My parents showed a lot of interest in me adopting their Christian views but they generally did this by exposing me to those views through church or church activities. They didn’t try to shield me from information that might undermine or contradict the church’s teachings. They never told me I couldn’t or shouldn’t read a book and the only television show I can remember them forbidding was Three’s Company, presumably because it depicted some fairly loose sexual ethics. I watched plenty of Three’s Company anyway, but it was never quite the same after Suzanne Somers left the program. Of course, their strategy wasn’t effective and I wasn’t confirmed. Still, I don’t think they regret letting me decide for myself rather than trying to control my exposure to other ideas.

The truth is, it’s pretty normal for parents to try to shape their children’s worldview. It’s part of the job description. But some worldviews are based on scant evidence and others simply run contrary to common sense or available facts. The less supportable the beliefs, the more vulnerable they are to alternative information. This is why fundamentalists who believe in the literal and scientific truth of ancient holy scriptures are the most likely to home school their kids or send them to schools run by their church. They worry that non-religious colleges and universities will create a chasm between them and their children.

In this sense, these parents aren’t much different from repressive governments that try to control information. Vladimir Putin has severely limited the outside information to Russian citizens ever since he decided to invade Ukraine. North Korea lives in near-total information isolation, mainly because the lives of North Koreans are so obviously more difficult than the lives of South Koreans. And these strategies can be pretty effective. The thing is, when they’re not effective, the backup plan is always violence and repression.

It’s easy to see why fundamentalism and public education are not a good match.

E-reader apps that became a lifeline for students during the pandemic are now in the crossfire of a culture war raging over books in schools and public libraries.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets or laptops.

Some parents want the apps banned for their children, or even for all students. And they’re getting results.

A school superintendent in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, pulled his system’s e-reader offline for a week last month, cutting access for 40,000 students, after a parent searched the Epic library available on her kindergartener’s laptop and found books supporting gay pride.

Now, we can debate the appropriate age to introduce concepts about sex and sexual reproduction to children. But the issue here is much broader than that. The Gay Pride example is just one incident, and the important fact there is that tolerance or support for homosexuality runs counter to these parents’ religious beliefs. They don’t want their children getting the idea that this position is up for debate. Likewise, Putin doesn’t want Russians hearing that perhaps Ukraine is not governed by Nazis.

It’s true that this concern isn’t limited to conservative Christians and other fundamentalists. Liberals would protest against  downloadable books supportive of exterminating Jews in death camps, for example. What it comes down to is what kind of information is allowed and what kind of arguments are permissible, and that’s really a political fight about the country’s values. We generally agree that representative government is a superior system and that people should enjoy certain unalienable rights. Books supportive of these positions are not often controversial.

But that’s changing a bit now as conservatives push back against gay rights, women’s rights, and self-critical assessments of the country’s treatment of Native Americans and Blacks. It’s true that a healthy country needs to have a positive self-image and an uplifting and optimistic story to tell. I think America can pass that test without the use of censorship. But it gets difficult when consensus breaks down about what’s essential to the country’s character. We should be able to agree that civil rights are good and death camps are bad, and public schools should be able to teach those values without apology or accusations of undue bias. Our public schools do not exist to protect whatever quixotic or parochial views parents may hold and want to pass on to their children, and this is triply true for libraries.

But we’re in a fight now. What we thought was a consensus has turned out to be contentious, and it has become a raw power battle. The battle is less about pro-gay versus anti-gay, pro-black versus anti-black, than about the right to see arguments for both views. This is a regression, since expanding rights has been part of America’s positive self-image. You can call it a progressive bias.

We didn’t think pro-Holocaust books were the flip side of World War Two history, needing equal treatment, and no one needed to be told to keep such books out of our public schools and libraries. Likewise for books supportive of slavery or Jim Crow. But now that kind of voluntary and self-confident censorship runs up against a revitalized white/Christian nationalism, and the consensus breaks down. Now we have parents believing that schools are undermining their children’s patriotism by telling the truth about the country’s history, and causing them to hate themselves by discussing systemic and historic racism. Their answer is to control information.

Here’s the truth. If learning about biology and astronomy and plate tectonics is going to destroy your child’s religious faith, that’s a problem with what you’ve taught them, not with what the schools are teaching. And if their patriotism can’t survive contact with the historical record, then you’ve taught them to love their country (and themselves) for the wrong reasons.

We should have a certain bias in what is taught but it should be based on a self-confident belief in the correctness of our system. That has to be based on a countrywide consensus and not some particular religious views.

It’s all breaking down, and I don’t know how to put it back together. But I think parents will do best to teach by example. Be good people and your kids might turn out to be good people, too, even if they don’t wind up embracing every one of your beliefs.