Parents Versus Tyranny in Virginia Schools
Virginia once took pride in her sons, especially Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The first was, of course, the main author of the Declaration of Independence, and Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution.
Apparently, that pride now lies as still in the grave as those Founding Fathers.
Suparna Dutta, a mother, an engineer, and an immigrant from India, had helped revise Virginia’s public education standards for history and social science. During the drafting process, Dutta dared to state at a public meeting of the Virginia Board of Education that “The Declaration and the Constitution … are remarkable documents.” She also condemned socialism as producing “dependency and depression.”
The reaction was swift and brutal. Democrats, including Anne Holton, wife of Virginia’s former governor and current U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, raised the cry against Dutta. Some of them had already taken their outrage to the floor of the Virginia Senate, where they had Dutta removed from the Board, declaring that she had connections to “very extreme and right-wing white supremacist groups.”
Did I mention that Suparna Dutta hails from India and isn’t white?
In the recent past, other such left-wingers have similarly accused Winsome Sears—a Republican and a black woman who is Virginia’s lieutenant governor—of being a “black mouth” for white supremacy.
In the last few years, Virginia has served as the stage for a slew of embarrassments in the field of education. In 2021, Loudoun County educators and the school board tried to cover up sex crimes committed against a ninth-grader in a restroom by a “gender-fluid” boy wearing a skirt. Last year, other Loudoun County parents organized protests against the teaching of critical race theory in the classroom, demanding “an end to the racist and divisive ideologies being infused into the government schools.”
Neighboring Fairfax County parents, most of them Asian, were outraged when they discovered that their kids were never informed they received prestigious National Merit awards. The information was bizarrely suppressed by their high school in the name of equity. Fairfax County schools have also “likely violated federal laws over parental rights by hiding the curriculum content from parents” of certain social-emotional learning programs, including a lesson that teaches kids about white privilege.
This contempt for parental involvement in schools was spotlighted during the debate in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race. Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe, who was the state’s governor from 2014 to 2018, declared, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That remark raised the hackles of parents in both political parties and probably caused McAuliffe to lose the election to Glenn Youngkin, who advocated for greater parental involvement in the schools.
The results of these shenanigans became painfully clear when the Center for Education Reform released its 2022 Parent Power Index, which evaluates states on how well they incorporate parents into public education and whether they put students first. Virginia ranked a dismal 45 of 51 (including Washington D.C.).
No surprises there.
But other factors deserve mention. U.S. census data rates Loudoun as the wealthiest county by household income in the United States. Fairfax County is number five on this list. Both are bedroom suburbs of Washington D.C., which reveals where the deep pockets reside in our country. Both counties have many residents who are Virginians in name only, who are products of progressive universities, and who were lured here by federal dollars and government jobs.
The contempt shown by these northern Virginia educators, politicians, and left-wing parents for those seeking a say-so in their children’s education is abominable. The treatment meted out to Suparna Dutta, who loves her adopted country, should embarrass them. The attempted cover-up of a sexual assault, apparently in the name of political correctness, should have landed some folks in a cell.
Designed by George Wythe, another Founding Father, Virginia’s state seal depicts a woman meant to embody virtue holding a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. Her left foot is planted on a figure representing tyranny, fixing this enemy firmly to the ground. The Latin motto reads, “Sic semper tyrannis” or “Thus always to tyrants.”
Virginia parents fighting for the rights of their children are the living embodiment of that battle cry.
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Image credit: RawPixel-Flickr, CC0 1.0