There used to be these books published for classrooms called "Opposing Viewpoints," and they included just those: if you picked up the one on the death penalty, you got all the different perspectives on that, and from people who *believed* what they were saying. It was not presented as, "Here's our argument (hint hint, the correct one) and here's some strawman version of what *those monsters* think." These books aren't published anymore, tellingly, and I feel like we're going to be working our way back to a place when they *could be* for many years to come. But it's a worthwhile struggle.
School as church is exactly what has happened. It’s gone too far. I enjoyed your interview with the teacher. I’m trying to engage with my child’s school now with friendly questions- as your interviewee recommended. On another note, I ran into a friend the other day who is a nyc public school teacher. She had tons of questions for me (as the mom of one such kid) bcs they had recently had a staff meeting regarding not telling parents when a kid changes names in school. I tried to explain how damaging that is to the parent child relationship. I’m hoping one person at a time will begin to understand more and the narrative regarding what is right will change.
As a retired Kindergarten teacher, who taught all of my students to operate in the learning environment of advanced academic teaching, especially science and math, I state that teachers are not psychiatrists and "gender dysphoria" (as testified by psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Levine, a former "affirmer" who found the diagnosis unstable) is a psychiatric illness. As a trans widow, who discovered my then husband's cross-dressing diaries (3 of them in one fell swoop in August of 1992) I state that IS a psychiatric illness and he was quite mentally ill, manipulative and deceitful. He put me in danger of STDs by his "true life test" behavior, which involved going to gay bars in Greenwich Village in female garb and pretending the gay men offering to by him a Blanc de Blanc didn't recognize him as male. A child at one of the schools I taught at, PS 107 in Park Slope, was famously profiled in the NY Times for "being transgender." I have it on good authority from colleagues still in service that he is now identifying as a boy, and the manipulation they witnessed by his parents was just that, manipulation.
I will be doing a deep dive into the behavioral analysis of cross-dressing, the multiple dopamine hits it involves, therefore is not in any way a "true life test." uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
As Exulansic (Isle of Ex Yt channel) said about her experience as "trans-masc" one time cross-dresser, "It's a distraction."
I have worked in education in both private and public schools for 25 years. There are other angles to this that need to be considered:
- There is a frequent refrain of “leave teaching to teachers.” But there is a serious problem in college of education programs where teachers in training are not taught the science of learning . Colleges of education and colleges of science - where the research or cognitive psychology and the science of learning happen - typically have little to no overlap and do not communicate with each other. Many teachers leave programs with very little instruction on *how* to teach a child how to read, the actual mechanics of teaching and learning, or how to support students with learning challenges. Talk to teachers - they are often very frustrated with this lack of preparation. It’s this lack of training in the cognitive sciences that results in stories like the widespread failure to teach children to read - see Emily Hanford’s excellent reporting on this and the podcast “Sold a Story.” If you want to see how gender ideology can take over a school, learn how “whole language” and “balanced literacy” took over schools, publishing houses, and colleges of education https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- The “social-emotional learning” and mental health programs schools are spending millions on are often not evidence based nor effective. See this study + read about the US military’s failed PTSD prevention program that was based on a program for kids that had no research support in Jesse Singal’s book The Quick Fix.
- We are expecting schools to do more and more within the confines of a short day and limited resources - they are to teach academics, teach “character development,” handle kids’ mental health and social-emotional learning, teach them sex education and be on the frontlines of preventing pregnancy and STDs, act as in loco parentis, and act as social workers. Then on top of this they’re also tasked with providing students with education in the arts, music, and PE and field trips. No matter what your opinion is of schools taking on one or another of these roles, it is impossible for schools to do all of them well.
- Finally, not only are we not helping children develop resilience, many of the current themes of social emotional learning programs combined with the online culture kids are steeped in encourage, enable, and reward behaviors and patterns of thinking that fuel anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation - all things that we are seeing on a steep rise in children and teens.
