Moms on the March: School Board Politics, "Parents' Rights," and the "New Oppressed"

• In Event: Curriculum as Control: Who Decides?

Abstract

The “anti-CRT” playbook turned out to be an effective process for shutting down complicated conversation that curricularists normally engage in, and the damage of that strategy is still playing out and continues to play out in public schools, with teachers, and is most notoriously written into state legislation. In this paper, we co-researchers dig further into the roots of the current culture wars by mining state legislation, but more specifically deconstructing discourse of school board meetings circulating in so-called ‘parents rights’ groups. We reveal and criticize the cynical politics of victimhood, and the characterization by reactionary, often privileged groups, that they are somehow being held hostage to a secular, bureaucratic system that is abusing their kids.

Authors

• Todd Alan Price, National Louis University
  Presenting Author

• Robert J. Helfenbein, Mercer University
  Presenting Author