**Previously Recorded by Phyllis Schlafly**
Public schools have been taking over many responsibilities traditionally in the domain of parents such as providing meals, health care, and pre-kindergarten services. Public schools notoriously assert their right to override parental decisions about the assignment of books that parents find im1noral or profane, the use of privacy-invading questionnaires, the teaching of sex and evolution, the provision of contraceptives and abortion referrals, the use of school counselors, and demands that children be injected with vaccines or put on psychotropic drugs.
This widespread campaign to give public schools or family courts instead of parents – the authority to make major decisions about the care, upbringing and education of children is taking place despite the fact that no scientific basis exists for the governments’ methodologies, tests used, or the recommendations and decisions made. School and court decisions about the best interest of the child are not scientific findings but expressions of personal preference. The use of people other than parents to determine the best interest of a child cannot be justified by science, law, morality, or common sense.
The Protection of Pupil Rights An1endment, a federal law passed in 1978, states that schools may not interrogate students — without prior informed written parental consent — about “political affiliations or beliefs … ; mental or psychological problems of the student or the student’s family; sex behavior or attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals … ; religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent; … “
The public schools and the teachers unions don’t like this law and are fighting it as hard as they can. Parents should insist that schools obey this law.
