A conservative education activist blasted 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones for saying she didn’t understand why parents should be in charge of their children’s education.
Ian Prior, the executive director of the political action committee Fight for Schools, told the Washington Examiner that the education system is “based on the concept that parents and teachers work together for the education of the student.”
“The idea that parents shouldn’t have a role in that process is anathema to our systems of education and government,” Prior said.
Hannah-Jones, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, told host Chuck Todd, “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught. … We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area.”
The statement echoed comments by former Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who infamously said he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach” during a September campaign debate leading up to his November electoral defeat by Republican and now Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin.
“The fact is, Nikole Hannah-Jones and other grifters are doing their best to prop up the educational industrial complex so that they can keep raking in taxpayer dollars for their wildly off-the-mark theories and morally bankrupt ideologies,” Prior told the Washington Examiner.
Hannah-Jones authored the controversial 1619 Project for the New York Times in 2019. It posited a view of American history that the year the first slave ships arrived in North America was the true founding of the United States.
The project, which has been criticized for historical inaccuracies, found its way into public school classrooms across the country following its publication, sparking substantial controversy amid a larger debate over the presence of critical race theory in schools.
Critical race theory says U.S. institutions are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities. It has been banned from public schools in several GOP-controlled states, and several other states are considering similar bans.
