This is the final entry in a four-part series attempting to set in historical context the current right-wing efforts to control public schools and education. We’ve talked about segregationists’ efforts to undermine public schools in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, the transition in the 1970s and 80s to religious objections to increasingly secular curricula in American public schools, and the sharpening focus on science education and LGBTQ people in the last 20 years of the 20th century. This issue of Activate will focus on current attacks and the thread that links the post-Brown segregationist era to what’s happening now, and offer some thoughts about what you can do.
--Karen Johnson-McKewan
Activate’s Advisors are Nikola Bozinovic, Ellen Ehrenpreis, Catherine Foster, Jon Foster, Don Keller, and Glen Van Ligten
If there is a single through-line in the history of conservative attacks on public schools—attacks on what is taught in those schools, and how—it is the “parental rights” refrain. From the Southern Manifesto’s screed against racial integration as an infringement on parental rights, to the Moral Majority’s insistence that teaching evolution and human reproduction in the schools undermined traditional (Christian) family values, the arguments were essentially the same: the rights of parents to choose what and how their children learn supersede any community interest in a well-educated populace.
That same chorus rises today from those who object to schools teaching principles of anti-racism, or promoting the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. We all see the headlines: school board meetings mobbed by angry (mostly white) parents who don’t want their children to learn the country’s history of racism, or who fear their children will “turn” gay or transgender if they learn that not everyone is heterosexual, and not everyone is cisgender. Nine states passed legislation banning the teaching of “critical race theory” in 2021, many of which laws also banned teaching about LGBTQ issues. In Florida, the agitation against acceptance of LGBTQ+ people is so aggressive that schools will soon be being directed to “out” students to their parents, not to breathe a word about the subject in the early grades, and later only to teach the subject in an “age-appropriate and developmentally-appropriate” way (whatever that means), under pain of parental litigation against any offending school or school district. (In Texas, it seems the “parental rights” banner only flies over some parents; parents of transgender children who provide their children gender-affirming treatment are criminally prosecuted for child abuse.)
And then there’s the school book banning, a movement that is growing exponentially at the moment. Among at least 330 incidents of book censorship in just September to November 2021, most of the books targeted concern LGBTQ issues, and race and racism.
The notion that parents should have the ultimate say over how their children are educated seems, superficially at least, non-controversial. But it quickly runs up against the broader societal interest in assuring that the populace is well- and consistently educated. It would be one thing if parents who objected to the teaching of evolution simply withdrew their children from public schools and sent them, instead, to a religious school with other like-minded families. But they have demanded that—in the public schools—no children learn about evolution, or that all children are also taught Creationism, over the objections of other parents with other (or no) religious inclinations. Likewise with the history of racism, and with human sexuality, and with books that a minority of parents find objectionable.
It is no accident that public schools are the perennial battlegrounds for these culture wars. The schools are meant to train young minds, to teach history and science and literature. To inspire curiosity and creativity, and to teach critical thinking skills. They are there to educate the electorate and thus to assure a healthy democracy across generations. What and how the public schools teach today will echo in the decades to come. The “parental rights” banner is today what it has always been: a cover for a fight about what American society will choose to be. The “parental rights” agitators fought desegregation in the 1950s and 60s, and are still fighting a version of America that knows its history and learns from it, that separates religion from science, and accepts and embraces diversity in all of its forms.
So what can any of us do about this? First, accept the proposition that no victory is ever final. The persistence and determination of conservatives to shape public education to match a so-called “traditional family values” world view has been going on for decades. They will not give up.
Second, as always, there are organizations who are fighting the good fight to preserve and enhance the future of American public education for everyone, and they can always use your financial support. Consider, for example, the Human Rights Campaign for LGBTQ+ advocacy nationwide. The National Coalition Against Censorship tracks right-wing school curriculum attacks, and identifies a number of conservative organizations coordinating those attacks (some of which, not surprisingly, are organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as hate groups).
Finally, study and speak up. Because education policy is often set at the state level and implemented locally, you need to be in touch with your state legislative representatives and your local school boards. Whether or not you have school-aged children, you have a stake in this fight. Most states have laws that require governmental bodies to hold public meetings and publish their meeting schedules and agendas in advance. Find those meeting schedules, check the agendas, and speak up. And, of course, pay attention to those local school board elections: learn who the candidates are and what they value.