WAGNER: The left’s frightening view, that children belong to the state

“When we get right down to the crunch, the child belongs to the state.” According to the Saint John's Calgary Report, that frightening statement was made by Alberta School Trustees’ Association president and University of Calgary education professor Alex Proudfoot in November 1977.Earlier that year, a private Christian school had opened in a small Alberta town, and the provincial government wanted it closed. The ensuing controversy generated a debate about parental rights in education, and it was in the context of that debate that Proudfoot made his statement.Court action was initiated against the parents who opened the school. Thankfully, the parents in that 1978 case — Regina v. Wiebe — won and their school remained open. In response to the decision, Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservative government loosened its requirements for private schools, opening the door for more private schools to be launched soon afterwards.Thus, the Wiebe case is a landmark for parental rights in Alberta.Some may doubt that Proudfoot really made that statement or think he said it carelessly, not really meaning it. But they would be wrong. In November 1991, Alberta Report — the successor to Saint John's Calgary Report — quoted him again as saying Canadian children “are property of the state, like our oil, our gas and our pipelines. The state determines what kind of education our children get, what age they’ll start school and how many years they will stay there. That is the law.”Proudfoot was not shy about stating his views.A similar statement was made by another political figure in 1988 when the Alberta government proposed a new School Act. This too entailed a debate over parental rights in education. The proposed Act was viewed as favorable to parental rights and therefore received strong opposition from the political left.In the legislature, NDP MLA Barry Pashak stated his reasons for being against the new Act. After complaining that the new Act “transfers all kinds of rights to parents,” he said, “In any kind of organized society the rights of the state have to come first. That’s why you have a public education system.” That is, the rights of the state “come first,” ahead of parental rights.These views are not unique to Alberta. Many progressives throughout North America do not give much credence to parental rights.For example, a previous column in the Western Standard described the view of law professor James Dwyer – in his book against homeschooling — that the state should take custody of every child at birth and allocate children to parents based on the state’s criteria.The Public School Boards' Association of Alberta produced a report in August 2021 entitled, Homeschooling in Alberta: The Choices, Contexts, and Consequences of a Developing System. This report cites Dwyer's book favourably, although it does not openly allude to the most egregious passages where he essentially claims the state owns the child.Dwyer has spent his academic career advocating for the elimination of parental rights.His earlier book against private schools, entitled Religious Schools v. Children’s Rights, singles out the children of Christian fundamentalist parents for seizure by the state. He argues for the idea of the state raising — or at least instructing – the children of fundamentalists in order to ensure that those children will reject their parents’ conservative Christian beliefs.He contends that since fundamentalists face hostility and contempt from “mainstream Americans” due to their religious beliefs, their children will suffer derision as they get older. He thus proposes the following solution: “Knowing that these children will incur the scorn of mainstream America if they grow up to be like their parents, why do we not act to prevent that, for their sake, rather than expect mainstream Americans to develop a respect for people who argue dogmatically for reactionary policies based upon religious premises we do not share?”In other words, why don’t we — that is, “we” progressives — “act to prevent” the fundamentalists’ children from growing up to believe like their parents? Why don’t “we” teach them our beliefs (progressive ideology) instead?It would seem that in Dwyer’s ideal world, conservative Christians who dissent from the state’s progressive ideology would lose their parental rights and perhaps lose custody of their children as well. Indeed, he writes that the elimination of private fundamentalist and Catholic schools would be a “cause for celebration.”So, while the frightening quotes at the beginning of this column are taken from events in Alberta in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, they are far from obsolete. Those kinds of views are currently commonplace among “progressive” academics.That is, the leftist view that “the child belongs to the state” is very much a contemporary challenge for freedom-loving citizens. .This is what the Western Standard is up againstThe Trudeau government is funding lies and propaganda by directly subsidizing the mainstream media. 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WAGNER: The left’s frightening view, that children belong to the state

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