This morning, I woke up to find a thread on my Facebook feed about a group of moms at a local elementary school one county over who were complaining that the new principal has installed new rules to tighten security and school operations. Among these rules were a 24-hour notice before having lunch with your child, and the inability to walk into the school carrying food for your child’s class as they had been able to with the prior principal. One mother lamented:

“I’d like to know who is going to do something about the fact that when I spend $60 on cupcakes and they get dropped by my daughter because she can’t carry them in by herself. Maybe someone should ask about that.”

It was at this point that I lost my fecal matter.

“Karen parenting” is in full effect these days because this generation of parents have fully and completely given themselves over to be indoctrinated into allowing the government to think for them while surrendering all accountability and personal responsibility for their own children. It’s MUCH easier to blame the teachers, staff, and administration for screwing up their daily dopamine dosage routine of “I’m doing it for the children” delusional self-aggrandizing soccer mom worldview than it is to do what is right, or even think about what is right, for the greater good.

Instead of Karen parents bitching? They should stand up, step forward, and volunteer to make a difference. Get that background check so they can be useful. Better yet? Get their teaching degree and join the front line!

Otherwise? Karen parents will want to sit down, shut up, and strap in to continue taking the low quality education the government shovels onto the public. Keep feeding their families the spoonfuls of outdated, antiquated, mediocre learning dribbled out across every county in the nation. Accept that little “Jane” or “Johnny” is being bred to spend the next fifty years earning minimum wage on the dime store education they received at their local government-run school. The other option would be to sack up and pull their kid out of public school and homeschool or find a private school.

Now, perhaps one day our government will mandate that all children must only attend public school as a means of instilling dystopian power and control over society (with the way our government, and more specifically, the education industry is nose-diving in a fireball of incompetence, it’s not hard to imagine). But as it stands now, all parents have complete power and control over this issue. 

The problem is– Karen parents don’t want the responsibility.  They would rather insist on blasting the new principal before the first day of school on a public social media site without actually reading the memo that was publicly published for the ACTUAL details. 

They would rather threaten to take their vitriol to the next school board meeting because “no one is going to come into our small town and change things!” Because that’s easier than offering to serve or rearrange their career plans in order to do what it takes to invest in their kids’ quality education.

This thread slopped out many “Karen parent” ideas about how the school must be “hiding something” because they don’t want an excess of visitors wandering the campus with limited staff available for a variety of legitimate safety, security, and practical reasons. 

Yet to be sure, these would be the same Karen parents who would positively CRUCIFY the school for allowing unvetted cupcake delivery strangers on campus if a real security threat were ever realized. The school can’t win. And that’s precisely “Karen’s” battle strategy.

Perhaps the school is not involved in a nefarious plot to unethically show the director’s cut of the latest Spongebob Squarepants movie without parental permission. Perhaps these new changes are more about ensuring students are able to focus and learn without Karen and her Blackhawk helicopter interference. 

Perhaps Karen can cut back on her caffeine and co-dependent control over her five year old for a few hours and think about how much a day spent with peers and learning might be a good thing for the child— and dare I say for her also. 

And if she has doubts about her school’s ability to educate her child? Then she should absolutely yank them out. She should just be prepared that this decision will severely slice any Facebook anonymous posting content she may have had lined up to obliterate her child’s school’s reputation.

Let’s keep it 100% clear— I am not for the education industry (can’t you tell?)  I’m pro-teacher and administration when they have good faith intentions in the work that they do. But the teachers, the administration, and the school district do not have the pay grade to make the kind of decisions that result in lasting change. They are often stuck between a rock and a disgruntled parent. And since it’s useless to talk to anyone but the decision maker in most situations, then parents (“Karens” or any other kind) should be bringing their complaints to the state level. Although– and I’m still keeping it 100% — it’s likely very little will change.

Know why?

Because the government doesn’t give a good golly grandma about your kids OR your cupcakes. They are in the business to breed followers. Workers for mass production of things that monetarily benefit the one percent of the population. And the public school system exists for only one reason: To create cattle for their factories and businesses. 

 

Not free thinkers. Not critical thinkers. Not independent thinkers.

They want employees, not employers. They want you waiting for a check instead of learning how to create one.

See, Karen parents have to understand the bigger picture. Unfortunately, that’s a problem for the typical Karen parent. She wants to ignore the meat grinder she’s sending her “angel” into daily and pretend that her baby is getting all her learning needs met at her friendly neighborhood school.

Wake up. 

Or don’t. But don’t bitch about a system that you willingly follow without investing any of your own skin in the game and then question the very system when they try to improve upon it.

And for all that is the joy of cheese dip and jalapeno nachos, don’t gripe about not being able to take $60 cupcakes into a school building where we now live in a world where teachers and administration have to worry about a stranger showing up to annihilate a generation of innocents. 

How friggin luxurious must it be to only have to worry about your pretty little cupcakes and the “unfairness” of not being able to attend school with your kid during the day when you decide you want to show up.

Get a grip. See the bigger picture. Or pull them out. You think they need a mental health day? Keep them home. Have a party and invite the class and their Karen parents to YOUR house for cupcakes and a community Karen bitch sesh. 

But if you’re going to settle for public education then you’d better get clear that your worldview cupcake crumbs are a luxury that you GET to worry about. You don’t have to worry about all the other students’ safety or well-being. You don’t have to balance government bureaucracy with angry entitled parents who have zero clue how to actually teach or manage an education environment. 

And then have some friggin respect for the teachers and staff who still find the oppressive will to show up on the daily largely unmotivated by the teeny paycheck they need to survive and balance that with the dread of dealing with your jerk of a kid (because let’s face it, if Karen parents are so oblivious to post entitled nonsense online, then they likely aren’t spending time teaching their kids manners or empathy for anyone else’s feelings).

Teaching starts at home. You want a better system? Create one.