Another truly excellent article from you, Lisa, and wonderful what a great discussion it has sparked here. Also, I am so, so grateful to have a community (with thanks to Lisa) that I can come back to for “reality checks” when others of my friends on the left side of the aisle (as I am) just will not engage with the fact that there are other, valid perspectives on these issues. I cannot imagine how hard it is for all here who are in the thick of it trying to protect your children from the onslaught. Even from where I sit, it is really hard to keep one’s bearings and speak up against the tide. In this regard, I was reminded today of the Asch Experiment on conformity, which you can find here: https://youtu.be/iRh5qy09nNw. In thinking about how hard it is for me, at 73, to keep to the facts and science in the face of the “I don’t want to listen, let alone talk about this” friends who should know better, I cannot imagine the pressure on parents, let alone children and young people, to conform, even when conformity means agreeing to things that are completely nonsensical, wrong, and dangerous.
Yes, great article yet again! I am blessed (or lucky or whatever) to have found a private middle/high school for my D that does exactly what you describe: teach reading, writing, math and science (and teaches these subjects very well), and makes the kids grapple with societal and ethical problems, including bio ethical issues. The teachers almost all possess Master's degrees and PhDs, and none are teacher's college-educated. My D exclaims at least once a week how grateful she is for her school, especially after talking to her public school friends.
I should add that while it is a private school and is therefore not publically funded, it provides scholarships for those who can't afford the fees. And I honestly don't see why we can't replicate at least some aspects in the public school system, which probably spends a similar amount of money per child.
I sent one kid to public school in kindergarten. It was a dismal failure for him, for both academic and social reasons. The education was spread very, very thin, and, as mentioned above, the teachers had to play so many other roles that a kid who wasn't challenged was the least of their worries. They had homeless kids showing up cold and hungry, and yes, I agree that's a bigger priority than a little nerd who's bored in math. The public schools in my city became a catch-all social services provider - they even provide free lunch for kids all summer long - but if what you want is education, that's not really going to happen there. All the kids from middle-class families do their math instruction after school, and almost a quarter of the kids in my city don't go to the public schools.
My second kid I sent to private school, because I could not imagine her thriving in the kind of public school my son suffered through. I chose her school in part because I loved the success the school had in instilling basic values. The kids demonstrate kindness and consideration to each other, and those cultural norms have held through the years. I appreciate how every student and every staff member feels like a full member of the community, not excluded because they have a scholarship or are groundskeepers. I love how the school really believes that everyone is learning and growing, there is no end state, and how much they support teachers (and groundskeepers!) continuing their education.
Fast forward to middle school, and the complications are growing. To Diversity, now add Equity, now Inclusion, now Belonging. They try to explain to the kids what the difference between fairness and equity is, and they fail. They try to explain why you need to call out not just inclusion but also belonging, and it's a lost cause. Inclusion is the measures the institution takes, and belonging is the outcome the person feels? It's bafflegab, trend-following, virtue-signaling.
Though private schools aren't subject to the same sort of rigid curricular controls that public schools are, they have their own governing institutions. Private schools giving scholarships at a specific rate isn't because someone has made an independent moral decision, it's because the associations they belong to, and their accreditation, require them. The mission creep in DEIB is likewise passed down from the associations and peer schools. And when the school informs all parents that the girls' team is for anyone who identifies as a girl, that's also been passed down to them, and they would be hard-pressed to go against it.
It's, for many parents of girls, like a warning shot across the bow: there will be no entirely girls' sports, and the likelihood of your girl having to encounter some young buck in the locker room increases the more she plays. Do you believe girls should have equal access to sports? Well, your belief is not allowed by the league.
I have a close relationship with my kids, and we talk about everything. We discuss the gender ideology disaster at home. It touched our family, as my son had an infatuation with it that put our family through hell for two years. I make sure my daughter knows that boys are still boys, and girls are still girls, in every cell of their bodies, no matter what they feel or think, and my son helps with this. We should be kind to people who think differently from us, but we don't have to agree with them. I make sure she knows that she has the right to say no to anybody who makes her feel threatened - like a boy in the girl's changing room or bathroom - even if someone at school says she shouldn't. She knows her safety is her right, and she has every right to disagree with adults about it.
I do my job as parent the best I can, but I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I haven't heard yet of the school pushing out that genderbread nonsense, but it's hard to hold on to the hope that they never will. It's coming, it's inevitable, and I must be ready.
