The Ideological Battle for America’s Schools

How do we occupy shared spaces without a common vision?

America’s culture wars are intensifying in the nation’s classrooms and board meetings. How long can this public institution withstand the tug-of-war between ideologically opposed groups?

Public school board meetings across the country appear to be the hottest ticket in town with multiple hours needed to accommodate public comment.

Attend one of these meetings and expect to witness angry tirades about COVID-19 policies, critical race theory (CRT), and in which bathrooms or sports transgender students belong.

Schools had already been dealing with an explosion of gun violence in their halls. Now, schools face parents who show up at the school ready to fight, or with actual zip-ties to perform citizen arrests on the principal for masking policies.

Already tense matters have been enflamed by a small number of teachers whose goal is to impose a controversial ideological agenda.

In one case, a teacher was accused of pushing Antifa propaganda, and in the other, a teacher removed the US flag and jokingly encouraged students to pledge allegiance to a rainbow pride flag. Parents were infuriated.

Parents across the nation are questioning whether the school’s curriculum is ideologically driven. The school board of the Central York School District is mired in such a heated controversy over its ban of a list of diversity resources in classrooms.

The school as a cultural battleground is not new to this country

America’s schools are not unfamiliar with navigating controversy. A short stroll through schools in the last 70 years reveals battle after battle.

Go back to 1954 and you will revisit images of racially segregated schools and the hostile mobs that gathered in communities after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that schools could no longer be racially segregated.

I recall backlash in public schools in the 1980s over the subject of sex education and whether schools should distribute birth control.

In 2005, in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a very public trial was played out in national news over the teaching of intelligent design (ie creationism) in public schools.

Fast forward to 2010 and Americans were fighting with schools over Common Core standards. 

Schools are one of America’s favorite places to wage its culture wars. 

What should a taxpayer-funded American education look like? 

Local schools are one of the few shared spaces we gather with a common vision of educating children. We have this collective agreement that education is a priority and a public good that should be offered to all kids, regardless of social class, ethnicity, gender, or religious identity.

Americans believe so strongly in the proposition that all children should be educated that we fund our education system with tax dollars to the tune of $734 billion, or $14,484 per student.

We have a system of education in place, but we have radically divergent ideas of what constitutes a good education.

American parents are passionate about what is being taught to their kids and should not be faulted for this.

We Americans also have a long history of concerns surrounding taxation (see the Boston Tea Party) and how those dollars are being spent. 

Some Americans are convinced that there is a taxpayer-funded, ideological agenda being crammed down their kid’s throats that starts in elementary school and crescendos in college. These Americans believe this “agenda” intends to teach white kids that they are racists. They fear that students are being indoctrinated with an anti-American message that encourages kids to hate our country. 

Other Americans get concerned when diversity resources are banned from taxpayer-funded schools in what they believe is an effort to whitewash American history. These Americans desire for history in schools to tell the full story of American history-its triumph and its shortcomings.

Is it any wonder that numerous state legislatures have spent so much time debating history curriculum? 

It is historically naive to believe that our nation’s shared educational spaces enjoyed some peaceful tranquility in the past. There have always been heated disagreements about what constitutes a healthy vision of public education. 

Today’s battles do feel as though they have intensified to a different level on numerous fronts. This very subjective perception of mine is not simply due to the temperature of the exchanges, but also the sheer number of topics on which Americans appear to have wildly different visions, including subjects such as sexuality, science, racial equity, sports, masking students in a pandemic, and how these are covered in the curriculum.

Social media has certainly changed the tone of our rhetoric as Americans hide behind keyboards and shamelessly call names. There is little to no engagement or exchange of ideas in this virtual format.

Our public school board meetings are starting to feel more like the nasty exchanges we witness in the comments sections on news sites or Facebook.

The American public is becoming unhinged, not behind the keyboard, but in public meetings.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have been just enough of a nudge to completely push us over the edge. We were already dealing with a contentious national environment fueled by a political environment that has become caustic and nasty on a personal level one would have only witnessed in a boys’ locker room.

Today’s educational leaders face a regular barrage of questions from parents on these hot topics and angry accusations depending on the school’s response. If we were to calculate the hours that school leaders have spent in meetings wringing their hands over how to craft a policy, or how to navigate unhinged responses from constituents, the number and cost of those hours would be extraordinary.

