Opt-in or Opt-out?

Jonathon Braden at the Homeroom blog reports on the lingering controversy about the president’s address to students. This is from his description of a recent Columbia Board of Education meeting (emphasis mine):

Pat Fowler said she was frustrated not every student in the school district watched President Barack Obama’s address to students last Tuesday. She asked the board to pass a policy that lets parents opt out of watching a presidential address instead of opting in to view the president speak.

That’s a troubling phenomenon in uniform public schools — people fighting for the schools to impose their preferred policies on everyone else, rather than just for their own children to be able to study what parents want them to to study.