Even before I became aware of the gender cult I had written our school to say “Please trust that parents are teaching values. If a child is found to be bullying or anything untoward then please let the parents know, but assume we have morals”. There was the “ raising the non racist” kid parent seminar. While I didn’t think in our blue state Lib leaning needed it it was optional and maybe that was helpful for some. My beef was my kids not reading classics and having social justice be the subjects. The book choices are problematic. I’m thrilled when they listen to MLKjr “ I have a dream” but I was unhappy when my 10th grade girl had to read “ The bluest eyes” by Toni Morrison. The girl is sexually and physically abused by her father. It was not ok. This year at a different school another English teacher had the class watch a wildly violent film ostensibly about racism. My daughter and I both complained. The NY Times just recently did another piece about these terrible conservative parents banning books like “ the bluest eyes” The writers assumption was that it had something to do with race. No I do t want my kids exposed to violence and sexual abuse. And why does every book need send a message! Cant it just get them to enjoy reading and teach them to write! No. There has to be a mission!
What I often wonder is, now that organized religion has fallen out of favor, where will people go for spirituality and moral guidance?
I agree that public schools teaching gender identity as gospel is not the way to go.
But I'd argue it's only become possible to do that because of the fall of organized religion. If we can't come up with something good to fulfill our need for religion, how can we fight off "bad" religions like this?
Yes, I agree that this is an important question, and that we as a society have lost our way in terms of understanding the importance of community. The myth of American individualism, lack of state/community support for families, etc, all exacerbated by the pandemic and ongoing income inequality, none of which I got to in this short piece—but it's all related. We need to value interdependence. But with the left and right both so extreme, it's hard for many of us to even find community in our politics with people. So we need new community institutions. I like FAIR, FIRE and Heterodox Academy as starts.
Was just listening to selected comments from the recently-held Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford University (check it out at:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQy2zhWqTFZ5Thzz1tE8dhWWTRUTQzaIZ ), at which Jonathan Haidt repeated his question about what the "telos" (the ultimate object or aim) of a University is.
So, what's the telos of a public school, be it elementary, middle or high school?
Most of us reading this are citizens of societies that anthropologists label as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), so I'll bet most of us share a belief that all kids possess a set of basic human rights, that are universally due every human being, regardless of cultural or religious background. So of course, we want our kids to feel physically safe, and be treated fairly at the educational institutions to which we send them. But the *main* and most important reason our kids are there at all is to learn basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic . . . and maybe some basics on the role of a citizen in a democratic republic), and hopefully a basic set of "facts" that can orient them within the general cultural identity of "American." National identity is how countries typically have formed and persisted in history. And most particularly ours, because our social cohesion - since we're "a nation of immigrants" - is supposed to be less reliant on those "blood and soil"-type stories often bandied about in more ethnically homogeneous countries.
Thomas Sowell often points out that people's arguments tend to have more to do with different perceptions of what causes things to happen than with fundamental values, disagreements over what is "bad" and what is "good." (from Sowell's Conflict of Visions: "Both constrained and unconstrained visions are fundamentally and essentially visions of causation. Only derivatively do they involve clashes of moral principles or different hierarchies of social values." If you're unfamiliar with the terms "constrained" and "unconstrained," a quick and dirty way to think of them is as short-hand for the conservative's tendency not to want to change even flawed traditions, for fear of unintended consequences, versus the progressive's desire to break down established norms and reform everything and everyone in order to achieve utopia. Sowell's observations are more nuanced than that in his book, of course.)
In other words, nobody on any side of a policy disagreement really wants kids to suffer. But there are just gigantic differences of opinion on the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything; and 99.999% of the people who staff a typical public school are nowhere near qualified to address the metaphysical. The fact that too many have gotten distracted by the conceit that it is their place to try means that too many public schools provide more confusion and mental angst than actual education. It is pretty damned hard to be antifragile in the modern world if you are innumerate and you don't know how to read.
This is developmentally so dicey. Kids need adults to reality-test against GNC is very easy to support. "He likes dresses. So what. It's fine." Trans is a made up reality that cannot be *shared*, it can only be agreed with. That's fascistic. If you use preferred pronouns on one kid, you gaslight the whole class.
There used to be these books published for classrooms called "Opposing Viewpoints," and they included just those: if you picked up the one on the death penalty, you got all the different perspectives on that, and from people who *believed* what they were saying. It was not presented as, "Here's our argument (hint hint, the correct one) and here's some strawman version of what *those monsters* think." These books aren't published anymore, tellingly, and I feel like we're going to be working our way back to a place when they *could be* for many years to come. But it's a worthwhile struggle.
