(LifeSiteNews) — A more than three-year-old video of a North Carolina mother addressing a Wake County school board resurfaced and gone viral on social media is also being shared by women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines.

In a Monday post, Gaines urged viewers to “Listen to all three minutes. No notes, just a mom who doesn’t play about her kids,” calling the remarks “the new standard for parents who care about what their kids are learning in school.”

Listen to all three minutes. No notes, just a mom who doesn’t play about her kids.

This is the new standard for parents who care about what their kids are learning in school. pic.twitter.com/fKeKDgszRT

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) September 28, 2026

The speaker is Michele Morrow, a registered nurse, homeschool parent, and longtime education activist. Morrow previously ran for the Wake County Board of Education in 2022 and for North Carolina superintendent of public instruction in 2024. Earlier this year, she sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate and finished fourth in the March 3 primary with 5.6 percent of the vote.

Her campaign website continues to emphasize parental rights, academic basics, and opposition to public schools having “become indoctrination centers under liberal control, pushing radical ideologies like Critical Race Theory, gender confusion, and explicit materials while failing to teach basics like reading and math.”

The clip itself focuses tightly on her argument that exposing children to adult social and sexual debates before they are ready is a primary driver of the mental-health struggles now routinely reported at school board meetings.

“What are we doing to our children?” Morrow asked. “I’m going to say, we are discussing things with them that they are not emotionally, intellectually and morally able to handle. That is what is causing the anxiety. That is what is causing the depression. That is what is causing the confusion.”

“Children are called ‘dependents’ for a reason. They depend on us, who have fully developed brains,” she emphasized. “There is one goal for the educational system. It should be to prepare children to enter careers, to be productive members of society.”

“You cannot feel your way through life,” Morrow admonished. The education system is not “a counseling session. It is not a self-help area. It is not somewhere to find yourself and we should not be led by the children for goodness sake.”

“We can brag about all of the wonderful graduations, but we know the statistics: 50% of children did not pass their end of grade test,” she lamented. “What are we celebrating?”

Framing the ideological agenda within the proper context of citizens’ views, the education activist explained “less than 5% of the entire population of North Carolina identifies as LGBTQ.”

“You guys all claim you want democracy. Well, you know what democracy is?” she asked. “It’s 50 (percent) plus one. You know what? More than 50% of the people in this state claim that they believe in God, Almighty God, who made us male and female, God who made marriage between a man and a woman, God who said that we must protect our children.”

“We need our children to be able to be children, to be able to be innocent, to be able to enjoy childhood and not know all of the drama and all of the difficulties in adult life,” she summarized in her conclusion. “That is what we want. We want our children to be able to read and write and to think for themselves. And we demand that the children who fear God are protected in your schools.”

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