A Parents’ Bill of Rights was recently reintroduced by Rep. Cynthia Davis, delineating the role of parents in a child’s education.

In thinking back over the US Bill of Rights, the Civil Rights Amendments, the Bill of Women’s Rights and the International Bill of Human Rights, many of these statements seem second nature to us in the 21st Century. Of course women should be allowed to vote, and of course we cannot discriminate based on race or gender. But at the time, those protections were not widely accepted—thus the necessity to spell it out. This is simply American History 101, but it wasn’t that long ago that civil rights and suffragists were fighting for the most basic protection from their government.

Parents are a group deserving protection as well, but their status as a group that needs it has gotten little to no attention because it’s not sensational. But for decades parents have been relegated to the back of the bus when it comes to deciding what’s best for their child. All things illegal set aside; the schools have circumvented parents’ authority to decide what is best for the education of a child. There are ministerial reason for a child to attend this school and not that, to receive this kind of special education class or tutoring—and those often trump the individual needs of a child. The Parent is the natural counterweight to promote the child’s best interest against the school’s interest in serving children as a whole.

We live in a country blessed by its commitment to individual freedoms, and having a safeguard for parents to promote the rights of the children they bathe, clothe, get to school on time and sacrifice to raise may seem redundant, but is in fact vital so that parents and others know the extent of parental rights and how they can and cannot be addressed in laws and policies.