Politics & Power Quote by John Doolittle

“Since the conception of our country” is doing heavy lifting here: it wraps a contemporary political fight in the costume of timeless tradition. Doolittle’s line isn’t really about education in the broad sense; it’s about authority. By invoking the nation’s origin story, he tries to preempt debate with a kind of patriotic veto, implying that any counterargument is not merely wrong but un-American.

The hierarchy he constructs matters: “parents, not schools, teachers, and certainly not courts.” Schools and teachers aren’t just secondary; they’re subtly cast as overreaching institutions. The real target, though, is the judiciary. That “certainly” is a tell: it signals grievance at court decisions that expand student rights, enforce desegregation, mandate accommodations, or arbitrate church-state boundaries. In other words, it’s a line tailored for moments when legal rulings or professional expertise constrain what some parents want taught - or not taught.

The subtext is a familiar conservative populism: elevate the family as the most legitimate unit of democracy, paint public institutions as ideologically captured, and frame legal oversight as illegitimate interference. “Primary responsibility” sounds moderate, but it also smuggles in a claim of near-sovereignty: if parents are primary, then curricular standards, credentialed educators, and constitutional limits become optional accessories.

Culturally, the quote plugs into recurring “parents’ rights” waves - from textbook battles and sex ed fights to contemporary disputes over race, gender, and religion in classrooms - where the real argument is less about pedagogy than about who gets to define reality for the next generation.