns were their own people with their own ideas. We learned this when our preferences conflicted with the baby’s: We wanted to use a sling; the baby preferred a stroller. We wanted to use a specific brand of bottle; the baby spat it out. These early conflicts taught us that our job as parents is not to force our children to follow our preferences — often a waste of effort — but to find a way to do what needs to be done that works for everyone involved.
If you listen to Iowa’s educators, you learn that this is what they do for our public school children: find ways of doing what needs to be done (providing a quality education to every child in the state) that works well for everyone involved (all races, colors, genders, orientations, national origins, religions, personalities, abilities). We are so lucky to have so many kind, competent, thoughtful people teaching our children in Johnson County and throughout Iowa.
You would never know that based on our most recent legislative session, though.
Our Republican legislators passed a breathtaking array of changes to state laws affecting children this session. Despite the rallying cry of “parents’ rights,” most of them put more control in the hands of state legislators. Iowa’s government — not parents, not doctors, not teachers, not school districts — now controls what books children may read, what bathrooms children may use, and what medical care children may receive. These laws come on top of last year’s “divisive concepts” law, which has already resulted in dumbing down our children’s history and social sciences curriculum.
One new law does put near-absolute power in the hands of parents, giving them the “fundamental, constitutionally protected right” to make most decisions about their minor children. But there is an exception for medical decisions the majority party disagrees with, making this an illusory right for some parents. Some parents, it seems, are more equal than others.
The common thread of all of these changes is a profound disrespect for the intelligence, moral fortitude, and humanity of K-12 students. It assumes that youth are so weak-willed, so unable to understand or hold their families’ morals, that they cannot withstand merely learning about people who are different from or have different experiences than them. It assumes that children should not have the opportunity to understand how their families arrived at their morals. It assumes that children are their parents’ property, mere tools to carry out their parents’ worldview and wishes.
These conservative activists seem to believe that their families’ faith, morals, and values are so weak that they will not survive scrutiny or comparison.
All of that is not just ineffective, it’s also insulting. Children are people, and Iowa’s young people deserve so much better.
What we're asking of Iowa City schools
We want to make sure that our own children and all children in the Iowa City Community School District have the opportunity to learn what Iowa’s legislators are taking away from them. Our district officials and local teachers should not risk their teaching licenses by violating the new book and teaching ban laws, but our community has the right to see specifically what our children are losing because of these laws. So please sign and share this petition for transparency to the ICCSD Board: bit.ly/ICCSD-Transparent.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.
Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on June 10, 2023, under the headline “Iowa takes away parents' rights.”