Educational freedom and “total transparency” for parents are the keys to defeating far-left race and gender wokeism in public schools, says former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
She says in a recent interview that total transparency and access to what’s happening in their children’s classroom is the way for parents to combat the ideas being taught in many schools.
A longtime advocate for educational choice, DeVos says parents should work to promote educational freedom and curriculum transparency to make informed decisions for their children.
DeVos has been vocal in her criticism of far-left ideas promoted in public school classrooms, particularly of the Biden administration’s proposed revisions to Title IX legislation, which DeVos says would “critically injure if not kill women’s sports.”
“There’s been a move to ban [Critical Race Theory], wokeism, etc., but banning it is not going to solve the problem because they will still find a way to get around whatever the ban is and reintroduce something under another name,” DeVos said in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
As a result of that game of Whac-A-Mole, various states have advanced legislation demanding curriculum transparency and full-on openness about what’s going on in classrooms.
“If you have total transparency to what is going on in classrooms, I can’t imagine there’s a high percentage of parents that think something like that is an okay thing to be exposing young kids to,” DeVos said. “Instead, they should be actually teaching kids how to read and how to write and how to do mathematics.
“They should be helping kids learn, versus exposing them to a whole agenda-driven experience that is antithetical to many, many families, values and perspectives.”
In her recently released book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and The Future of the American Child,” DeVos details her years fighting for educational freedom, defining that freedom as the liberation of public schools from the union-controlled, zip-code determined, government-run education monopoly.
“It means empowering families to choose how and where the education dollars already designated for their children are spent,” she writes.
“Creating an education freedom environment will totally change the dynamics around K-12 education,” DeVos said. “If people can vote with their feet and go somewhere else, then all education providers need to become responsive.
“This is, in my view, the most important thing we can do to fundamentally change and improve K-12 education.”
