Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Friday during an interview that he does not ârespectâ parents who speak up at school board meetings.
The Biden administrationâs top educator also lamented that adults who have children in government schools have been âacting like they know whatâs right for kids.â
The comments were made during an interview with the Associated Press and saw him face heat online.
Cardona was asked about a number of topics ranging from student loan forgiveness to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars colleges and universities from considering an applicantâs race during enrollment.
He was also asked about a nationwide interest among parents who want to have a say regarding what other adults are telling their children in classrooms.
When asked about prior comments in which he claimed the Education system is âunder attack,â the AP asked Cardona if he believed he was the only Education secretary to oversee a department that had found itself under scrutiny.
âIâve been in Education, you know, about 25 years,â he responded. âNot including the time I was in higher ed as a student. Iâve never seen it where it is now.â
On parents who have shown emotion during school in board meetings about far-left ideas in classrooms, Cardona told the AP that America has lost âcivility.â
âThere was civility. We could disagree,â he said. âWe could have healthy conversations around whatâs best for kids.â
Cardona added, âI respect differences of opinion. I donât have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and then acting like they know whatâs right for kids.â
Cardona was heavily criticized on X, formerly Twitter, for the shot at parents:
Countless videos of parents expressing their displeasure with school curriculum have gone viral on social media throughout Cardonaâs tenure heading the Department of Education.
In October 2021, at the direction of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI was tasked with working with local law enforcement agencies to flag parents who were vocal about radical ideas that have been injected into classrooms in recent years.
A memo from Garland shared by House Judiciary Committee chair Rep.Jim Jordan online showed the Department of Justice was told to find parents who were deemed problematic and to âprosecute them when appropriate.â
Cardona has previously faced heat after his department equated parents who have challenged educators on curriculum to domestic terrorists.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
