If children in elementary schools be taught that people of the same gender you fall in love with one another? Do teenagers want to learn about how slavery’s legacy things now? If parents be able to forbid their children from attending training?
As Republican-dominated state legislatures limit how teachers talk about race and restrict transgender children’s access to rooms and activities, and as school board votes turn on book bans and kids’ rights, three new national reports from the Pew Research Center, the research firm RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.
Despite the amount of interest that LGBTQ issues receive in federal politicians, teachers said that subjects like gender identity and sexual orientation hardly ever get discussed. Many people said they don’t think these subjects should be covered in school.
According to the research, a large portion of the general public doesn’t believe gender and sexuality should be discussed in school. Nevertheless, there were vast political splits, as well as distinctions along racial and ethnic ranges.
Teenagers and adults found it easier to get their hands on teachers who spoke about prejudice than LGBTQ problems. They were also more at ease with teachers discussing past injustices than current injustice, and they were more at ease with gay rights than transgender rights. And they were more at ease with any of these subjects, despite the fact that some teenagers had already experienced it.
Therefore, it is perhaps surprising that two-thirds of faculty in one study said they had made a decision on their own to restrict how they discussed potentially controversial subjects. One purpose: They feared clashes with unhappy parents.
“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. However, both teachers and students have “very different perceptions of these two issues.”
What are some of the key conclusions from the three new accounts:
Many educators are censoring themselves
More than a third of American faculty are employed in states where communication styles that are deemed contentious or questionable are limited. However, a study by the research firm RAND found that local regulations and teachers’ personal fears are having an impact as well.
Two-thirds of the 1,500 instructors surveyed last year said they were independent in their decision to control how they discussed social and political issues in the classroom. However, about half of educators told RAND they were content to either a state or local limitations. These limits may be elegant, such as a school board plan, or casual, such as a principal’s comments.
Despite state law, more than 80% of those who were content to a regional restriction claimed to have changed their methods of teaching. That should not be amazing, said Ashley Woo, an assistant plan scientist at RAND.
She said, “That is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your class” if your principal is telling you to do something.
More than half of teachers who were exempt from any restrictions also claimed to have had a limited ability to discuss specific subjects, with self-censorship also prevalent in democratic settings but more typical in conservative settings.
A fear of confrontation with annoyed parents and the fact that their management may not support them if they encountered difficulties was one of the main causes teachers cited as being against limiting instruction, particularly in communities with regional restrictions.
Less frequently than racism are raised about LGBTQ issues in classrooms
A report released this week uncovers a troubling finding: Despite the fact that LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, most teachers claim that they hardly ever discuss gender identity and sexual orientation in class, and many claim that they shouldn’t.
More than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said sexual orientation and gender identity were hardly ever or never discussed in their classrooms last school year, according to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. About 3 in 10 said they occasionally or frequently brought up the subject.
Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.
The findings come as many states’ anti-trans laws make the environment more hostile for young people who are not gender-conforming.
In contrast, more than half of teachers said they occasionally or occasionally discussed racism or racial inequality. Around 4 in 10 teachers claimed that the problems eluded or never occurred.
Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it impacted Black Americans’ lives today, whereas just under one quarter said slavery should only be taught as a component of history and have no bearing on the present.
Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.
What sexuality and gender education should young children receive?
In Searching for Common Ground, a study released this week by a team at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.
Democrats were more at ease with almost every scenario, with independents and others largely in the middle. However, even Democrats were less enthusiastic about bringing up race or different family structures when it came to addressing gender identity or asking students for pronouns in elementary school.
A majority of respondents thought a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk was appropriate for an elementary teacher. And almost as many people approved of elementary school students reading a book about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.
However, only 30% of respondents and only 50% of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations like a Pride flag.
Republicans were far more likely to fear that discussing these subjects would lead to children believing they were gay or trans, while Democrats were much more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected in schools.
According to Morgan Polikoff, a professor of USC’s education and one of the study’s lead authors, “the largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school.” Republicans do not believe that children can handle that, while Democrats believe that children can handle that.”
Some students and teachers are keen to learn more about a diverse history, but some conservatives have targeted the course as a result of the launch of Advanced Placement African American Studies. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images)More students find it easier to talk about racism than LGBTQ issues
According to the Pew report, students in grades 8 through 12 are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about LGBTQ issues than race and racism, and this is because they are more likely to do so.
Around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics relating to racism or racial inequality came up in a nationally representative survey of 13 to 17-year-olds conducted last fall.
However, only 3 out of 10 people shared the same opinion on issues involving gender identity or sexual orientation. And just under half of teenagers said they shouldn’t be taught about gender identity in class. Teenagers who identified as Republicans as Democrats had a slightly higher rate of that rate.
Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. About half said they should learn about slavery and how it relates to Black Americans today, while 40% said they should only learn about slavery in its historical context.
In other surveys, Black parents and Black teachers reported finding that Black teenagers and teenagers who identify as Democrats were significantly more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teenagers to want to learn about how the legacy of slavery has affected Black people today.
It’s challenging to bridge these gaps
The political spectrum is well represented in the University of Southern California study.
However, Democrats and Republicans have a nearly 39 percent difference in the debate over whether children should be taught to accept differences in public schools. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.
This presumptive belief was a significant predictor of responses to particular circumstances. People who claimed that children shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more unease with the discussion of race, gender, and sexuality in the classroom.
Democrats believe that schools are the ideal setting for this because they are one of the last places where everyone can come together despite their differences, according to Polikoff. Republicans don’t believe that to be a proper role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”
Parents were generally opposed to having the ability to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers asked respondents to weigh the positive aspects, such as their child missing out on the chance to develop critical thinking skills, support fell.
A healthier discussion than what is currently occurring could result from understanding the values that underlie differences and focusing on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historical injustices.
“We need to have this conversation,” he said. Democrats sticking their fingers in your ears and saying you’re all bigots are the ones who are in place, Ron DeSantis says we’ll ban everything.”
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at [email protected].
A senior national education reporter based in Chicago is Kayla Belsha. Contact her at [email protected].
