In principle, schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate. Yet every culture expresses values and morals that will invariable be reflected in what it teaches the next generation.
Some may see this reality as evidence that education has always had an element of indoctrination, as it communicates and upholds these cultural mores, and therefore justify not only challenging them, but also defending an expressed effort to indoctrinate according to a certain agenda.
For example, a Christian school may declare within its mission statements that it teaches students a wide variety of curricula through an explicitly Biblically based worldview. This may include such views as Christianity being the only true religion.
However, when it comes to public schools, the concept of educating children on the primary subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics, and avoiding agenda-laden indoctrination has long been accepted as not only possible, but mandatory. Indeed, this is where we get the often-expressed statement that school should teach one how to think, not what to think.
That ideal is all well and good and seemingly possible in a cultural scenario where all major values and morals are shared in common. But what happens in a setting where that is not the case, where major values and morals come into direct conflict with each other?
This appears to be what has been happening all across the nation, but particularly within the suburbs surrounding the nation’s capital.
Loudoun County, Virginia, has been making the news over the last several years, and primarily when it comes to the woke ideals associated with “transgenderism.” A culture class has been transpiring in this part of the country, wherein those who run the public education system have embraced a worldview that conflicts with the worldview of many parents.
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) has embraced a pro-LBGTQ+ ideology, which includes the promotion and inculcation of this ideology to children within its schools. This explains the recent news regarding the suspension of two high school boys from Stone Bridge High School regarding an incident last school year when they were filmed objecting to a girl in the boys’ locker room.
The girl who identifies as a “transgender boy” is the one who filmed the incident and raised a complaint against the boys. Following an internal investigation, LCPS decided that two of the three boys who expressed their discomfort over the girl in the locker room were actually guilty of a Title IX violation.
LCPS asserted that these boys were guilty of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination, and handed them a 10-day school suspension, a no-contact order, which means they are not even allowed to be in the same classes with the girl, and they must meet with school administrators to come up with a corrective action plan. In other words, LCPS is acting to impose its woke ideological values onto these students. LCPS is engaging in indoctrination, not education.
The irony is that if LCPS actually recognized the truth — that this girl is indeed of the opposite sex of these boys — then she would have had no business in the boys’ locker room. Furthermore, her filming in the locker room, which the school expressly forbids, would have been upheld as the violation it is, and she would have been found guilty of violating Title IX’s sexual harassment provision.
Yet because LCPS has decided to push “transgenderism” as normative and has been fighting the Trump administration on the issue, the school district has chosen to punish students who dare to express a differing opinion.
As Renae Smith, a mother of one of the boys being punished, said, “It’s shocking. It’s wrong, and it should terrify every single parent.” Another parent, Seth Wolfe, observed, “They’re going to have to follow what Loudoun County says, what they believe is right, and what goes against other people’s beliefs, or what we believe is right.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has responded to the development, stating, “Loudoun County Public Schools weaponized Title IX to punish male students for expressing discomfort at being forced to share a locker room with a female student. This suspension is completely unjustified and tramples their constitutional rights. My Office is monitoring the situation.”
This episode proves that the notion of a neutral playing field where all ideas and views can be allowed and debated simply does not exist. What matters is seeking and promoting the truth over and against blatant falsehoods and destructive ideologies like “transgenderism.”
