By Elisabeth Palacios

Education has always been a huge concern in the U.S, and rightfully so. Our education system tries to be the best it can be so that our youth grows up to be well-educated citizens. Individually, schools want to be the best environment a student can learn in, so they can feel as safe and comfortable as possible. 

There has been controversy over the past couple of years about what American schools teach to children. Specifically, whether or not certain topics are appropriate. Conservatives heavily argue that some subjects should be off limits. This has led to the creation of various bills and laws in order to protect children from supposed harm. However, many deem these bills as acts of censorship and bigotry towards minorities and their history in America.

Florida is one of the main states where the school curriculum has been heavily revised and monitored. The main topics that conservatives have attempted to exclude are in regard to race and gender/sexuality. 

The controversial “Stop W.O.K.E” Act restricts the instruction on systemic racism and sexism. This was introduced by Republican Governor DeSantis. The act paints slavery (an integral part of American history) as something that benefited African-Americans by ‘teaching them new skills,’ and slaves as instigators of violence. Conservatives largely focus and fight against cultural issues because they challenge the ‘traditional’ values America is built on, and in turn, fuel the fight for drastic, uncomfortable change. Since the state of minorities in our country is not as bad as it was compared to earlier in our history, conservatives do not feel the need for more change. Furthermore, politicians who claim that they will preserve America’s structure and values gain more support, and therefore power, from the comfortable citizens who are scared of what “far-left” progressives may bring to our country. 

The ACLU has been very vocal about the “Stop W.O.K.E” bill and others similar to it in Florida. The organization states, “Conservative politicians pushing these bills are advocating for nothing less than a re-whitewashing of history… Students will not be taught, and may never learn, to trace the deliberate impact of historic oppression on institutions today. This will… prevent the next generation from achieving justice.” If students are not taught the proper history of bigotry in this country, they will become blind to it. This leads to our future generation being susceptible to letting the history they are unaware of repeat itself. 

In Pennsylvania, different school districts have had controversy over similar topics as well, not only in its education’s content but the environments of where the students themselves learn. 

At Hempfield, the school board recently delayed the consideration of a new bathroom policy to decide where transgender students are permitted to use the bathroom. This policy can be based on their sex at birth, their gender identity, or a ‘combination’ of both, meaning that separate bathrooms would be made for transgender students.

According to a recent LNP article, the main reasoning for Hempfield going with the third option is how cisgender students have expressed their ‘discomfort’ with transgender students using the same bathrooms as them. 

Though it is easy for this to be categorized as a safety issue, there is no real problem with transgender and cisgender students using the same bathrooms. According to journalist and human rights researcher Lindsey Erin Blumell, “Among bathroom attack cases, only a small number of cases actually involved transgenders, people who falsely claimed to be transgender or perpetrators who tried to disguise themselves as a member of the opposite sex to gain access to the bathroom.” 

Making a separate location for them completely may as well be on the same level as making transgender students use the bathroom of their biological sex. This categorizes them as “others” or “different,” which sends the wrong message. This is comparable to segregation laws that racially separated public places such as pools, water fountains, and bathrooms. They claimed to be “separate but equal,” but it is agreed upon that the purposeful split between white people and people of color could never be equal. All in all, making transgender students have to use completely different bathrooms unnecessarily separates them from the rest of the student body and poses them as an alienated threat. 

When we come back to McCaskey, our school is clearly more progressive and open-minded, even if it is not entirely perfect. Topics that surround racism and the LGBTQ+ community can be openly discussed in classrooms, and transgender students are allowed to use whichever bathroom they are most comfortable with. This should be the standard across all schools as the bare minimum. Students can be well educated about the real world, and students are unified as one without any division.

Overall, the attempts of conservatives to control the education system is very harmful, and students deserve to both be taught the full history of their country and feel wholeheartedly accepted by their school community regardless of their identity. Students aren’t in danger if they are exposed to sensitive topics, or use the same bathrooms as transgender students. They are in more danger being taught whitewashed history and having a fragmented community due to bigotry.