On Sept. 17, 2020, then-President Donald Trump addressed a crowd in Washington, D.C. "Our mission is to defend the legacy of America's founding, the virtue of America's heroes, and the nobility of the American character," Trump told the clapping audience. "We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country."
Trump's administration helped revive a long-standing debate in U.S. public education: Do parents have the right to control what is taught in schools and protect children from instruction they deem unsuitable, or should educators — tasked with the responsibility to teach and equipped with training to do so — be able to decide how and what to teach?
In our three-part series below, we examine how history, recent events and policies limiting discussion of race and LGBTQ issues in classrooms have led to changing school environments and climates — and the experiences of the teachers, administrators and students living in this world.
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