Queer questions about capitalism aren't right for kindergartners
The 'queens' and 'queers' of the kindergarten alphabet book 'Pride Puppy' finally had their day before the Supreme Court. Predictably on Tuesday, the six conservative justices were not pleased with the Maryland school district that made exposure to this and four other LGBTQ+-themed books a mandatory part of the grade-school English curriculum starting in kindergarten.
Religious parents in Montgomery County, Maryland objected to what their kids were being exposed to and made a federal case out of it — this one centered on the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment.
As the First Amendment protects my writing, I am a big fan of an expansive reading of the five freedoms it protects — religion, speech, press, assembly and the right to petition the government. But it shouldn't take a coming rebuke from the Supreme Court to get schools to remember that they are only borrowing our kids. Parents' values should be treated with respect.
Public schools ought to be a little more modest about how they teach issues that divide us, particularly to young children not yet used to questioning the sanity of the adults around them. If parents don't have the bucks for private school or the time and patience for home schooling, they shouldn't have to hand their kids over for a first grade indoctrination in intersectional feminism.
Let's take LGBTQ and religious views out of it. We all know that kids are impressionable. What would you think if kindergartners were required to be exposed to books that presented smoking in a puppy-themed, sparkly and rainbow bedecked light?
We'd never do that. Indeed, the Maryland schools intended message of tolerance and support for some kinds of diversity can be widely found on the internet, cable and broadcast and streaming TV, movies and music. But positive depictions of smoking are rare. They can get you slapped with an R rating or raise questions about your broadcast license. We know kids are susceptible to influence from how things are portrayed and we know that some things are only appropriate for an older audience.
While most Americans think tobacco is bad for you and most Americans don't think that about being gay, for people who do object, the idea that images and the way things are portrayed to kids can be influential is well-accepted idea.
In the coming year, this issue is going to heat up. If you haven't noticed already, the 250th anniversary of the opening battles of the Revolutionary War have already passed. The drumbeat of anniversaries will continue to get louder culminating in a national celebration of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026. Next school year, the nation's pupils will be awash in Revolutionary War pedagogy.
Among the leading voices in shaping what they hear is the 1619 Project, an educational K-12 version of which has been adopted by 4,500 schools across the country. Among its more debatable contentions are the claims that American capitalism is intimately bound with racism, that the Revolutionary War was launched, in part, to protect slavery from British-led reform efforts and that the very idea of police in America is descended from patrols engaged in recapturing escaped slaves.
These aren't questions of religious orthodoxy that the Supreme Court can sweep in and give parents a right to opt-out of for reasons of religious freedom. Nevertheless, in the lower grades, schools shouldn't be using complicated and contested interpretations of history to encourage impressionable young children to hate their homeland. Leave such debates for the adults and older students who are equipped to interrogate the evidence for themselves and not as likely to take the word of a teacher as gospel.
Kindergarteners don't need to know the word queer any more than 1st graders need to critique capitalism or even know the word at all. Public schools should remember these kids are ours and treat us — and our kids — with a little more respect.
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