For several years there, our education was in a lull. culture compTerrorism, war and recession have stolen our attention. As gay marriage has become a decade-long debate, the cultural battle has been relegated to churches and courts.
But then, inexorably, the school board battles returned. Seemingly everywhere, battles were raging over COVID-19 rules, curricula on race and gender, and ultimately the shape of national identity.
It is possible that these particular disputes could be resolved (or gradually abandoned) and settled into a bitter truce, as we have done for old disagreements over sex education, evolutionary teachings, and campus prayer. But we are naive if we think we can understand this in the broadest sense that one day the culture wars in America’s public schools will really end.
The school board battles of the past three years are not temporary. The relative quiet of the 2000s and early 2010s after 9/11 was an anomaly, dramatically changing the way public education is organized, or how we exist and imagine ourselves as a nation. You can’t recreate that tranquility permanently unless you change it.
Because public schools play such a central role in defining and inculcating American identity, they are an inevitable point of friction in this divided nation.
This may surprise us, especially after a temporary ceasefire. We tend to think of it as a respite from controversy in Washington, a place where actual reality and neighborly cooperation can overcome partisan animosity. We all want the same thing when we scale federalism low enough, right? Well-maintained roads, reliable utilities, and good education for our children.
But as education historian Jonathan Zimmerman writes, public schools are also “America’s premier public institution for distilling and delivering moral values to young people.” whose America?Culture wars in public schools— and here we categorically please do not We all want the same thing. “Schools around the world teach national glories, connecting children to a set of transcendental events and ideals,” Zimmerman observes.
still what that is our glory?What is our ideal? Beyond math and literacy, music and sports, American visions of a good education vary greatly. they always do.
We have bequeathed public education systems from different eras, with different problems and goals. It’s designed to foster a common identity that we just can’t (and to some extent, don’t want to) resolve. It is a winner-takes-all approach, irrevocably inadequate for achieving peace in a country as religiously diverse and politically polarized as ours. Mixing the most intimate questions of how our children are raised with the grandest questions of what our country should be like, public education will forever be at the forefront of the culture wars. and probably the most annoying one.
That is, unless something changes, which is to say, something big and currently unbelievable. Such changes can occur on the educational front. Most optimistically, teachers and textbooks can, as Zimmerman suggests, “give multiple views of the country” and “allow students to sort them out for themselves.”
But I confess I’m not so optimistic. Plans for teaching, e.g. 1619 Project Along with some achievements of the Trump Administration’s 1776 Commission, it will not satisfy anyone. Proposals that present dissenting views on transgender identity are rejected by LGBTQ activists and their conservative counterparts alike. Parents will suspect that teachers are keeping their thumbs on the scale, regardless of what the curriculum officially says. Instead of being hailed as a strike of critical thinking, presenting multiple views is a new variation on the creationist ‘teach the controversy’ push to combine the debate of religious views on the origin of the Earth with education on evolution. It is likely that you will be rejected.
“Mixing the most intimate questions of how our children are raised with the grandest questions of what our country should be like, public education will forever be at the forefront of the culture wars. and probably the most annoying one.“
Cutback proposals may do better than incremental proposals, and the programs at release that many states are holding could be a viable model.
Freed time allows public school students to leave campus for short periods during the school day for religious instruction.Following mid-century Supreme Court rulings, mainly McCallum v. Board of Education (1948), state and district codes stipulate that instruction must take place off school premises and that all costs and logistics must be handled by the parent or religious body. Participating students must obtain parental permission to make up for off-campus assignments.
For the three Rs and non-arts subjects (particularly social studies and sex education), one could imagine a similar approach that would give students a partial charter or private school experience without abandoning the entire public school infrastructure. I can do it.Progressive families can free their children to read Howard Zinn’s books History of the People of the United States Along with drag queens, conservative parents may send their children to memorize the Declaration of Independence at church.
Retaining a minimum standardized test for students across classes at release ensures a consistent baseline of factual knowledge as failed programs may be cut. Perhaps such a division of territory could mitigate, if not completely calm down, the escalation.
An alternative to radically changing our school system is to change how we live and understand American identity. It seems difficult.
The most likely concrete scenario is a scaled-up and deliberate “Big Thought” where like-minded Americans come together to make each public school district (or even state) monocultural. , internally real American heart.
What we lose in the process is unlikely to be worth a sober school board meeting. The narcissism of small differences will see it. And there’s a problem: an ever-pluralizing society will be more uncomfortable with public education than ever before.
So here we are, trapped in an educational war, all very well-intentioned and ferocious, with absolutely no foreseeable path to detente.
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