Where is John Scopes when we need him?

Lucky for my kids, I didn’t have a say in what they were taught in math class. Likewise, it’s not too much to say that I wouldn’t have been their best mentor for wood shop, figure drawing, or phy ed.  Those were things decided by their teachers and their school, and rightly so.

Yeah, I was their parent, but that’s all I was. It never occurred to me that a guy who never mastered glitter and glue should have a say in designing a fine arts curriculum, or that my neighbor, who can’t carry a tune across the street in a bushel basket, ought to direct the choir director as to how the sopranos should sing.

Apparently, some of the folks up in the legislature have different ideas. Last week the Republicans up in St. Paul announced something they like to call the “Minnesota Parents’ Bill of Rights” – a set of vague proposals that essentially would add a fourth “R” to the school curriculum – “Republicanism.”

Let’s not for a moment ignore the fact that making political hay by stirring up trouble in the schoolyard is as old as segregation, miscegenation, and “forced bussin’.” It’s no coincidence that a couple of the folks suddenly seized by concern for what Junior might be learning that Mom and Dad might want him to stay stupid about are Republican governor wanna-be’s.  They wouldn’t be the first governor to use a schoolhouse door as a political prop.

Now once upon a time it seemed that the old Scopes Monkey Trial had put the kibosh on folks sticking their noses into what was taught in the classroom. It put forth the basic principle that if somebody was going to tell a teacher what to teach they ought to know as much or more about it than the teacher.

Simply being a parent doesn’t put anybody in that category.

Let’s face it, the essential bar to parenthood is set pretty darn low – two people possessed of working genitals in the back seat of a Chevy and you’re pretty much all set. Beyond that it’s pretty much just a matter of time and biology.

Once the kid’s arrived, Mom and Dad pretty much have a free hand when it comes to putting ideas in Junior’s head. Depending on the luck of the parental draw that kid may grow up thinking lutefisk is edible; that rooting for the Cubs is a moral obligation; or that But Light is a substance fit to drink. Kids are regularly sent off to school firm in the parent-fostered belief that a fat man herding flying reindeer, a sentient egg-laying rabbit, and a spend-thrift fairy obsessed with deciduous dentation all invade their homes on a regular basis.

Parents don’t know everything; don’t get everything right. That’s why we send our kids to school. When it comes to the classroom, teacher knows best.

But our Republican savants don’t want to see it that way. Parents, they argue, should have a greater say. Now they don’t say which parents that might be, or what those parents might or might not know – that’s apparently a risk they’re willing to take. As candidate Paul Gazelka told the Strib, “Typically it’s not about math or science that parents are going to want to know what’s going on. It’s going to be social studies standards; its going to be what books are read in English class…”

Yeah…books, history… Parents – or maybe, just maybe, Republican politicians – are worried that kids might get the wrong ideas. They’re not coy about it. They’re worried the kids might discover the crazy aunt in the attic or the bodies buried beneath the basement floor.

Better to encourage the outraged mommies to stand up to the school board to demand the schools “teach the controversy” regarding reindeer aerodynamics and the possibility of seasonally-oviparous bunny rabbits.

Parents are always right, you know.