About
Education Matters. Parents Matter.
The life of every child revolves around education; from the earliest moments of their lives they absorb everything around them. To grow is to learn.
Parents bear the primary responsibility and privilege of providing for their children’s education.
Stealing the rights of parents
Like most people, parents find that many cares compete for their time and attention and they lack enough time to devote themselves to the formal education of their children. To make matters worse, the apparently unrelenting advancement in human understanding often makes parents feel inadequate to the task; continuous competition from television, radio and the internet seem to drown out parents’ voices. As a result, many parents are uncertain about educating their children.
Some say that nature abhors a vacuum. As parents withdraw their influence in the education, others grasp greater influence. These include the provincial government, school boards, and teachers’ unions. Parents allowed these group to illegitimately make decisions about the education of their children because these others seemed more learned and capable and they appeared to have their children’s best interest in mind.
Perhaps that was so at one point in time but these are political, not personal, entities and they have interests that run contrary to the interests of parents and their children. Special interest groups are granted inappropriate influence over children, even though their interests may not have any similarity to the interests of parent, children or even the public at large who are paying for the cost of education
A time to act
Take Back our Schools is a campaign of several advocacy groups and individual citizens to turn the tide and get parents back into education. These groups were galvanized into action by an especially blatant attack on parents rights, namely the Corren Agreement. This proverbial straw is in no way the point of this campaign. It is only a symptom of a greater problem in the education system.
Take Back our Schools provides a single focus from which many organizations can organize their activities in this area. The hope is that this will address the general lack of coherence that occurs with many groups working independently.
A time for which actions?
Take Back our Schools will work in number of areas. First, this website will provide parents, students, educators and the public at large with the necessary news, information and research be properly informed about parents rights in the education of their children and the action they need to take to ensure those rights are honored. Second, as issues arise, Take Back our Schools will engage the mainstream media through issuing press releases and granting interviews with various members of the campaign. Third, as the opportunity arises, Take Back our Schools will hold public meetings to better inform parents and others about issues that they may not be aware of.
Our principles
Some of our participating organizations are explicitly Christian in nature. Others come to these issues from the stand point of natural law and morality. Some of the content of this site will be more reflective of the principles of one group or the other, which we feel is good, beneficial even. Further, we all agree on the following principles:
- Every school must be a place where members – that is students, teachers, staff and parents – do not accept harassment or abusive conduct directed at any individual, regardless of their actual or apparent association or identification with any group.
- Parents carry primary responsibility for the education of their children, and posses rights commensurate with those responsibilities. The rights and responsibilities of all others are secondary and subordinate to those of parents. “The best interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents.” – From the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, Principle 7
- No one possesses rights, nor may be granted privileges, beyond the scope of their responsibilities in the education of children.
- Schools must be open and honest with parents about what they teach students. Teaching materials should be open to examination by parents. Particular care should be taken that parents are directly advised, well in advance, when topics they feel are controversial or sensitive are to be discussed.
Who we are
- British Columbia Parents and Teachers for Life
- Parents for Democracy in Education Society
- Canadian Alliance for Social Justice and Family Values Association
- REAL Women of BC
- The ECP Centre
- ARPA Canada
How to get involved
If you want to participate in this campaign, feel free to send us an email. We’ll get back to you as soon as we are able