Wow. If we had a heterodox publishing company, they could reissue those. The "intellectual virtues" series for K-12.
School as church is exactly what has happened. It’s gone too far. I enjoyed your interview with the teacher. I’m trying to engage with my child’s school now with friendly questions- as your interviewee recommended. On another note, I ran into a friend the other day who is a nyc public school teacher. She had tons of questions for me (as the mom of one such kid) bcs they had recently had a staff meeting regarding not telling parents when a kid changes names in school. I tried to explain how damaging that is to the parent child relationship. I’m hoping one person at a time will begin to understand more and the narrative regarding what is right will change.
Keep writing Lisa!
As a retired Kindergarten teacher, who taught all of my students to operate in the learning environment of advanced academic teaching, especially science and math, I state that teachers are not psychiatrists and "gender dysphoria" (as testified by psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Levine, a former "affirmer" who found the diagnosis unstable) is a psychiatric illness. As a trans widow, who discovered my then husband's cross-dressing diaries (3 of them in one fell swoop in August of 1992) I state that IS a psychiatric illness and he was quite mentally ill, manipulative and deceitful. He put me in danger of STDs by his "true life test" behavior, which involved going to gay bars in Greenwich Village in female garb and pretending the gay men offering to by him a Blanc de Blanc didn't recognize him as male. A child at one of the schools I taught at, PS 107 in Park Slope, was famously profiled in the NY Times for "being transgender." I have it on good authority from colleagues still in service that he is now identifying as a boy, and the manipulation they witnessed by his parents was just that, manipulation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/nyregion/family-of-boy-who-wears-dresses-sues-education-department.html
I will be doing a deep dive into the behavioral analysis of cross-dressing, the multiple dopamine hits it involves, therefore is not in any way a "true life test." uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
As Exulansic (Isle of Ex Yt channel) said about her experience as "trans-masc" one time cross-dresser, "It's a distraction."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ERBzqDzaA&t=27s
I have worked in education in both private and public schools for 25 years. There are other angles to this that need to be considered:
- There is a frequent refrain of “leave teaching to teachers.” But there is a serious problem in college of education programs where teachers in training are not taught the science of learning . Colleges of education and colleges of science - where the research or cognitive psychology and the science of learning happen - typically have little to no overlap and do not communicate with each other. Many teachers leave programs with very little instruction on *how* to teach a child how to read, the actual mechanics of teaching and learning, or how to support students with learning challenges. Talk to teachers - they are often very frustrated with this lack of preparation. It’s this lack of training in the cognitive sciences that results in stories like the widespread failure to teach children to read - see Emily Hanford’s excellent reporting on this and the podcast “Sold a Story.” If you want to see how gender ideology can take over a school, learn how “whole language” and “balanced literacy” took over schools, publishing houses, and colleges of education https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- The “social-emotional learning” and mental health programs schools are spending millions on are often not evidence based nor effective. See this study + read about the US military’s failed PTSD prevention program that was based on a program for kids that had no research support in Jesse Singal’s book The Quick Fix.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mobile.twitter.com/DrJackAndrews/status/1548925718746189824__;!!JZyed81S!hKsxD2eeNWJXqXBm4GnjWeMOoYoNTmbCJ0xCUoKpmBUM02VfQGvX0h5vNfzzy4CJO_5PYMfNvttyYvazi5BDT1TW$
- We are expecting schools to do more and more within the confines of a short day and limited resources - they are to teach academics, teach “character development,” handle kids’ mental health and social-emotional learning, teach them sex education and be on the frontlines of preventing pregnancy and STDs, act as in loco parentis, and act as social workers. Then on top of this they’re also tasked with providing students with education in the arts, music, and PE and field trips. No matter what your opinion is of schools taking on one or another of these roles, it is impossible for schools to do all of them well.
- Finally, not only are we not helping children develop resilience, many of the current themes of social emotional learning programs combined with the online culture kids are steeped in encourage, enable, and reward behaviors and patterns of thinking that fuel anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation - all things that we are seeing on a steep rise in children and teens.
