Or, so says MSNBC host Melissa Harris.
We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.
Leftists represent a significant threat to families. This sort of talk should be taken very seriously by parents because leftists truly believe this silliness. The worst part is that this lady, Melissa Harris, is a college professor at Tulane University. Yes. She’s “educating” impressionable young minds. Can you imagine the indoctrination?
And it occurs to me that we’ve tried this approach to collective education and it has failed miserably. Children “educated” in State-approved schools score significantly worse on college entrance exams than those children educated in private and home-schools. So we have yet another example of a grand idea, however impractical, heralded over the evidence that it is ineffective. Typical leftism.
UPDATE
Melissa Harris issued a response to all the criticism. She said,
My inbox began filling with hateful, personal attacks on Monday, apparently as a result of conservative reactions to a recent “Lean Forward” advertisement now airing on MSNBC, which you can view above. What I thought was an uncontroversial comment on my desire for Americans to see children as everyone’s responsibility has created a bit of a tempest in the right’s teapot. Allow me to double down.
One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of more than our households, they are part of our communities and deserve to have the care, attention, resources, respect and opportunities of those communities.
When the flood of vitriolic responses to the ad began, my first reaction was relief. I had spent the entire day grading papers and was relieved that since these children were not my responsibility, I could simply mail the students’ papers to their moms and dads to grade! But of course, that is a ridiculous notion. As a teacher, I have unique responsibilities to the students in my classroom at Tulane University, and I embrace those responsibilities. It is why I love my job.
Sifting Reality 
I hate to sound like the tin foil hat black helicopter crowd, but after reading Animal Farm where Napoleon and the pigs took the puppies from their mother because they could be best “educated” by him strikes a chord. Also from 1984, the State trained the children in the Boy Scout-esque “Spies” organization and trained them to be little eyes and ears for Big Brother.
This is the leftist thinking that says parents don’t have a right to know the curricula in middle and high schools as it relates to certain social issues, and then refuse to allow them to opt out of the
indoctrinationclasses.I hate feeling like a conspiracy theorist, but the political left are, imo, out of control and too intent on gaining control over the minutia of our lives.
Wow! That’s scary stuff. I read her “response” and in it she seems plays it off as though she meant that communities “have a responsibility to” kids in the community. She HAS to be a smart enough person to know that there is a world of difference between saying that a community has a responsibility and that a kid “belongs” to a community. To me, this feels like an attempt to say something controversial to gain press… and that’s looking at it in the best possible light.
Steven,
I forgot about her response. I’m glad you mentioned it. We don’t like to be unfair here, so I’m going to locate that response and post it.
Thanks for reminding me! And I agree with your sentiments.
Her position is so NOT new, which is probably why she was surprised by the “vitriol” she got in response to it. For decades, one of the arguments made by teacher’s unions to make home schooling either illegal or to require parents either have a degreee in teaching before being allowed to home educate, or be required to be under the control of the public school system, has been that parents are simply unqualified to have anything to do with their own children. Parents are “encouraged” to put their children into daycare as young as possible, start school as early as possible, and leave the parenting to the state via the school system.
While there are a lot of good teachers out there, far too many have no respect for parents whatsoever and truly believe that they are the ones who should control how children are taught and raised. Parents, in their view, should not be allowed to teach their children because they might teach them the “wrong” things. The earlier kids can be seperated from their parents, the better.
The adage, “It takes a village to raise a child,” is often used as a touchy-feely way to encourage parents to reliquish parental autonomy and let the “experts” raise their children for them.
I am not at all surprised that home schooling is growing by leaps and bounds.
Richard Rorty, a notable philosopher who taught at such schools as Princeton, the University of Virginia, and Stanford University.
Kunoichi,
While President of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson said about public education,
Transforming children through “education” is not new by any means; it’s been a common goal of the “progressive” movement for a hundred years now.
Terrance; Ironically, Woodrow Wilson was home schooled.
Adolf Hitler also thought children belonged to the state, so she’s in good company.