Season 1, Episode 5 - Parents’ Day

Original Airdate - November 18th, 2001

The episode title was not lying! Parents' Day is here! For many students, this is a time to face the music about their academic performance or bask in the awkward glow of their teachers telling their parents that they’re good at stuff. But for little Toby Isaacs, there’s a different concern. Both his dad and his mom will are coming, and while there’s been a fragile peace since the latest custody situation was worked out, but that’s mostly because his parents don’t see each other.

Not everyone is worried about Toby’s mom swinging by. Ashley knows his mom is a talent agent, and is ready to make her move to seek stardom. Never one to let someone else take the spotlight, Paige makes a her own plan to woo Toby’s mom. Ashley, Paige, and Terri all volunteer for the welcoming committee, so Ashley and Paige can impress the unsuspecting agent.

Part of what’s got Ashley so focused on her future stardom is losing her morning announcement slot to News About Kids (NAK), a nationally syndicated “news bulletin” about problems facing Canadian kids. Emma hates NaK because she sees it for what it is - conservative propaganda. Last week’s broadcast was about joining the military. This week is about the “scourge” of poor kids cleaning car windows at red lights hoping for a few bucks. Plus the whole thing is loaded with advertisements.

Our little leftist queen is not going to stand by and let NAK rot the brains of her fellow classmates. She storms Raditch’s office to ask about the broadcast. Turns out, NAK funded Degrassi’s shiny new computer center and Degrassi has to show the news bulletins as part of the agreement. But Raditch says that if Emma has opinions, she should write them in the school newspaper, the Grapevine. If she can get her article in by 4pm, it’ll make it in the Parents’ Day edition.

Emma rushes to the computer lab with Manny to work on her piece and has a tense run-in with Sean. He’s been a bit of a sourpuss since the dance, and is really bringing the vibe down. Emma rushes to finish her article, and misses the deadline by seventeen minutes. But Liberty, the Grapevine’s editor, decides to give her a pass, just this once.

Inspired by Emma’s efforts to take action, Toby takes action of his own. He forges a note from Mr. Simpson to his parents saying that he’s doing great in school and they don’t need to come. Toby’s dad isn’t buying it. The note is riddled with spelling errors. He confronts Toby about what’s going on, and Toby comes clean. He wants both his mom and his dad to come to the event, but he doesn’t want them there together. Toby’s dad promises to keep things civil.

It goes bad pretty quickly. Toby’s mom is held up at work and shows up late, creating instant tension. That doesn’t stop Ashley and Paige from swarming her, though she doesn’t seem interested in their advances. During the conference with Mr. Simpson, things get worse. Mr. Simpson tells Toby’s parents that he is bright but lacks follow through and he’s missed a couple assignments. Toby’s mom lays into his dad, and a fight breaks out. She’s mad he’s not being a more active parent. He thinks that’s rich considering she works all the time, which is why he got custody in the first place.

Toby snaps. There’s no one to blame for his mistakes but himself, and he’s sick of being used as an excuse for his parents to fight. His parents hear him, and apologize, promising to focus on being co-parents more than exes. As Toby’s mom is leaving, Ashley and Paige make one more attempt to corner her, but get nowhere. Although someone at Degrassi does catch her eye. She gives Terri her card.

Emma is having a stellar Parents’ Day with rave reviews from her teachers, until she runs into Sean and his big brother. Sean’s brother is less than impressed with her article and Emma isn’t backing down. They fight, Emma saying that this blatant propaganda isn’t worth any price, and Sean’s brother asserting that she’s naive. Without the computers at the school, Sean wouldn’t have access to a computer at all, and he’s falling behind as is due to his dependency on the school’s technology. Neither Emma nor Sean’s brother backs down, leaving tension between Emma and her crush.

The next day at school, Emma has cooled down a bit and finds Sean in the computer lab. She sends him a cheeky e-mail apologizing, and he apologizes in return. Both Emma and Sean’s brother can be a little headstrong, but Sean doesn’t mind. Good vibes between them are restored.

Mr. Simpson checks in with Toby after the conference to make sure he’s doing okay, since the conference got heated. Toby feels good. He’s glad he stood up to his parents, and feels like they’re on a better path. Mr. Simpson is happy, but less happy about the forged letter he found on the school’s computer. Oh Toby, when will you learn to delete your scandalous documents and check your spelling!

The whole NAK storyline made me feel weird. I enjoyed it. The fact that Emma is a bold and unapologetic leftist is one of my favorite aspects of her character, and one that unfortunately diminishes over time. She’s right that it’s unethical to inundate kids with advertising at school, and is correctly calling out the insidiousness of using classroom videos to make kids join the military or turn their back on the poor.

But it all hit a little too close to home, because this episode is basically nonfiction.

Ten states in the US have now approved PragerU as an educational resource for their classrooms. A brief overview for those unfamiliar. PragerU is a nonprofit that makes short-form videos aimed at both adults and children, as well as curriculum that includes and reinforces their content. They claim their ideological bent is simply towards patriotism. Their content for children has one aim — character development.

Anyone alive in 2025 knows these are dog whistles. PragerU’s sleek content is blatant conservative propaganda. Some of the videos are subtle. Ish. Videos for teens about financial literacy are used as a way of reinforcing rugged individualism and makers v. takers ideals. Others are more blatant, highlighting dysfunctional universal healthcare systems or framing the civil war as an issue of states rights.

A famously bad example from their “Leo and Layla’s History Adventures” series features the titular characters meeting Christopher Columbus, who rejects the idea that he should be judged by modern moral standards and says that it’s better that he took people as slaves than killed them.

This is very gross, not the least of which because much of this “educational” material is blatantly counterfactual. Yet in ten states throughout the country, it’s government-approved for use in public schools. It’s hard to get good data on how often PragerU videos are actually being shown in classrooms, but there is a clear, organized push to use edutainment to make kids more conservative.

In the episode, NAK’s presence at Degrassi is framed as a debate. On one hand, no one denies that the creators of the program have an agenda. On the other, free computers! This debate is extremely dark to me. Put a different way, the question at hand is whether anyone with resources is owed a captive audience of children for their propaganda. Bad enough if we were talking about a political organization buying ad time on children’s YouTube programming. But we are talking about children at school.

This debate around how much impact all of us, especially the most wealthy among us, should have over what is taught in schools is one of the most insidious attacks on public education facing the modern world. Personally, I lack the ego to think that I should be the one to decide what, when, or how a child learns. I’d rather leave that to experts in education. I will gladly turn my tax dollars over to their expertise.

But there is a group of people who believes that this is unfair. These are the people for whom an educated populace is not an undeniable good. Because these are the people who stand to lose their power, outsized wealth, and privilege if kids learn too much. These are people who benefit from a populace that is just the right amount of ignorant.

And so, instead of allowing their resources to go to a public pool that can be fairly distributed with no strings beyond our educational standards, they find ways to keep control. They make individual donations to schools. They fund candidates, especially at the state and local level, who will allow inequitable and unethical educational practices. They give money to bullshit nonprofits like PragerU to create counterfactual propaganda dressed up as educational tools.

It’s much darker in real life America than it was in Degrassi’s Canada. They don’t need to buy a school computers, they can buy themselves a superintendent. But we’re talking about the same core problem. A public school shouldn’t have to turn to individual donors for vital resources. They should be able to turn to the state.

To me, and to the leftist I imagine Emma grew up to be, this is why you cannot allow this to be framed as a debate at all. A good education is more important than the greed and power of the ultra-wealthy. You don’t have to accept conditions to get computers for your schools. A state that truly valued education wouldn’t give those with resources to spare a choice.