In loco parentis: a Latin phrase meaning, simply, “in the place of a parent.” Or maybe not so much anymore, since nothing in this postmodern world is simple.
In legal parlance, the phrase is used to decide if someone is acting in the role of a parent and therefore has the legal rights and responsibilities of said parent.
In an education system, at least once upon a time, it was drummed into the heads of inspiring teachers that they bore a great responsibility. The parents of the children we taught were committing them to our trust and care to educate them in accordance with traditional societal norms and to ensure their physical, social and mental well-being, so that at the end of the day – literally - we safely returned their children to them, no worse than they were in the morning, and hopefully, having learned something during the day.
As opposed to family law, where there is a strong legal rights component for those acting in place of the parent, teachers acting in loco parentis mostly focused on their responsibility. If we did the right things by the children, parents would be happy: treat the children the way that we would want ours to be treated. It seemed a simple proposition. Of course teachers were not always perfect, nor was the education system itself. Sometimes we botched the job. But then again, they were not acting in loco parentis.
That Was Then, This is Now
In 1971, Y.A. fiction writer S. E. Hinton’s second best seller was titled, That Was Then, This is Now. And indeed, just about everything that was then is subsumed by this is now, which includes the concept in loco parentis.
Back then, our better angels knew as an obvious matter of course that we “stood” in place of parents, that we were not there to usurp their role. To rephrase what I wrote above, parents entrusted their children to us in September and it was then up to us to return them to their parents in June, at the very least no worse than they were at the start of the year, and with any luck, better for the experience, in ways that society in general and parents specifically, desired. It was a tacit contract.
Now, in locus parentis has come to be something very different. In short, boards of education, teachers organizations and governments have seized the role of parents. In Ontario, boards of education and teacher organizations have made significant changes to the curriculum, from extreme global warming advocacy to gender education to critical race theory. Some parents might be fine with the changes, while others would object, but it seems that until recently, few parents were even aware of them. Our education system now lacks transparency, and like other governance agencies, it is becoming a closed affair, even censoring its rank and file members who might disagree.
A recent example of this centered around Chanel Pfahl, a licensed member of the OCT (Ontario College of Teachers) who dared to disagree with Critical Race Theory being taught in Ontario schools. Miss Pfahl’s crime was to post on her Facebook page – not even something she said in her classroom - that schools should be non-partisan, and that children are not in school to be indoctrinated. She then went completely overboard, suggesting that schools should model kindness and speak out against all forms of discrimination. She was turned in, apparently, by a fellow teacher who saw the posting and reported it to their professional organization.
So, clearly, the OCT knows what’s in the best interest of your children: Critical Race Theory is in: kindness and anti-discrimination in its broadest of sense, is out. And so was Pfahl, who was suspended from teaching while the OCT reviewed her case preparatory to a disciplinary hearing.
Fortunately for her, lawyers were provided by a nonprofit NGO called The Democracy Fund. Perhaps only because of that, who can know, the Ontario College of Teachers decided against a disciplinary hearing, instead, giving Pfahl an “oral caution.” Not even in writing! Too bad as it would be interesting to know what the caution said. Where does Pfahl go from here with her career? Where do parents go from here? Children are being taught revolutionary concepts which in this case, divide them on the basis of race.
The public school system was once the institution that bound children together, breaking down barriers and providing the framework for a multi-ethnic, multi-level society from all walks of life to come together and forge a common citizenry. That was then. Now boards and teaching organizations promote and teach conflict and divisiveness, and it is not a good career move to opine otherwise.
