Who Controls Your Child’s Mind—You, or a Distant Board?

Who Controls Your Child’s Mind

Let’s be blunt. Every textbook is propaganda—the only question is: whose propaganda do you want your child to believe?

Picture this:

A mother in rural Tamil Nadu flips through her son’s schoolbooks, puzzled. He’s memorizing dates of European battles but can’t name three leaders from his own state. The recipe for semia payasam gets less space than the history of Queen Victoria. Across the nation, thousands of parents share her confusion, wondering—who decided what my child studies?

Is it you—the parent?
Or is it a bureaucrat in an air-conditioned office hundreds of miles away?
Or is it an international board with no idea about the pulse of your town?

The Silent Curriculum War

Syllabi aren’t neutral. They’re silent weapons—shaping worldviews, loyalties, and ambitions. Whether it’s CBSE, ICSE, IB, Anglo, State Board, or Matriculation, each comes with its own narrative. Some call it “standardization.” I call it subtle control.

We fret over “influence” on social media. But what about the influence that seeps in through schoolbags, five days a week, for twelve years?
If you’re not deciding what goes into your child’s mind, someone else is.

Education or Indoctrination?

Let’s not kid ourselves:

• When boards dictate, education becomes a script—a cage dressed up as opportunity.

• When communities choose, education can liberate—rooted in culture, relevant to local realities, yet open to the wider world.

Remember this line:

“A syllabus is never neutral—it’s a silent weapon.”

Do you want it pointing at your own family’s values?

The Case for Parental Power

Nobody knows your child—their dreams, their struggles, their heritage—better than you do. When local parents and communities have a real say:

• Learning reflects local heroes, languages, and needs.

• Kids understand where they come from, not just where counting and coding can take them.

• Education stops being a distant diktat and becomes a shared project, building pride and resilience.

But Don’t Cage Curiosity

Of course, no child is just local.
Let’s not make the mistake of closing doors in the name of reclaiming control. To thrive in this global world, every child must still learn the best of science, technology, and critical thinking—beyond any border.

The answer isn’t less education. It’s more voice at the table:
Local grounding. Universal opportunity. Real choice.

If You Don’t Decide, Others Will

This isn’t just about textbooks. It’s about who shapes the next generation’s minds.
If you don’t demand a say in the syllabus, don’t be surprised when your children grow up knowing everything about distant lands, but nothing about their roots—or worse, nothing about how to think for themselves.

So Here’s the Challenge:

“If you don’t shape the curriculum, someone else will.
And it may not be in your child’s interest.”

It’s time to ask the question:
Who really controls what our children learn—and why aren’t parents at the center of that decision?

Let’s reclaim the syllabus.
Because education should be a window to the world, not a cage built by strangers.