There is a new battle line forming in the culture wars. Parents are sick and tired of schools claiming they don’t teach Critical Race Theory (CRT), and yet these schools are using its teachings as the malignant undertone in every lesson. The rallying cry is the demand for schools to be transparent in their curriculum. After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide, then why would you fight the call for honest and open knowledge of curriculum and lesson plans?

Naturally, the left-wing activists in the media, school boards, and school staff have fired back with a push for less transparency. They don’t believe parents should have a say in their children’s education. If they are teaching your kids, then the kids belong to the state. Parents who object are no better than domestic terrorists, to quote the infamous NSBA letter. They hold that this call for transparency is anti-“free speech.”

Furthermore, these CRT pushers want parents to believe that CRT is not taught in grades K-12. Hogwash. They are just going to hide it better and hope that the parents aren’t astute enough to really look.

CRT ideology has infected both private and public schools. How is it hidden in curriculum? CRT is a worldview, a lens through which any topic can be viewed. It hinges on the premise that there is a hierarchy (or privilege) and that people are either oppressors or oppressed based on their surplus or lack of privilege. All institutions are based on white supremacy and are therefore needing to be destroyed. Teachers are very creative in the ways they express these ideas. At Fox News’s “MisEducation of America” summit, several stratagems were unveiled.

Teachers have introduced the CRT worldview by playing games with students to sus out those who have the most privilege (no prizes for the winner). CRT is in children’s books, text books, and history lessons. They teach that math is racist and grades are racist. Episcopal School of Dallas — an elite private school that has an enormous admission fee — teaches CRT while lying to the parents and saying it doesn’t. In Georgia, Gwinnett County Public Schools took down a syllabus that demonstrated their intention to teach an AP Language class through the lens of CRT.

Leftists justify this move to hide CRT from parents as a protection of free speech. Besides being as twisted as a pretzel in terms of logic, free speech does not mean anything goes. There is such a thing as a moral standard. Without this caliber of merit, education loses its value. This can already be seen in the dismal decline of student readiness for higher education and the workforce.

There is such a thing as good ideas and bad ideas. There is a reason that Mein Kampf is not required reading. There is a reason you cannot shout “Fire!” in a movie theater.

In the spirit of transparency, parents who discover that their school has lied and is teaching their children CRT should have the right to move their child to a school that will do right by the values of the parents. This is called school choice. But just as the powers that be don’t want transparency, they also don’t want to give parents the power to vote with their feet. And it’s a crying shame.