PARENTS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

guest opinion

by Tom Gutowski

Conflict between parents and public schools isn’t new. Over the years, parents have objected to things like compulsory education laws, the teaching of evolution, the existence of school-led prayers, the elimination of schoolled prayers, the use of corporal punishment, the elimination of corporal punishment, mandatory vaccination, and of course school desegregation, which opponents called communism.

Now, the relationship between parents and public schools is heating up again. The issues this time are mostly derived from the culture and the children of gay and trans parents have as much right to be in school, and to be made welcome, as anyone else.

Being made welcome means more than just being let in the door. It means not having your race, your history, your sexual orientation, or even your family structure demonized or erased. No parent has the right to force any other parent’s child to live in the shadows or to become a target for bullying.

And while it’s wrong to tell white children that they should feel guilty for the misdeeds of their wars: mask mandates, vaccinations (again), teaching about racial issues, sex education, and anything related to the LGBTQ+ community. Not surprisingly, most objections are coming from the political right.

Educating children doesn’t mean filling empty heads with carefully-selected facts and pre-approved opinions. It means providing students with a safe place for learning, giving them an honest, factual introduction to the wider world, and teaching them to think critically.

The protestors’ mantra is “parents’ rights,” the idea that parents know best what their children should learn, whether they should wear masks, and so forth, and that no school board has a right to overrule them.

The response from the left hasn’t always been articulate. Glenn Youngkin won the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia partly because his Democratic rival, Terry McAuliffe, famously said “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” To some, that sounded like an assertion that parents have no rights at all vis-à-vis the schools, which isn’t true. But the “parents’ rights” position is equally exaggerated; parents’ rights aren’t absolute. For starters, it’s literally impossible to honor every wish of every parent because parents often disagree with each other as well as with school administrators. Compromise is unavoidable in an inclusive system.

From its inception, one of the purposes of the public school movement has been to knit together students from various ethnic groups and social classes into one community. This idea gained additional prominence in the decades before World War I when America took in tens of millions of immigrants, many from Eastern and Southern Europe. And in 1954, after the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed the segregation of public schools, the purview of inclusive public education was expanded again to include people of color.

One method for creating a unifying effect in a school system is to mix students together so they get to know and respect one another and form friendships across cultural lines. Attempts to exclude children from the public schools based on their ethnic heritage or the color of their skin would run counter to one of the basic purposes of public education—not to mention be illegal and just plain wrong. The same holds true for the LGBTQ+ community. Gay and trans kids ancestors, it’s equally wrong to whitewash or ignore the history of Black and indigenous people. Their history—the full story, not just the history of oppression—needs to be taught, and taught honestly, in public schools. And it should be mainstreamed, not relegated to the status of an elective. Teaching all students about each other’s history is another way public schools can foster mutual respect and understanding.

This inclusive focus on the entirety of the school population is also a consideration with regard to health-related issues. Obviously, parents are free to disagree with school policy on masks and vaccines; no one claims school administrators or Board of Health members are infallible, or that they get every decision right. But an objection that doesn’t take into account the effect of a parent’s preference or a student’s actions on the health of the general school population is a non-starter.

Lastly, there’s the matter of making sense, being specific, and being grounded in reality. Those claiming that masks and vaccines don’t work are asking school boards to ignore the scientific evidence to the contrary. Someone who thinks school restrooms have litter boxes for kids who identify as “furries” will not be taken seriously. And the flap over Critical Race Theory doesn’t rate much higher. Those seeking to ban it often erroneously define it as nearly any mention of any aspect of current or past race relations that might be offensive or embarrassing to any white person.

Educating children doesn’t mean filling empty heads with carefully-selected facts and preapproved opinions. It means providing students with a safe place for learning, giving them an honest, factual introduction to the wider world, and teaching them to think critically. If instead we provide students with a sanitized version of reality along with a hefty dose of intolerance dressed up as moral righteousness, we’ll have short changed an entire generation.

If you’re tempted to fall for the marketing and take your mom, grandma, or bestie to 80 for Brady thinking that you’ll have a great time, let me try to run interference and encourage you to call an audible for something else.

While it’s clear that 80 for Brady was created in good faith, that’s entirely what makes it so offensive; not not even the combined star power of Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Jane Fonda as a girl gang can save a plot so flimsy and thin it might only have one side.

For pigskin fans hoping they’ll enjoy the movie as followers of superstar quarterback and chronic-retiree Tom Brady, even an off schedule pre-season game will have more inherent NFL drama, despite being produced by the film’s namesake. The peewee plot could be held in a thimble and seems more suited to a movie of the week than the big screen.