As a leader of a very diverse private school, I have witnessed a change in tone from parents and financial supporters. People are quick to call names. As we have navigated issues like racial equity, and the sometimes conflicting advice on COVID-19 from health experts, I have been called “sheeple,” a Marxist, Antifa supporter, and had my manhood questioned for not standing up to State tyranny.

None of the people who have quickly called names sat down with me to ask questions to find my perspective or to hear the complexity of navigating these issues.

Our shared spaces are now governed by a mindset that says “shoot first and ask questions later.” If we are honest, the “asking questions” later part is probably not part of the equation. Very few are interested in seeking understanding.

I have to confess that I deeply question whether Americans can find a consensus on what a taxpayer-funded education should look like in terms of curriculum and shared values.

There will be casualties in a reckless culture war

Anyone who cares about our nation’s public institutions should pause and ask, “What will be the cost of this seemingly endless culture war?”

I believe there will be several casualties:

1. School leaders and teachers will become distracted and unfocused from the very thing at which we need them to excel: teaching kids. Instead of training educators and assessing student progress, precious time is being spent by school leaders in countless meetings responding to the culture wars.

2. Administrators and teachers will become more and more fearful of controversial topics and simply avoid them. Kids will never learn critical thinking, sound logic, and how to peacefully dialogue with people with whom they disagree.

3. Education will become bland. If we as a people can come to no common vision of what is true, good, and beautiful, we lose the power of moral and ethical assessment. Teachers will no longer be able to guide students in analyzing history because we can’t even talk about what moral bearings are appropriate and useful.

4. Our heated and caustic rhetoric could quickly rise to a level of violence. Disagreement becomes division. Division breeds fear. Fear leads to the need and justified-in-our-minds “right” to defend ourselves and our institutions. Where logical arguments and rhetorical flourish fail to persuade, fearful people will defend themselves against ideological enemies they believe are destroying the country.

5. Educators will leave the occupation. Administrators, teachers, and school board members will get tired of playing constant defense in a role that requires selfless service and sacrifice. Teaching is a difficult occupation as it is. Students can be challenging. Managing numerous subject matter and district priorities is difficult to juggle. Parents and families are not always supportive. There is more money to be made in other occupations. An angry public coming at you constantly will probably be the tipping point in killing our teacher recruitment efforts. Don’t believe me? Look at the rapid decline in American police recruitment.

Public schools require a fearless pluralism to survive

The idea of public schools can survive but only if the public embraces pluralism. By pluralism, I mean the tolerance needed to allow various ideas to coexist.

Our current trajectory is taking us toward the place where the winners get to dictate what is taught. The elected winners get to choose what curriculum is chosen and which subjects are off-limits. I won’t get into what happens when the legitimacy of elections (a seeming new norm in American polictics) is constantly questioned.

Pluralism embraces a diversity of thought and perspective or at least allows space for dissent. 

Pluralism would require academic freedom to allow ideas a platform on which to compete. It would require school faculty to exercise academic integrity, to reject strawmen arguments, to teach critical thinking to students. 

Our children would need to learn the art of logic and what constitutes a logical fallacy. 

Ideas would not be quickly shut down but would be forced to compete. After all, does the truth not set us free?

Pluralism works but only when we reject fear (ie fearless pluralism). If my beliefs and ideas are logical and sound, I won’t be afraid for them to be challenged.

By making space for divergent viewpoints, I also allow for the prospect of improving my beliefs and ideas. I also accept the prospect that I might be wrong.

When Boris Yeltsin handed over the Russian presidency to Vladimir Putin, he commented that Russia was a nation that had been afraid of itself (see Catherine Belton’s Putin's People). 

I wonder if America has crossed a dangerous line where we are afraid of ourselves.

Fear is not fertile soil for the kind of pluralism needed to govern public discourse.

I am convinced that the American school as a shared public space will only become more difficult to navigate for two reasons: 

1. We lack a common vision of what constitutes a good education. This includes morals, ethics, what constitutes a fair evaluation of American history, what science ought to be embraced, etc.

