Ignorance Breeds Obedience — That’s Why Some Parents Prefer It

It was nearly a century ago that Tennessee, the state where I was born and have lived for most of my life, outlawed the teaching of evolution in schools.

The Butler Act, as it was known, drew praise from perennial presidential candidate and former Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, who thanked the Governor for signing it by saying:

The Act also drew legal action from the ACLU, which decided to test the law by funding a case involving a substitute teacher, John Scopes, who noted that he had indeed taught from the chapter of the state-mandated textbook describing evolution.

The resulting trial, which featured Bryan as a special prosecutor for the state and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow representing Scopes, became a national sensation to which millions listened on live radio throughout the country.

After the judge denied the defense the right to introduce evidence challenging the statute itself, and since Scopes admitted to violating the law, he was found guilty and fined.

Ultimately, the Butler Act would not be repealed until 1967, one year before the Supreme Court voided all such laws on the grounds that their primary purpose was to codify religious belief, and thus, were violative of the First Amendment.

If kids learned to question the Biblical narrative of man’s origins, what else might they question?

What the so-called “monkey trial” suggested was a desire on the part of ultra-conservative and fundamentalist Christians to stifle critical thinking and science in the name of their faith.

Fearful that young people might be corrupted by the theory of evolution, even though it had been widely accepted by that time among scientists and featured prominently in state-mandated textbooks, reactionaries censored classroom teaching, sacrificing factual information on the altar of religiosity.

If kids learned to question the Biblical narrative of man’s origins, what else might they question?

Tennessee’s religious conservatives were in no mood to find out.

Four generations later, and not only in Tennessee, they still aren’t.

Conservatives believe in keeping young people “innocent” — meaning ignorant and uninformed

It has become as predictable as the change in seasons. Conservatives seek to limit the range of information available to young people — whether about evolution, sex or sexuality, and most recently, racism in America.

Sex education

For years, conservative parents have sought to limit sex education to abstinence-only programs, afraid that information about contraception will encourage young people to have sex — and presuming that young people’s sexuality is inherently sinful and to be constrained.

Of course, research has found that comprehensive sex education, including information on contraception, is far more effective than an abstinence-only curriculum at preventing unwanted pregnancy. Abstinence-only programs are correlated with higher rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, even after controlling for other factors that influence both.

But to the right, that doesn’t matter because their opposition to comprehensive sex ed was never about teen pregnancy.

It has always been about viewing sex as purely heterosexual, only for procreation, and morally limited to the confines of marriage — a religious view to which the state has no obligation to pay deference, but for which parents seek it anyway.

For persons on the right, children are viewed as extensions of their parents rather than free moral agents.

The parents have the right to raise them as they see fit, according to this view, with the morals and beliefs of the parents unchallenged by others. And if schools introduce concepts that conflict with those beliefs, the schools become the enemy.

Once identified as such, they become the targets of angry vitriol and even death threats aimed at teachers, administrators, and school board members viewed as insufficiently supportive of parental prerogatives.

Discussions of LGBTQ lives, issues, and struggles

Recently, in addition to the backlash against honest discussions of racism in America, the right has focused considerable ire on anything that touches on the lived experiences of LGBTQ folks.

Last week, a school board member in one Florida county filed a complaint insisting that the presence of the book All Boys Aren’t Blue in school libraries — a young adult memoir about being young, Black and queer — is a crime for which someone should be prosecuted.

And why? Because in the mind of the complainant, it constitutes a form of pornography.

Conservative policymakers…wish to shut down all access to information about sexual orientation or gender identity that isn’t heterosexual and cis-normative

On the recent list of 800 or more books being investigated by the state of Texas — to determine whether or not they are appropriate for students or might cause “discomfort” — there are hundreds of books related to the lives, families, and challenges faced by LGBTQ folks.

In addition, the state has asked for information on any books addressing human sexuality, sexually-transmitted diseases, HIV, or AIDS so that these can presumably be vetted for “appropriateness.”

Conservative policymakers have made it clear: they wish to shut down all access to information about sexual orientation or gender identity that isn’t heterosexual and cis-normative.

And it’s not a new phenomenon.

Several years ago, Tennessee lawmakers sought to ban all discussion of homosexuality by teachers or counselors in Tennessee schools before the ninth grade, with their infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

According to the proposed legislation, no teacher, counselor, or other school official would be allowed to discuss any sexuality other than heterosexuality with students before high school.

So even if a child lived with LGBTQ family members or identified personally as such — which many do well before high school — they would be able to speak with no one in school about it even if they were being bullied.

In fact, the same year this legislation was pushed, another bill would have allowed a carve-out to anti-bullying legislation for students who felt compelled by their religious beliefs to share their views on homosexuality with their classmates.

So kids could religiously bully other kids and tell them they were destined for Hell because of their sexuality, but the victims of this abuse would have had no recourse in school to discuss the matter with officials there.

Although these bills ultimately failed, this year, the state passed — and Governor signed — legislation allowing parents to opt their children out of any LGBTQ-related curriculum with which they disagree.

As one lawmaker put it, sounding much like the opponents of evolution a century earlier:

Mental health and social/emotional learning

Now, in addition to their attacks on queer content, any form of sexuality education, or curriculum involving racism, the right is targeting social/emotional learning and mental health-related programming, and again, under the guise of deferring to parental authority.

In Southlake, Texas, a hotpot in the battles over CRT, one parent recently accused the school district of “advertising suicide” with their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs and counseling.

According to this parent and others like her, students aren’t thinking about their mental health until schools bring it up.

And if they are struggling with mental or emotional issues, the parents should be the ones to handle them.

Again, these parents don’t care that SEL programs have been shown to improve academic performance, reduce bullying, and improve students’ self-reported mental health by teaching them better problem solving skills, impulse control, and empathy.

Nor do they care that whatever parents are doing to address their children’s mental health and prevent teen suicide clearly isn’t sufficient.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 16.5 percent of children between 6 and 17 — more than 13 million youth — experienced some form of severe mental illness in 2019.

And according to the Centers for Disease Control, the suicide rate among 10 to 24-year-olds has increased more than 50 percent since the mid-2000s.

Just as limiting sex ed doesn’t keep kids from having sex, limiting information about racism doesn’t keep kids from developing bias or experiencing it, and limiting LGBTQ content doesn’t keep kids from being queer, restricting SEL and information about mental health doesn’t prevent depression, anxiety or suicidal ideation.

All it does is keep young people uninformed in a way that allows their parents, in the name of politics and religious belief, to control their children.

It is about authority and obedience, not what is best for young people’s health and well-being. In that sense, it is a form of intellectual and emotional child abuse.

. . .

Ultra-conservative parents want their kids to do as they say and follow their lead in all things, dispensing with the critical thinking skills that mark them as fully human.

It’s ironic, coming from the ideological descendants of those who fought so hard to deny that humans descended from so-called monkeys.

After all, that kind of pack mentality — one that places the highest emphasis on domination and control — is very ape-like behavior indeed.

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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.

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