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My point is that access does not equal control, it only increases the potential for it. It is true that without access you can't have control, but that doesn't mean that if you have access you have control, that's crazy. My free Disney plus subscription ends tonight, but just because I still have access that doesn't mean I have until midnight to revamp the platform to only show Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Rescuers Down Under on a loop.
Right but if in the past parents had no access and thus (as you agree) no control. Parents of today have access and weaker unions.
The argument was over which had more control, and the assertion I was contesting was it was past parents.
Parents of today don't have to have much control to have more than basically zero.
Except you said "Parents have much more access and thus control than they ever did". Implying that they have control simply because they have more access. Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think terms like thus should be reserved for clear logical inferences - if you had said they have more control thus they have more access I wouldn't say anything for instance.
Anyway I think the disagreement here lies in your final sentence - basically zero is precisely how I would define the amount of control parents have today. Personally I don't think things have really changed that much from the sixties, all the extra access did was make it more obvious how unnecessary the education system considers parents to their childrens' education.
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Traditionally, parents exercised control via elected school boards, whose entire purpose was to provide oversight of the local education establishment. Now, those boards very often got institutionally captured by a combination of the teacher's unions and the administrative bureaucracy, neutering their oversight function, but the boards are properly the agents of parents, and have sometimes even acted as such.
Some years back, someone local suggested that it must be an advantage for a school board member to have a school-age child, because the board member would be better informed of what was going on in the school. The response was no, quite the opposite: a school board member who was also a parent knew better than to cross the administration, because her child was a hostage to her 'good behavior.'
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