It’s hard to ignore that the United States is in an election year. Texas opened the primaries on 1er March, with the November 8 elections on the horizon.
The stakes are high: in six months, the control of the House of Representatives and, possibly, that of the Senate are in the balance. At the federated level, the legislative elections for 88 chambers in 46 states also coincide with 39 elections for the post of governor. To which must be added those of prosecutors, judges, comptrollers general, secretaries of state and school commissioners.
However, in the wake of culture wars exacerbated by two years of pandemic, education has become a red flag that some politicians and activists are using to excite a frustrated electorate, fed with fringe theories that are being trivialized as elected officials appropriate them.
Schools have long been in the electoral field. As evidenced by the bitter debates around the need to sanctuary them or, on the contrary, to arm teachers with guns (according to the Giffords Law Center, half of the States authorize them in primary and secondary schools). Or the controversies surrounding textbooks when it comes to teaching (or not) the history of slavery and the evolution of species.
And if Harry Potter was banned from school libraries 20 years ago, it still appears on the list of most restricted or prohibited books. It rubs shoulders with several hundred works, including The Scarlet Maid by Margaret Atwood Maus of Art Spiegelman, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, as well as Captain Underpants by David Pilkey. They are criticized for their crude comments, the questioning of traditional structures or values or discussions around LGBTQIA + identities.
In the past year, according to PEN America’s tally, more than half of the legislatures have introduced legislation that encases education, from elementary to post-secondary, arguing the need to reduce “the indoctrination of children” and outlawing concepts deemed controversial in the teaching of history, racial issues or gender concepts. To the point where, in its report, the organization for the defense of freedom of expression speaks of “educational gags”.
It is no coincidence that American school board elections have become competitive and heavily funded. And if school board meetings have become places of confrontation.
It took a whole different turn when last October members of the anti-government organization People’s Rights pushed a Portland school board debating vaccines to continue its work online. Or in November, when Proud Boys militiamen showed up at the commission meeting in New Hanover, North Carolina, where the wearing of masks in class was discussed. Or at a meeting of the school district of Downers Grove, Chicago, which focused on a book evoking LGBTQ issues. Tensions such, explains PEN America, that it is sometimes necessary to reinforce the security of these meetings.
The debate now goes beyond a post-pandemic overinvestment in parent drones. Gradually, fringe theories imposing the need to “protect” children from the “perversity” of adversaries linked to “paedophile circles” are gaining ground. And the speed with which they are normalizing is due to three reasons.
First, a sociological reason. Richard Hofstadter had established it in 1964: there exists in the American psyche a propensity for paranoia, which the American radical right has often embraced in its history and which, for him, culminates with McCarthyism – the period in which he wrote his opus . The mechanisms that this radical fringe develops by engulfing the conservative movement are strikingly acute.
Then, a political reason. In July 2021, in the New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells portrays conservative activist Christopher Rufo. With candor, the latter explains that in seeking to define the opposition to the evolution generated by the death of George Floyd, he tested several concepts. Leaving aside the cancel culture (not very operational) and the notion of woke (tote), he opted for the “perfect ugly”: the critical race theory, which carries a pejorative connotation in its very words, while having the advantage of having been defined by those it wants to pillory. Built artificially on the diversion of a theoretical concept, the republican score thus avoids false notes.
Finally, the last reason is electoral. Today, the governors of Texas and Florida are engaged in a competition hidden in an educational one-upmanship… because their real objective is not only their re-election in 2022, but the primaries (presidential) of 2024. Thus, Rick Scott, in Texas, is attacking “pornography in schools” by threatening legal action against any educator who exposes a child to inappropriate content. However, its definition includes any reference, by extension, to the LGBTQ community.
It is also in this perspective that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis acts. With the law nicknamed by its detractors ” Don’t Say Gay “, which notably prohibits any teaching relating to gender identity until the third year of primary school, it openly targets LGBTQ children and families. It is this law that Disney has denounced by calling for its withdrawal. And it was to this intervention that DeSantis responded by revoking the company’s special tax status.
The table is set for next November’s election, amid increasingly veiled Republican accusations of the Democrats’ sexualization and indoctrination of children, with the risks that entails — just think of “Pizzagate.” .
But for some, you have to believe that the election cycle justifies going to war against Mickey Mouse. Even at the expense of children.