Nicole Neily, who leads Parents Defending Education, says the grassroots group encourages everyone from concerned grandparents to frustrated taxpayers to fight left-wing indoctrination.
“We encourage everyone to get involved,” she tells AFN, “because one person can and does make a difference.”
Neily, who previously worked for the Cato Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum, founded the education watchdog to fight left-wing wokeness that has overtaken schools.
The wokeness that is brainwashing students typically follows one of two major topics: racism and white oppression, or the transgender-related obsession over choosing genders and pronouns. Both topics have the same theme: Teachers view objecting parents as unwelcomed enemies of progress.
Parents who know their history can spot the Marxism in that hatred of parents, and an ongoing theme of the left-wing lessons is a hatred of the West and of the nuclear family.
Last year, PDE filed a civil rights complaint against a Manhattan public school outed for segregating its 7th and 8th graders by race. The school’s principal said the goal was for students to “undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community.”
Parents and community members who are naïvely clueless would be shocked at the numerous reports documented by Parents Defending Education during just four months of 2022.
So why is this happening? According to Neily, it’s because powerful “gatekeepers” have decided what is taught in the classroom for more than 100 years, and with that power comes an air of entitlement.
“They feel entitled to spend our money,” she says, “and they don't like having to answer questions about their spending and their priorities."
