Children’s education is a major political issue and has been for years. Surveys of voters have long placed education high among their priorities. However, we have entered a new phase with new and pressing concerns for parents .

It used to be that parents mostly worried about the quality of their children’s education. Did schools employ the best methods to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic? Did the curriculum prepare students for college or for a career? Research has for decades showed serious problems on these fronts, with reports finding children’s basic knowledge and competence lacking both objectively and in relation to children in other countries.

These concerns haven’t gone away. But for many, they’ve been surpassed by two new concerns. First, parents now must cope with the effects wrought from shutting down in-person learning during COVID. We continue to learn more about the horrific effects school closures had on our children’s intellectual, emotional, and relational development. We learn of the damage while remembering that early on in the pandemic, it was clear that most children faced small risks from the disease. Some children lost precious time that will take years to recover. Others never will make up the gaps, permanently inhibiting their future life prospects and happiness.

Second, parents have had to confront the proliferation in our schools of indoctrination thanks to liberal ideology. We find many curricula dominated by critical race theory, which seeks to recast American history and contemporary society as inherently and perpetually racist. We read of other textbooks and teachers who engage in LGBT advocacy as early as kindergarten, undermining core religious values of so many households. In some places, schools have pitted themselves against parents about children’s welfare, with laws seeking to empower educators against mothers and fathers.

On both counts, parents now seek a reckoning. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted the rising influence of Moms for Liberty. The group organizes parents for greater involvement in schools as well as advocating education policies at the state and federal levels. Though the group only started in 2021, this organization already boasts 275 chapters and more than 100,000 members. Republican presidential campaigns also are actively courting the group with an eye toward the 2024 race.

The rise of Moms for Liberty seeks to address the new crisis in education. Through it and like organizations, parents have renewed their involvement in their children’s learning. They have asserted increased power on and through school boards and in choosing which schools to send their children to.

The organization has witnessed significant success over the past year alone. States such as Florida, where Moms for Liberty originated, were among the most open during the pandemic and have taken significant steps to remove liberal ideology from the classroom. Other states are following suit. At the local level, school boards are changing dramatically in their composition and in their voting patterns on these issues.

These changes are all promising. They should continue. In advocating better schools, we must push for a truly substantive education for all young people. This education should not replace left-leaning dogmas for right-leaning ones. Instead, it must seek to display honestly and patriotically America’s history and principles. It must expose students to the truths about human nature, including human biology, that help us know who we are as persons. And curriculum should teach the origins of our society, including the Judeo-Christian roots that gave it vitality before and may do so again. Taken together, this kind of education will help prepare our young people to be better human beings and citizens, not just better workers.

Education is important and always has been. Let us respond to the current crisis with principled tenacity and clever grit. We owe no less to our children, to our country, and even to ourselves.

Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.