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A few weeks ago, Brooksville, Florida, fifth grade teacher Jenna Barbee showed her students the Disney movie Strange World, which features an openly gay character. Soon afterward, Shannon Rodriguez, a local parent who happened to be a member of the school board, had Barbee suspended and launched an investigation against her, invoking Florida's Parental Rights in Education law (otherwise known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill) which prohibits the sexual indoctrination of students.
As one might expect, legacy news media have made hay with this story, which they allege shows how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' new law was really a pretext to discriminate against LGBT people, not an attempt to protect kids' innocence. The story also suggests that cultural conservatives are more paranoid and vindictive than truly worried about students' well being.
All that said, it's worth asking whether Jenna Barbee really is a groomer or a hapless victim of belligerent conservative culture warriors—because she might be neither. Speaking from my own perspective as a high school teacher, it's complicated. While I sympathize with Rodriguez's concerns, this whole issue was needlessly escalated and mostly detracts from issues that bother parents more than leftist indoctrination.
Even though I think Barbee erred in showing the movie—which she should have known would upset parents who disagree with its pro-LGBT messaging—this incident alone doesn't qualify as "queering the kids" or "woke indoctrination." Nor was it appropriate for Rodriguez to go above both Barbee and the school's administrators to discipline her. A simple phone call would have been enough.
After all is said and done in this particular case, Jenna Barbee will probably become a local celebrity and end up working for a better school, and Shannon Rodriguez will likely lose her reelection for the school board, if she isn't dismissed outright.
Cultural conservatives should take this story as an opportunity to reflect on their movement and what it has become. While the problem of possible indoctrination is something to worry about, the problem of widespread mediocre instruction and student safety worries parents far more. After all, what is worse: a teacher showing Strange World to her class after they finish a standardized test, or a teacher showing a slew of other Disney movies all throughout the year before students take (and fail) their standardized test? In my experience, the latter scenario is much more common than the former—and yet, nothing seems to happen.
While it politically served Republicans well in the short term, the excessive focus on potential leftist indoctrination and sexual grooming is a losing strategy for the long term. Most parents want to take back their schools, but not at the cost of compromising instruction or driving off otherwise innocent first-year teachers during a nationwide teacher shortage. This is why conservative candidates for school boards "lost big" in recent school board elections. Parents just want good schools where their kids are safe and actually learning, and these candidates could only discuss their opposition to teachers' unions, CRT, and sexualizing young children—most of which aren't really serious problems in most districts.
Rather, what schools desperately need is some kind of handle on American youth's technology addiction, which accounts for record levels of depression and declining academic growth. In this regard, parents who are concerned about protecting their children from inappropriate content and leftist indoctrination could do far more by not giving their children a smartphone in the first place. This is where the bad influences come from—not teachers showing crummy Disney movies. What's ironic is that the effort to ditch the screen would easily serve as common ground between conservative parents and progressive teachers who both just want students to start thinking for themselves.
Naturally, this could be reinforced by policies implemented at the district level. Conservative parents should call for a ban on all screens in the classroom. Yes, this would disrupt the recent migration to online instruction that emerged in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, but allowing students to have these devices inevitably undermines learning. Whatever benefits of convenience come from having students using Chromebooks or iPads are more than negated by the harms of distraction and foul content.
Furthermore, conservative parents should advocate for higher academic and behavioral standards. Put simply, students should be busy with more rigorous work. Not only would this help them grow intellectually (and potentially overcome the learning gaps that have emerged during the pandemic), but it would keep them out of trouble. As they say, the devil finds work for idle hands, and the abundance of downtime in schools has led to a rise in vandalism and bullying. True, giving the kids screens can sometimes neutralize some of this behavior (hence their popularity), but so does giving them challenging work that's engaging and relevant.
Finally, I will add that I say all this as a teacher and as a conservative Christian parent. I strongly oppose leftist indoctrination and hold a firm belief in instilling virtue in students. I also believe that it's important to restore power to parents and hold bad schools accountable. We just have to do it in a way that's consistent with our values, which means focusing on first principles and not scapegoating leftist teachers.
Auguste Meyrat is a high school English teacher in North Texas. He is the founding editor of The Everyman, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and a regular contributor to The American Mind, Crisis Magazine, the American Conservative,and the Acton Institute.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