Such good points. A great example of the problem in ed schools is chronicled in this video series by Peter Boghossian. Well worth the watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hybqg81n-M&t=1s
Another truly excellent article from you, Lisa, and wonderful what a great discussion it has sparked here. Also, I am so, so grateful to have a community (with thanks to Lisa) that I can come back to for “reality checks” when others of my friends on the left side of the aisle (as I am) just will not engage with the fact that there are other, valid perspectives on these issues. I cannot imagine how hard it is for all here who are in the thick of it trying to protect your children from the onslaught. Even from where I sit, it is really hard to keep one’s bearings and speak up against the tide. In this regard, I was reminded today of the Asch Experiment on conformity, which you can find here: https://youtu.be/iRh5qy09nNw. In thinking about how hard it is for me, at 73, to keep to the facts and science in the face of the “I don’t want to listen, let alone talk about this” friends who should know better, I cannot imagine the pressure on parents, let alone children and young people, to conform, even when conformity means agreeing to things that are completely nonsensical, wrong, and dangerous.
Yes, great article yet again! I am blessed (or lucky or whatever) to have found a private middle/high school for my D that does exactly what you describe: teach reading, writing, math and science (and teaches these subjects very well), and makes the kids grapple with societal and ethical problems, including bio ethical issues. The teachers almost all possess Master's degrees and PhDs, and none are teacher's college-educated. My D exclaims at least once a week how grateful she is for her school, especially after talking to her public school friends.
I should add that while it is a private school and is therefore not publically funded, it provides scholarships for those who can't afford the fees. And I honestly don't see why we can't replicate at least some aspects in the public school system, which probably spends a similar amount of money per child.
Edit: "exclaims", not "explains"
Please write to me privately and tell me what this school is!!
I sent one kid to public school in kindergarten. It was a dismal failure for him, for both academic and social reasons. The education was spread very, very thin, and, as mentioned above, the teachers had to play so many other roles that a kid who wasn't challenged was the least of their worries. They had homeless kids showing up cold and hungry, and yes, I agree that's a bigger priority than a little nerd who's bored in math. The public schools in my city became a catch-all social services provider - they even provide free lunch for kids all summer long - but if what you want is education, that's not really going to happen there. All the kids from middle-class families do their math instruction after school, and almost a quarter of the kids in my city don't go to the public schools.
My second kid I sent to private school, because I could not imagine her thriving in the kind of public school my son suffered through. I chose her school in part because I loved the success the school had in instilling basic values. The kids demonstrate kindness and consideration to each other, and those cultural norms have held through the years. I appreciate how every student and every staff member feels like a full member of the community, not excluded because they have a scholarship or are groundskeepers. I love how the school really believes that everyone is learning and growing, there is no end state, and how much they support teachers (and groundskeepers!) continuing their education.
Fast forward to middle school, and the complications are growing. To Diversity, now add Equity, now Inclusion, now Belonging. They try to explain to the kids what the difference between fairness and equity is, and they fail. They try to explain why you need to call out not just inclusion but also belonging, and it's a lost cause. Inclusion is the measures the institution takes, and belonging is the outcome the person feels? It's bafflegab, trend-following, virtue-signaling.
Though private schools aren't subject to the same sort of rigid curricular controls that public schools are, they have their own governing institutions. Private schools giving scholarships at a specific rate isn't because someone has made an independent moral decision, it's because the associations they belong to, and their accreditation, require them. The mission creep in DEIB is likewise passed down from the associations and peer schools. And when the school informs all parents that the girls' team is for anyone who identifies as a girl, that's also been passed down to them, and they would be hard-pressed to go against it.
It's, for many parents of girls, like a warning shot across the bow: there will be no entirely girls' sports, and the likelihood of your girl having to encounter some young buck in the locker room increases the more she plays. Do you believe girls should have equal access to sports? Well, your belief is not allowed by the league.
I have a close relationship with my kids, and we talk about everything. We discuss the gender ideology disaster at home. It touched our family, as my son had an infatuation with it that put our family through hell for two years. I make sure my daughter knows that boys are still boys, and girls are still girls, in every cell of their bodies, no matter what they feel or think, and my son helps with this. We should be kind to people who think differently from us, but we don't have to agree with them. I make sure she knows that she has the right to say no to anybody who makes her feel threatened - like a boy in the girl's changing room or bathroom - even if someone at school says she shouldn't. She knows her safety is her right, and she has every right to disagree with adults about it.
I do my job as parent the best I can, but I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I haven't heard yet of the school pushing out that genderbread nonsense, but it's hard to hold on to the hope that they never will. It's coming, it's inevitable, and I must be ready.