2. We are being taught to fear divergent groups and their ideas.

Education is a formative process whose goal is shaping the mind and hearts of kids. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “intelligence plus character” is the goal of true education.

Education requires some common vision of what constitutes the “good life.”

What makes for a worthy existence? 

What kind of people ought we to be (a loaded character question)? 

What knowledge and skills are essential for thriving? 

How do we properly assess the actions of our predecessors (ie a moral evaluation of history)? 

Whose morals reflect the highest good?

If we can’t embrace a fearless pluralism that forces the best ideas to compete to win, our safest bet is to build bland, noncontroversial schools where kids fail to learn critical thinking, logic, and how to respectfully disagree.

We will be left with a public that can no longer think or navigate the complexity of public spaces-a sure recipe for a dictatorial demagogue to rescue us from our own stupidity.

Perhaps parents should have more educational choice

In my humble estimation, enabling parents the freedom to choose schools that align with their values and beliefs is the best option in an increasingly divided culture. 

Taxpayer-funded school choice is very common in the developing world.

This could be accomplished with educational savings accounts that allow the funding to follow the child to the school of their family’s choosing.

Keep in mind that the only way to get school choice in many places today is to either pay for private tuition (not affordable for most families) or to move to a school district with better schools (also not affordable for most families).

Dollars allocated to educational savings accounts could be spent at a wide range of ideologically diverse schools that match a family’s values and beliefs whether they be secular, religious, humanistic, agnostic, or any number of other flavors.

These schools could be held accountable for providing a core curriculum necessary to a child’s education. In addition, these schools could be required to report basic data to help parents assess a school’s desirability.

An informed parent is a tremendous source of accountability, especially when a school knows the dollars could walk if the student is not served well. Parents with options could quickly go elsewhere if their students are not hitting targets in subjects like reading or math.

By no means am I suggesting that we abandon the idea of public schools. I am simply advocating that we expand what constitutes our public education system to include other options like independent schools.

I have long believed that independent schools serve a public good, that is the public good of educating kids. 

At Logos Academy, a private school, operating in one of Pennsylvania’s four failing school districts, we are not funded by taxpayer funds. Instead, we have to raise approximately 80% of our budget.

We are an open-enrollment school that does not screen out families based on income, religion, or any other ideological agenda.

The reason we have to raise 80% of our budget: we have committed ourselves to enroll over 65% of our students from households living in poverty. We are a private school for kids who can’t afford it.

Our students enjoy tremendous academic success in the same subjects public schools are required to teach, socialize in a diverse setting, and are encouraged to develop the character that makes them effective public citizens.

I am hard-pressed to understand how this is not advancing a public good and why we are restricted from accessing funds that could exist at the discretion of parents who already keep us accountable. 

Moving beyond the ideological battle for America’s schools

There are places in the world that don’t educate their poor. 72 million kids don’t attend school and 759 million adults are illiterate.

I am thankful to live in a nation that believes all of its children deserve to be educated. We should not this for granted.

Every child deserves the best education they can receive. What constitutes a good education? Is a good education simply high math and reading scores, or is it the moral and character formation of students?

I happen to agree with MLK’s assessment that “intelligence plus character” is the goal of true education. 

I am not convinced we can come to an agreement on a common vision of human formation and that is ok. As an ordained minister, I can assure you that Christians struggle to agree with each other. Fitness experts are not homogeneous either.

Agreement is not necessary for a healthy public life. The right of belief, expression, and dissent is essential in a free society.

More freedom serves everyone.

Perhaps our best alternative is to expand the number of shared spaces where kids can be educated. Parents should have more freedom to choose where they want their kids educated.

Parents appear to be ready for more choices in education. 

A New Yorker article titled The Rise of Black Homeschooling chronicled that prior to the pandemic, 5% of our nation's families homeschooled. That number has now ballooned to 11%. 

Prior to the pandemic, only 3% of Black households homeschooled their children. That number has grown more than five-fold to 16% of Black families who have chosen to homeschool.

There is no reason for casualties to continue to mount in our endless culture wars. We can educate our nation’s children effectively in a variety of formats that enhance freedom and peace.

Perhaps then we can catch our breath from the ideological battle for America’s schools.