Christina Wyman is a “public intellectual” and academic who specializing in teaching critical theory. This is about all you need to know to realize she knows nothing about teaching and/or surgery.
It is disheartening to see so many people “liking” this argument because it may be one of the most ignorant statements about education since Terry McAullife’s election-destroying comment: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Let’s start with the easy part: parents ARE involved in surgery. What happens is that the doctors involved in the surgery come to the parents and give them options. I can tell you that the surgeon himself (or herself) will usually discuss the situation with the parents. No surgeon can force the parents to do the operation, and the parents are always allowed to get second and third opinions. Depending on the type of operation, many parents do get second and third opinions, so they are indeed “interfering” with what the surgeon may want to do. And sometimes parents decide not to get surgery at all because the condition makes surgery optional. Very often, surgery is more dangerous than the other options.
Once the surgery starts, it is necessarily closed off for reasons of health and security, but the strict parameters of the surgical process have been set by parent involvement. It is not as if surgeons have the freedom to say they are going to do heart surgery and then decide, mid-operation, to perform transgender surgery.
So, to sum up, it appears that Christine Wyman knows nothing about what happens during surgery.
But unfortunately she also knows nothing about public education. By design, the public school system necessarily involves parent involvement. (Whether or not parents take advantage of this is another question — most of us do not do the due diligence we should). Parents are involved in electing the school board, which sets curriculum and other policy. Parents are involved in seeing the grades that their kids get, these days via on-line portals, and teachers rely on parent feedback to make sure kids are getting assignments done on time. Teachers are available via email or other on-line systems for interaction with parents. And of course there are the old-fashioned parent-teacher conferences that actually are essential to the educational process.
So, in fact, the public school system relies extensively on parent involvement and feedback. I get daily emails from multiple teachers regarding my three kids still in public schools. I get opt-out forms for various classes all the time, meaning the school recognizes that I as a parent can decide whether or not my kids will participate in certain subjects that I might find objectionable.
Need I mention that according to recent US Census figures, 5 to 6 percent of kids nationwide are homeschooled, meaning the parents and the kids together do all of the schooling without government involvement in any way?
The alternate world of the Christina Wymans is a dystopian nightmare in which your children are owned by the state system and are programmed by the critical race and gender theorists to believe a long list of woke talking points. This is what the Christina Wymans of the world want: complete control over your kids so they can be brainwashed away from the influence of parents.
