Press Herald editorial

Our View: Culture warriors want to take down public education

Alarmist attacks on sex ed and racial history are designed to weaken public schools by imposing minority religious views on everyone.

| The Editorial Board, Portland Press Herald |

The war on schools is on in Maine, as far right-wing groups are forming to interfere with educators trying to prepare students for life in a diverse and pluralistic society.

We saw this last month when the Maine Republican Party passed a platform that calls for abolishing sex education at all levels through high school. At the party convention, anti-school activist Shawn McBreairty referred to  “cult-like, government-run K-12 schools,” that are indoctrinating students. He was also a featured speaker a few weeks later when dozens of people gathered at the Believing Baptist Church in Gray, where the assembled were informed that schools were engaged in “the hyper-sexualization of school children” and they need to fight back.

McBreairty and others claim that they are defending children, but it really is something quite different. It’s an aggressive attack on the notion of public education itself, using loud voices and bullying tactics to make minority religious and cultural views the standard for everyone.

While the culture warriors describe the heavy hand of state government controlling what goes on in the classroom, that’s not what is happening in Maine’s decentralized public schools. Keep reading

NGX editor’s note: This Press Herald editorial refers to and follows up on the recent article “National Culture Wars Come to Maine School Districts.”