Into the madness?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has had a busy spring. As his feud with Disney continues to roll on, his state’s Board of Education has just approved a new expansion of the Parental Rights in Education Act, otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Extending the affected grade range from K–3 to K–12, it  will prohibit any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity beyond what’s required by state academic standards or taught in sex-ed/health classes—and even there, parents will have the choice to opt out. 

The governor’s administration has been accused of bigoted fearmongering and banning even innocent books from school libraries out of political prejudice. But a news conference last month exposed this as a baseless claim. In fact, the banned books were so pornographic, their illustrations couldn’t be shown on mainstream news channels. This short video samples just a little of the highly explicit imagery (viewer discretion advised).

Florida may be getting all the attention at the moment, but families across the country have been raising the same alarm. In February, some of the books on the Florida ban list were spotted in a school library in Maine. A mother in Ohio also told me how last September, she had protested another book from the ban list in her own small district. Clearly, something is rotten in more than one state. 

But Bible teacher Jen Wilkin has cautioned against using stories like these to spread alarm and mistrust in public schools. In her “Good Faith Debate” with Jonathan Pennington, she offered her own warnings about “misinformation” and “fearmongering,” implying that schools exposing children to inappropriate material are the exception, not the norm. This is part of her comprehensive case for public schools as the Christian parent’s ideal first choice.

Wilkin does acknowledge that public schools forced her and her husband to discuss certain “hot-button issues” early with their own children (who are now in their 20s). But from her perspective, this was a plus. She wanted her children to be educated in a context where they had a “diverse” array of friends and teachers. And so far from seeing her family as “on mission” to change the school from the inside, she taught her children to respect it as a fundamentally “pluralistic” space.

One wonders how Christian proponents of public education would respond to DeSantis’s Florida legislation, which angered many self-identified LGBT teachers even with its initial restrictions on what could be taught to K–3 children. Material at this level may not yet be pornographic, but as showcased in a recently unveiled “LGBT-inclusive” Maryland curriculum, it can still be expressly designed to introduce young children to new “vocabulary” like “transgender/cisgender,” “queer,” “intersex,” and “drag king/queen.” One award-winning “anti-bias” training documentary shows a young woman introducing 4- and 5-year-olds to a “nonbinary” doll (from timestamp 20:45), as well as a gay man who occasionally comes to class in a skirt so that little children can learn to be comfortable with distinctly LGBT forms of “dramatic play” (from 17:20).

Wilkin further argues that participating in the public school system can be a way for Christian families to show “neighbor love,” in an institution designed to serve “the last and the least.” But does it really serve “the last and the least” for teachers to confuse children about the created order of sex and gender? Or for the Biden administration to entangle their school lunches with radical transgender policy? Or for multiple state education department guidelines to include clauses about hiding information from parents when children express gender confusion? For former California teacher Jessica Tapia, serving “the last and the least” looked like getting herself fired by saying “no.” 

In my home state of Michigan, an “anti-bullying” law has been written to include anything that might be “reasonably interpreted” as motivated by “bias” against a student’s “gender identity or expression.” This could encompass many gestures that clearly do not constitute “bullying,” including a polite refusal to use a child’s “preferred pronoun.” Christian parents teaching their children to “live not by lies” should not be putting them in a situation where they will be faced with this kind of dilemma. Parents following Wilkin’s advice to be a “presence” in the life of their school community could face a similar dilemma. If they are forced to check their deepest convictions at the public school door, then what does it still mean to be “present”?

I currently teach at a classical Christian high school. I do this not because I am uninterested in caring well for my community but because this is the best way that I can care well for a community while integrating my faith and my work. And in that process, I can attest that I’m not just serving Christian students. I’ll never forget one mom who told me how unsettled she was by this new aggressive assault on the most basic building blocks of identity. Her personal beliefs weren’t grounded in the Bible. And still, she said she wanted to stand up and say, “Don’t take away my foundation.” 

It is for parents like this woman that public school alternatives exist. We are nothing less than a haven from madness. It is to escape that madness that she and her husband are making the necessary sacrifices to give their daughter a Christian education. They don’t care that it’s not the most “pluralistic” environment. At least it will be sane. At least the teachers can be trusted. At least they will give her some kind of foundation.