How America’s Educational Organizations Are Fighting Parental Rights

What’s happening: Over the past year, conservatives have passed a host of bills in an attempt to keep liberal ideologies out of schools and require schools to inform parents of their children’s curricula. The country’s biggest teachers unions and educational organizations are pushing back against those efforts, encouraging classroom discussions on LGBT issues and race and discouraging conservative values more than ever.

Libraries: The taxpayer-funded American Library Association (ALA) reportedly encouraged public libraries to prevent Christian and conservative book events from being held. The Christian book publisher Brave Books requested to hold story hours at over 50 public libraries across the country; after ALA’s interference, only 14 libraries agreed to host them.

Ideology: The Biden-backed National Education Association (NEA) is the nation’s largest teachers union with over 3 million members. This month, it recommended including controversial books like White Fragility and Gender Queer, which includes explicit illustrations, on students’ summer reading lists. It also pledged to work with various organizations to bring LGBT curriculum to schools and support schools facing “anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives.”

Political efforts: The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), another large union, has set its sights on fighting Republican education initiatives, which it has deemed racist and homophobic. AFT has teamed up with Campaign for Our Shared Future, which was formed to fight opponents of critical race theory in K-12 classrooms. The two organizations want to provide aid to teachers who say they’re under attack by Republicans.