Here’s the gist: Four elderly but youngat-heart friends become unlikely New England Patriots fans who will do anything it takes to get tickets to the Super Bowl, where they hope to cheer on their favorite player. Along the way, anything can go wrong (and does!).

With talents the likes of these remarkable actresses, it’s difficult to believe the characters were given so little to work with and finally reduced to four silly shells: the cancer survivor worried about the end; the lonely widow trying to pick up her life; the fading beauty and serial dater; and the doting housewife who wakes up one day and realizes she’s spent her whole life serving an ungrateful man.

by Joseph Beyer

There are other men besides Tom Brady in the film’s story along the way (you’ll recognize them by their old man ways and their cardigan sweaters), but they don’t add much to the story except running Hot Wingz contests and being lonely at puzzles. The only flash of promising creativity in director Kyle Marvin’s work is an interstitial series of magic-realism dream sequences featuring Brady himself speaking to the lead character in Tomlin.

What’s so remarkable about the juvenile screenplay written by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins (of Booksmart fame), is not that is seems to follow every predictable Syd Field rule in the playbook but that the film is actually based on a true story—which, when revealed in the end credits, seemed infinitely more interesting that the 1-hour-48-minute Bran-Flakes fiasco I just sat through.

The film has a singular level of complexity and no shame using every granny-pack joke in the AARP arsenal (including cougar romance in a broom closet and mistaking sleeping pills for cholesterol medication).

On a Friday night screening with about 30 other audience members, the PG-13 film elicited not one measurable crowd laugh or response except, in the end, a few groans. For a comedy that promised to surprise and delight, I’m still wondering … how did they go wrong?

Instead of the mastery of The Golden Girls where hilarity, pathos, and ensemble work created vivid inner lives for characters that could touch anyone, 80 for Brady’s most unsportsmanlike conduct is not trusting us to love the characters on their own for who they are, no matter their age.

Wait, What?

A couple in Etobicoke, Toronto, left on an extended business trip in January 2022, CTV News reported. When they returned home months later, they were stunned to realize that their house had been sold and the new owners had moved in. Police said a man and woman impersonated the owners, hired a real estate agent and listed the property using fake identification. Police are still looking for the imposters.

Size Matters

Momo the lar gibbon, who lives at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden Mori Kirara in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, delivered a baby in February 2021, which surprised zookeepers, since Momo lived in her own enclosure with no males around. She was very protective of the offspring, United Press International reported, so it wasn't until two years later that handlers were able to collect DNA from the youngster to determine who the father was. As it turned out, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, Itou, was the baby daddy. Zookeepers found that a partition between Momo's exhibit and Itou's off-display area had a perforated board with holes about 9mm in diameter, and they believe the two were able to mate through one of those holes. The perforated board was replaced with a steel plate, but Momo and Itou will be introduced properly to each other so that they may live as a family.

That Rule Doesn't Apply to Me

On Jan. 16, Brazilian attorney Leandro Mathias de Novaes delivered his mother to the Laboratoria Cura in Sao Paolo, where she was scheduled for an MRI. Before they both entered the MRI room, the New York Post reported, they were asked to remove any metal objects from their persons and signed a form detailing the protocols, but Novaes opted to not remove, or disclose, his concealed weapon. When the MRI's magnetic field yanked the pistol from his waistband, it fired and struck him in the stomach; he was hospitalized for three weeks after the incident but died on Feb. 6.

Clothing Optional

Trevyn Wayne Hill, 21, of Las Vegas, let it all hang out on Jan. 28 when he approached another guest in a stairwell at the Des Moines (Iowa) Downtown Marriott, KCCI-TV reported. Court documents said Hill was naked and brandishing a toilet plunger when he yelled, "I'm going to (expletive) get you" while chasing the other person. Hill cruised around the hotel in his birthday suit, destroying a sprinkler system and pulling several fire alarms before finally being subdued by firefighters. Hill pleaded not guilty to assault, first-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

Least Competent Criminal

Early on the morning of Feb. 5, 20-yearold Lantz Kurtz broke into a gas station in Palm Coast, Florida, and stole multiple items. He exited via the front door, apparently unaware that he'd left a big clue behind: his debit card, Fox35-TV reported.

Officers responding to the alarm found the card and tracked down Kurtz, who told them he had intended to come back to the store and pay for the items. But Sheriff Rick Staly wasn't having it: "Leaving a debit card behind does not absolve you from theft or committing a burglary," he said.