In Virginia, there’s a neck-and-neck gubernatorial race going on between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin. To be frank, I haven’t been paying much attention to this race because I’ve been assigned to other stories and, like most people, I don’t live in Virginia. But I have a vague understanding that history curriculums are a big issue for Youngkin because of the controversy over so-called critical race theory instruction in public schools.
It was in this context, and the context of receiving emails from two of my children’s principals this morning about after-school care being canceled because the second catastrophic flooding event in the area since Labor Day weekend is imminent, that the following pullout from a USA Today/Suffolk University poll of Virginians struck me right in the face:
There are a few problems with this question, one being that parents elect school boards in the first place. But a much bigger problem is that it suggests the existence of parents who want to spend more time dealing with logistical issues related to their children, something that already takes up approximately 99.9 percent of my waking brain energy.
Can you imagine even having to review one entire year’s worth of curriculum to approve it, much less providing detailed input on it? And doing this, probably, on a Zoom meeting with hundreds of other people? Do these angry parents know how much planning it takes to fill six hours each day with material that’s interesting enough to keep children from breaking everything in the classroom by hitting each other with it (elementary school) or texting each other TikToks about recreational drug use and open-minded sexual promiscuity (contemporary high school, I assume)?
Anyone who answered “parents” on that question has too much time and needs a hobby or other means of passing the time and finding purpose in life. In fact, I have the perfect thing: taking care of my children, this afternoon. Bring an umbrella.
