The Supreme Court thinks it should decide what kids read

It's bizarre, and frankly alarming, when America's most brilliant legal minds don't know their rightful role in society

Here’s the conundrum: Religious families in Maryland object to their children being taught LGBTQ storybooks and have asked, on religious grounds, to opt-out of those lessons. But the schools have refused. So now the country’s highest court has taken up the case. In Mahmoud v. Taylor — argued last Tuesday, April 22nd — the Supreme Court leapt into the fray of this latest culture war flashpoint, taking up the question of which books should be taught to America’s children.

Let’s stop there. Does that sound strange to you? What makes these nine Justices — none of whom have even taught young children, not even for a day — competent to make a judgement that all public schools will henceforth have to follow? Absolutely nothing.

And yet — here we are. The structure of our society gives them the decision, so they will make it. They won’t question whether they should or shouldn’t. And no one else will either.

And so, last Tuesday, we saw the Justices disagree over the meaning of books that were written for three year olds, and ask whether the meaning of those books — whatever it might be — was age-appropriate. (What follows has been condensed for the sake of clarity):

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

Because I’m looking at the books — I’ve looked through all of them — they have two men, “Little Bobby’s Wedding,” where they’re getting married. One is black and one is white in this rendition of the book.

Is looking at two men getting married, is that the religious objection?

Associate Justice Samuel Alito:

“Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” I’ve read that book, as well as a lot of these other books.

Yeah, the book has — the book has a clear message. And a lot of people think it’s a good message, and maybe it is a good message. But it’s a message that a lot of people who hold on to traditional religious beliefs don’t agree with.

Uncle Bobby gets married to his boyfriend, Jamie, and everybody’s happy, and… everyone accepts this, except for the little girl, Chloe, who has reservations about it. But her mother corrects her: “No, you shouldn’t have any reservations about this.”

Sonia Sotomayor, speaking to Eric Baxter, the lawyer for the plaintiff:

Counsel, a couple of questions to clarify things. “Uncle Bob’s Wedding,” the character, the child character, wasn’t objecting to same-sex marriage. She was objecting to the fact that marriage would take her uncle away from spending more time with her. Correct?

Eric Baxter:

I’m not sure that’s correct, Your Honor. I think for a child of that age, it’s hard to express what their actual concerns are.

Samuel Alito:

Justice Sotomayor and I were discussing this before, and we could have — we could have a book club — and have a debate about how Uncle Bobby’s marriage should be understood…

What are the ages of the children who are involved here?

Eric Baxter:

These books were approved for pre-K, which in Montgomery County can start as early as three, if they’re going to turn four that fall.

Samuel Alito:

Now, would you agree that at a certain age, students are capable of understanding this point — which, probably, is not a point that can be understood by a four or five-year-old — and that is that my teacher, who was generally telling me that certain things are right and that certain things are wrong, isn’t necessarily going to be correct on everything?

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So how, exactly, can the Justices even decide such a case? What principles will they use? Their main criteria is that of coercion — are the children being forced to believe something, or can they decide for themselves? And are these books content-neutral, just presenting facts, or are they promoting or “normalizing” a certain worldview and value system?

But if reading these books is ultimately judged to be coercive, where is the line? What else can parents object to? This was a major concern of the liberal Justices on the Court. As Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it,

What if we have a teacher who is gay, and has a photo of a wedding on her desk… could [a parent] opt out of having their student be in that classroom? …What about the teacher showing pictures from the wedding? …What if a student group puts up “Love is love” posters around the school featuring same-sex couples or trans youth?

For the liberal Justices at least, the question then becomes — if kids start opting out of all sorts of classes, can schools bear the financial burden of having to offer alternative activities to these kids, or will they just scrape everything from the curriculum that could be deemed controversial?

And there is a lot that could be deemed controversial on religious grounds: divorce, magic, evolution, anything that doesn’t conform to traditional gender roles. The list goes on and on.

But there’s also a lot that secular parents deem controversial. They don’t want religious materials, like the Ten Commandments, displayed in the classroom, nor religious storybooks read to their kids. And many take issue with the classics in general, describing them as perpetuating white supremacist culture (a few years back, Howard University cut the Classics department entirely from its curriculum).

Of course, when you get down to it, everything in the curriculum is likely controversial to somebody. Why would a pacifist want their children reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, or any book that depicts war as an exciting adventure? Why would a socialist want their kids taught by capitalists? Why would a minority parent want their child to learn about the history of the majority, and not about their own culture’s rich past? And why would a nature-lover want their kids sitting inside for 6-7 hours of the day?

So should the Supreme Court decide on all these issues, or just the religious ones? And are all these things coercive because they all promote or normalize certain values? Where’s the line?

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Unfortunately, the line is nowhere near where the Justices are busy searching for it. They’ve lost the bigger picture, as we all have. The bigger picture — the more profound principle we all need to find again — is freedom of thought.

The first amendment isn’t about freedom of thought for a religious few. No, it’s about freedom of thought for everyone. The government shouldn’t tell us what to think, regardless of whether we’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, secular, pacifist, socialist, or anything else.

The government shouldn’t decide curriculum because there’s simply no such thing as a “value-neutral” curriculum. It’s a fantasy. Everything that’s taught is taught for a reason — it’s inherently assumed to have value, otherwise why would we bother teaching it?

This is the most obvious point in the world, yet we totally ignore it. Instead, we talk about teaching kids how to think, and not what to think. But it’s absurd: There is no “how” without a “what.” And the what matters. A lot. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t always be fighting about what’s being taught.

One person thinks high school kids should be learning about the major political figures of the past. Another disagrees, and thinks that the struggles of everyday people are what matter. Who’s right? Which version of history should be taught? Both would seem to have value, but then… things inevitably heat up. Progressives declare that the first approach is “white supremacy,” and conservatives call the second approach “communism.” And now it’s red hot. Now there’s no more room for conversation, no way to live at peace with our neighbors — we have to eradicate their views from the classroom.

Do we think the politicians and judges can really restore sanity to this situation? Can they tell us what version of history is “Truth” and what’s mere “ideology”? What’s neutral and what promotes a certain viewpoint? And what’s age-appropriate? Of course not. The only way out, the only clear principle that can meet everyone’s needs, is freedom of thought. Let people teach their children what they want.

Yes, it sounds scary. How will we have a unified country if we don’t all learn the same things in school? But is that really how it works? We’ve had a robust public school system in this country for over 150 years — how well has that worked out? Would you call us unified? And what’s the cost when we standardize education? What amazing diversity is lost when we make homogenization our goal?

But there’s another way: Take government out of education entirely. Its rightful role is simply to ensure every child has access to education — through vouchers or whatever means necessary — but it shouldn’t provide that education. Abolish the elitist, two-tier system of public and private education, where some parents can choose their kid’s school while others can’t. Let every parent decide.

Do we really want to continue down this road where politicians and judges decide what books our kids read? Or do we want to try something different?

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To read more on this topic, check out “Critics of school choice have it wrong. It doesn’t violate the separation of church and state. It finally upholds it.”

Yes, writers have to eat, but paywalls just punish low-income people, and why shouldn’t they have access to the writing and ideas they want?