Twitter Users Mock NBC Op-Ed That Compares Wanting Say In Kids’ Education to Interfering With Surgery

Twitter users criticized an NBC op-ed which argued that parents wanting a say in their children’s education is equivalent to parents interfering with a surgical operation simply because the patient is their child.

“Teaching, too, is a science. Unless they’re licensed and certified, parents aren’t qualified to make decisions about curricula,” Christina Wyman argued in the NBC article.

Wyman went on to argue that parental involvement in curriculum decisions hinders teachers’ ability to “teach students to think.”

A teacher herself, Wyman noted that she has a doctoral degree in curriculum, and 36 states require teachers to have a master’s degree to teach. Parents who aren’t “qualified to teach” should “keep their noses out of school curricula,” she wrote.

“No. It’s like expecting your surgeon to perform the surgery you actually need rather than their favorite surgery that nobody asked for and that would actually harm your body,” Adele Scalia tweeted.

“They really think they own your kids,” Corey DeAngelis, national research director of School Choice Now, posted.

“They hate you and they think you’re stupid,” Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute commented.

“I’d workshop this analogy a little bit,” wrote Alex Griswold.

“’Parents think they can control their kids’ education. It’s sort of like a medical patient thinking he has rights.’ … ‘Yes, that is a good analogy, actually.’” Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted.

School districts nationwide have witnessed struggles between school leadership and parents over the teaching of racially divisive content and the availability of sexually explicit content in school libraries, and the FBI’s counterterrorism division is reportedly flagging parents as “threats” in relation to school board incidents.