Another good essay!!
Even before I became aware of the gender cult I had written our school to say “Please trust that parents are teaching values. If a child is found to be bullying or anything untoward then please let the parents know, but assume we have morals”. There was the “ raising the non racist” kid parent seminar. While I didn’t think in our blue state Lib leaning needed it it was optional and maybe that was helpful for some. My beef was my kids not reading classics and having social justice be the subjects. The book choices are problematic. I’m thrilled when they listen to MLKjr “ I have a dream” but I was unhappy when my 10th grade girl had to read “ The bluest eyes” by Toni Morrison. The girl is sexually and physically abused by her father. It was not ok. This year at a different school another English teacher had the class watch a wildly violent film ostensibly about racism. My daughter and I both complained. The NY Times just recently did another piece about these terrible conservative parents banning books like “ the bluest eyes” The writers assumption was that it had something to do with race. No I do t want my kids exposed to violence and sexual abuse. And why does every book need send a message! Cant it just get them to enjoy reading and teach them to write! No. There has to be a mission!
What I often wonder is, now that organized religion has fallen out of favor, where will people go for spirituality and moral guidance?
I agree that public schools teaching gender identity as gospel is not the way to go.
But I'd argue it's only become possible to do that because of the fall of organized religion. If we can't come up with something good to fulfill our need for religion, how can we fight off "bad" religions like this?
Yes, I agree that this is an important question, and that we as a society have lost our way in terms of understanding the importance of community. The myth of American individualism, lack of state/community support for families, etc, all exacerbated by the pandemic and ongoing income inequality, none of which I got to in this short piece—but it's all related. We need to value interdependence. But with the left and right both so extreme, it's hard for many of us to even find community in our politics with people. So we need new community institutions. I like FAIR, FIRE and Heterodox Academy as starts.
Was just listening to selected comments from the recently-held Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford University (check it out at:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQy2zhWqTFZ5Thzz1tE8dhWWTRUTQzaIZ ), at which Jonathan Haidt repeated his question about what the "telos" (the ultimate object or aim) of a University is.
So, what's the telos of a public school, be it elementary, middle or high school?
Most of us reading this are citizens of societies that anthropologists label as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), so I'll bet most of us share a belief that all kids possess a set of basic human rights, that are universally due every human being, regardless of cultural or religious background. So of course, we want our kids to feel physically safe, and be treated fairly at the educational institutions to which we send them. But the *main* and most important reason our kids are there at all is to learn basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic . . . and maybe some basics on the role of a citizen in a democratic republic), and hopefully a basic set of "facts" that can orient them within the general cultural identity of "American." National identity is how countries typically have formed and persisted in history. And most particularly ours, because our social cohesion - since we're "a nation of immigrants" - is supposed to be less reliant on those "blood and soil"-type stories often bandied about in more ethnically homogeneous countries.
Thomas Sowell often points out that people's arguments tend to have more to do with different perceptions of what causes things to happen than with fundamental values, disagreements over what is "bad" and what is "good." (from Sowell's Conflict of Visions: "Both constrained and unconstrained visions are fundamentally and essentially visions of causation. Only derivatively do they involve clashes of moral principles or different hierarchies of social values." If you're unfamiliar with the terms "constrained" and "unconstrained," a quick and dirty way to think of them is as short-hand for the conservative's tendency not to want to change even flawed traditions, for fear of unintended consequences, versus the progressive's desire to break down established norms and reform everything and everyone in order to achieve utopia. Sowell's observations are more nuanced than that in his book, of course.)
In other words, nobody on any side of a policy disagreement really wants kids to suffer. But there are just gigantic differences of opinion on the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything; and 99.999% of the people who staff a typical public school are nowhere near qualified to address the metaphysical. The fact that too many have gotten distracted by the conceit that it is their place to try means that too many public schools provide more confusion and mental angst than actual education. It is pretty damned hard to be antifragile in the modern world if you are innumerate and you don't know how to read.
This is developmentally so dicey. Kids need adults to reality-test against GNC is very easy to support. "He likes dresses. So what. It's fine." Trans is a made up reality that cannot be *shared*, it can only be agreed with. That's fascistic. If you use preferred pronouns on one kid, you gaslight the whole class.
whoops: period after "against"