ABSTRACT
Miranda shows up in Here's Looking at You, 2000, a health curriculum used in several thousand public schools. Because she knows that parents can't be trusted, Miranda encourages children to check the family cupboards for "poisons," including alcohol and tobacco. The busybody curriculum also urges them to confess "problems at home" by writing secret messages to the teacher. In the media, parental objections to all this usually come under the heading of condoms, school prayer, and the religious right. But behind the media screen, parents of all political stripes are getting the message and pressure is building. Alan Wolfe, one of the best public intellectuals, reviewed the Dana Mack book in the New Republic and didn't much like it. But he agreed with the central message. In his well-off suburb, he said, friends and neighbors are shopping around for alternatives to the public schools because of the schools' anti-intellectualism and hostility to parents.
