Miguel Cardona, President Biden's Secretary of Education, sat for an interview with The Associated Press this week in which he sought to brush aside concerned American parents who have grown alarmed at both the leftward lurch of their kids' schools and curriculum as well as the efforts by school officials to conceal their dive into radical ideologies and policies — even when students are endangered as a result.
In response to a usual softball question from AP about whether other secretaries of education have had to grapple with "attacks" on public education, Cardona had quite the take. "I've never seen it where it is now," he lamented.
While many American parents would agree, at least in part, that public education has veered off the correct course of preparing children for future development and training them to use the skills needed to compete in the world, leading families to see things they haven't before, Cardona's point was really a warm-up for an attack on those parents who've grown increasingly alarmed at the playground of radical ideas that public education has become.
"There was civility, we could disagree, we could have healthy conversations around what's best for kids," Cardona continued, trying to explain what he says was the previous state of education. "I respect differences of opinion," he claimed before dropping the real purpose of his point: "I don't have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids."
🚨Secretary Cardona openly dismissed thousands of American parents who have been speaking out at school board meetings:
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) September 22, 2023
“I don’t have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids.” pic.twitter.com/QafoiKwAdB
Does he mean parents? You know, the Americans whose entire job is protecting their children and doing their best to ensure their flourishing in life. The ones who spoke out at school board meetings after public schools allowed their children to be, in the worst examples, victimized by their peers and then covered up. And in other cases, the ones appalled to learn that their daughters were being forced to use changing rooms with biological males, or find out their young children were being encouraged to deny their DNA and begin changing their name, pronouns, and bodies to fit a radical ideology rather than biology. Why on earth would those "people" (read: parents) be upset about how schools were seeking to usurp their role as parents? And, according to Cardona, what do parents know about what's right for their children?
It appears Cardona just, again, said more of the quiet part of Democrats' education agenda out loud. The Biden administration, by Cardona's admission, does not respect the parents who oppose their agenda for education. It also does not think that parents know "what's right" for their own kids. Instead, Team Biden views righteous indignation and at-times deservedly passionate demands for transparency and accountability from education official as uncivil and misbehaving.
Clearly, neither Secretary Cardona nor the aides who prepared him for the interview learned anything from Terry McAuliffe's 2021 bid for governor in Virginia. His debate stage quip that "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach" followed up with an interview in which he doubled down: "You don’t want parents coming in in every different school jurisdiction saying, ‘This is what should be taught here.'"
That seemingly clear-eyed declaration from McAuliffe played a major role in his decisive defeat that shook Democrats. Apparently, Team Biden isn't worried about or doesn't care what parents think ahead of 2024.
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