During Covid 19, when students went on-line, parents began to see what their school boards and teachers unions had introduced into the curriculum, the two contentious areas being critical race theory and the new, gender ideology. When American parents began attending school board meetings to ask questions and demand answers, board officials silenced them and had them forcibly removed. The National Association of School Boards (U.S.) wrote to the White House to have such parents labeled as domestic terrorists and requested FBI intervention. Clearly, the Boards were now fully in charge of the children and their education. Fortunately the silent majority awoke: public outrage was vivid and livid, forcing a withdrawal. As evidence, this from Politico:
NSBA WALKS IT BACK: The National School Boards Association has apologized for a letter that called on President Joe Biden to use the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, its National Threat Assessment Center and other federal agencies to stop “threats and acts of violence” on school officials during school board meetings.
These are school boards that are clearly invested in the new version of in loco parentis. They have determined that their new belief systems should prevail, not those of parents and traditional values. But just because they backed away from their authoritarian attempt to forcibly shut down parents, to remove their right of free speech and the right to advocate for their children, does not mean that boards have jettisoned those belief systems. These are still in the curriculum.
But not in Canada, you say. According to a very recent National Post article, “school boards [are] running racially segregated events – dances, career days, workshops-that White students are not invited to attend. We have drag queens being hired…to give pep talks to the student body [and] teachers telling six year olds that boys and girls don’t exist in reality.”
This surely goes beyond the purview of education, far beyond that good faith social contract by which decent parents entrust the education of children to their local schools.
In various school boards, children who express some concern about their sexual identity are counseled along the path to transition and are encouraged to choose names and pronouns of their newly adopted gender, while also being counseled not to inform their parents. A California school board is being sued by a mother who claims that her eleven year old daughter’s “school was helping the young student transition her gender in secret without parental consent during the 2021-2022 school year.”
Continued research indicates that our institutions have encroached on, and taken over, the rights of parents. Advocates often mount attacks on parents by centering out religious and conservative groups as low hanging fruit, and charging that parents don’t own their children. This is a straw man argument. No, indeed, parents do not own their children. But they are the ones raising them, the ones responsible for their well-being and safety, the ones blamed if something goes amiss. They are the ones who provide love and financial support for their children, enabling them to eventually take their place in society. Do those boards of education and governments have such a life-long commitment for these children once they are through with them?
And while parents don’t own their children, certainly, neither does the State. Unless the children are growing up in places such as Wisconsin, where a particularly aggressive school board is being sued by parents for acting as if they do. It is perhaps best conceptualized by a teacher’s flyer posted in at least one Wisconsin school that stated, “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now.”
There used to be a shared responsibility between governments and parents for the well-being of children, and accepted moments when the government needed to intervene in the family to protect children, all built over tome and years of laws and traditions. Examples like that of the Wisconsin school board are clear indications that governments are aggressively contravening this traditional arrangement. When the state, the government, suddenly begins to go far beyond accepted practice, creating new paradigms and injecting itself into the family equation, when governments control the education of children, it smacks of creeping totalitarianism. Sounds over the top, doesn’t it? Then again, Vladimir Lenin said, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”
All of this begs the question: What are boards of education doing so heavily invested in areas that are not their fields of expertise, nor what they are commissioned to do? If a teacher, school, board, finds a health issue, a social issue and so on, the normal process would be to begin by counseling the student, then involving the parents, and finally making recommendations to the family involving outside agencies who are equipped with the appropriate expertise and resources. The schools would then make any adjustments suggested by the experts and family. But schools and boards now have subsumed this entire procedure to themselves, bypassing parents in the process.
Back to that National Post article. The Ford government has introduced The Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act. Its focus is to be on skills and thinking and to “ensure accountability and transparency for parents and families.” That sounds refreshing and somewhat reassuring. It also indicates that something in our education system must be amiss or why would such legislation be introduced? The usual suspects are quoted in the article and they already are voicing displeasure, wanting to know what is wrong with our curricula, and what is supposed to be left out. They are quoted as saying that the bill is vague, and at this moment, as the Post suggests, maybe deliberately so.
But perhaps the essence of this bill, which could not come any sooner, is simply to restore the traditional idea of in loco parentis.
Anthony always has interesting takes on very controversial issues. I enjoy reading his posts and look forward to reading more