Few noticed or cared when U.S. education secretary Miguel Cardona announced on June 14 the launch of the National Parents and Families Engagement Council (NPFEC). The NPFEC “…will serve as an important link between families and caregivers, education advocates and their school communities. The Council will help foster a collaborative environment where we can work together to serve the best interest of students and ensure they have the academic and mental health support they need to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the future.” 

While this sounds promising, a journalist with Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council (FRC) in their Washington Stand newsletter took an interest and identified some major red flags; “Yet one look at some of the council’s 14 acknowledged members shows it represents a small segment of elitist, left-wing views.” For example:

The National Action Network started by Al Sharpton made an “LGBTQ Alliance” in 2015 "...to promote "the hiring or participation of gay/transgender people “in all areas of religious and public life.”

Girls, Inc. supports abortion, comprehensive sex- ed, gender transition procedures for young people, and promotes critical theory.

UnidosUS, originally the National Council of La Raza (The Race) has promoted left-wing causes and open borders since its founding in 1968.  It now promotes sexual orientation and gender identity.   

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has partnered with the National Center for Transgender Equality and Lesbian Task Force.  

The National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) believes teachers should Infuse social justice into mathematics.

The United Parent Leadership Action Network (UPLAN) “…encourages schools to institute new “sexual health” classes, endorses affirmative action quotas in hiring school administrators, promises to “further equity and social justice” based on “race, class, gender, sexual orientation, [and] immigration status.” 

Generations United lobbied the Biden administration to bar government contracts to religious nonprofits, adoption agencies, childcare providers, and Christian schools that believe in traditional religious teaching about sexuality and gender.

The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) supports critical theory to end “systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination based on race, national origin, ethnic and/or religious identity, [and] sex/gender/gender identity/sexual orientation.”

Parent Leadership, Advocacy, and Community Empowerment (PLACE) advised the Biden administration on how lobbying groups “…can use the DOE’s Civil Rights Data Collection to change policies aimed at students “of limited English proficiency, and who are immigrants, LGBTQ.” They also advocate voting rights for illegal immigrants.

Based on the above, we can conclude Biden’s council is a hyper-partisan packed court (not unlike the makeup of the Jan. 6 Commission) that is likely to dismiss any family input that differs from their progressive views. 

How did we get in the situation where the country is overrun with radical left, communist-inspired organizations like the small sample above?  It was because we paid little attention when the radical left took to heart what Vladimir Lenin said more than a century ago; “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” The arrival of the German refugee academics from the Marxist Frankfurt School got the ball moving, but it took the 60s sexual revolution radicals from my generation to really jump-start the process.  Once the Vietnam War died down and people tired of violent protests, the hard-core leftists needed a new strategy.  It was to gradually take over the universities by hiring likeminded academics.  And they have had not four, but over 50 years to grow an army of woke true believers.  Many of their woke graduates now occupy influential positions in just about every area of Western society from K-12 schoolteachers to corporate CEOs.  And now their numbers have achieved the necessary critical mass of angry, often violent (allegedly oppressed) supporters to help nudge the nation in directions that few would have believed possible even 10 years ago.

But parents have more clout than people think.  The local and then nationwide news coverage generated by the Loudoun County Virginia protests at school board meetings by a few concerned parents resulted in an unexpected loss for former VA governor and fundraiser for the Clintons Terry McAuliffe (D) in his run for governor against a previously unknown novice political candidate, Glenn Youngkin (R).  McAuliffe’s defeat was assured only after he reinforced the leftist notion that parents have no say in what their children are taught.  Since then, parents across the country have been successfully challenging and seizing control of woke school boards. Therefore, parents must continue speaking up despite threats from the increasingly weaponized FBI.

Parents can also consider private/religious schools (although some could be just as woke).  They can vote for candidates supporting school choice or try homeschooling.  A neighbor of limited financial means found a way to homeschool, and their oldest son did so well in math that he earned a full academic scholarship to William & Mary University, where he continues to excel.  But this family benefitted from having a well-educated stay-at-home mom.  Homeschooling would be difficult for working single moms or school dropout moms. 

Parents should not be the only people to bear the burden.  I recently learned of two real-world proposals that could potentially benefit kids if widely adopted. 

1.  Pass legislation to constrain the enablers of the gender-transition fad.  The FRC in a related article described one in the Washington Stand.  “Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) have introduced legislation giving teens up to 30 years to file suit against those who performed gender-transition on them before the age of 18. The Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act allows minor victims to sue for “any physical, psychological, emotional, or physiological harms” caused by any gender-transition “procedure, related treatment, or the aftereffects” of those actions. That category includes dosing minors with puberty blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and performing gender-obliterating “top” or “bottom” surgeries.”

 2.  Reintroduce civics to replace the divisive CRT indoctrination in K-12 schools.  According to the Federalist “…the National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) announced a new model of social studies standards “American Birthright” ready for adoption in K-12 schools.  Robert Maranto, the 21st-century chair in leadership and professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, is one of 15 advisors who collaborated on the project.  “The thing we’ve lost,” Maranto told the Federalist, is how to “prepare people for democracy.”  “Jan. 6 and the 2020 riots indicate people don’t understand our political system… If we don’t teach young people about that, we’re going to lose it,”

The current Democrat leadership will never consider either of these two real-world solutions.  They need the chaos and the increase of indoctrinated woke voters to enable the fulfillment of their dream to fundamentally transform America into a one-party, amoral, green utopia controlled by a ruling class of woke liberal elites.  Therefore, the 2022 and 2024 elections are more important than ever if the American dream has a chance to survive. 

Image: Marc Nozell