The Patriot Post® · Cameras in the Classroom?

More American parents are taking action in response to the systemic leftist indoctrination in the nation’s public schools. But, as the old cartoon PSA from the ‘80s said, knowing is half the battle. There are already cameras for safety on school busses, so if parents really want to know exactly what their children are being taught, “Why don’t we have cameras in every classroom?”

That’s the question asked by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who discussed the subject with Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh.

Walsh says we should have cameras. “It makes total sense that, obviously, we should want to know what our kids are being taught,” he said. “Teachers as government employees, in their capacity as government employees working with kids, they shouldn’t get privacy or free speech,” he asserted, addressing the Left’s primary objections. Besides, Walsh wants to know, “Is there anything that could happen inside a public school classroom that you absolutely would not want on film? And if you can think of something that could happen like that, it shouldn’t be happening in the classroom to begin with.”

Given that we already know a lot, Walsh makes a good point. As we noted earlier this week, according to the National Education Association, all K-12 schools should teach children that “white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cis-hetero-patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and anthropocentrism” form the oppressive foundation of our culture and society.

In other words, the NEA wants the racist and Marxist ideology of Critical Race Theory taught in every classroom in America. No wonder these union thugs don’t want it on camera.

And then there are the sexualization curriculums aimed at children, and sometimes physical abuse.

Leftist opponents liken the idea of cameras to George Orwell’s 1984, which is almost hilariously ironic given that it is they, not conservatives, who are behaving as Big Brother and the Thought Police. It is they who wish to control the present, past, and future, and to eradicate “thoughtcrime” by any means necessary.

To be sure, though, not every conservative is on board with the idea of classroom cameras. “I do want parents to know what their kids are being taught at all times,” says Allie Beth Stuckey. “But I care about kids’ privacy, too. I don’t want them to be recorded & watched by other parents all day.” Moreover, she adds, “That’s a lot of potential for creepiness, hacking, AND a lot of pressure on students knowing everyone’s parents may be watching their every move.”

Well then, just focus cameras on teachers and the chalkboard, right? Perhaps, but there are an awful lot of truly good teachers out there, and what if someone — anyone — doesn’t like something they said? We all know how videos can be taken out of context to vilify a disfavored target, and even the best teachers have a bad day or a bad moment.

“BETTER idea than cameras in public school classrooms: homeschool,” says Liz Wheeler.

Dennis Prager agrees, writing before the camera debate even began: “The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America’s schools.”

The system, he says, “is actively, deliberately miseducating them by the tens of millions,” and our kids are “guinea pigs in the left’s sick and dystopian experiment.”

Homeschooling is indeed growing quickly, but it’s not always an option for parents, and public schools are almost certainly here to stay. So how do parents better know and influence what their kids are learning? That will be an ongoing and healthy debate, the best outcome of which would be more engaged parents and resilient kids who know how to think.

In the meantime, Mark Alexander says, parents should consider clip-on cameras so their kids can record classroom interactions — and let the resulting confiscation of those body cams become a test case.

(Updated)