We have to hold some things in common to have a public system

 ...and that is what this lawsuit before SCOTUS is designed to break. 

At issue is some Maryland parents who want to be able to opt their children out, not of health classes, but any lesson involving LGBTQ+ themes. Note that this means things as innocuous as the mention of a an uncle married to a man in a picture book.

As always, I highly recommend reading Chris Geidner on this over at Law Dork.

Erasing human beings who exist from elementary education is a deeply, deeply disturbing argument to make, and families arguing that they have a "right" for their children not to know that LGBTQ+ people ARE, and being (it appears) agreed with by a preponderance of the Supreme Court is horrific. 

And that is bad enough, and I very much am not putting this as "canaries in coal mines" because we don't sacrifice anyone, but we're fools if we think it stops there. 

There are those who have religious principles that women shouldn't work, that there shouldn't be interracial marriage, that children shouldn't develop any independence of thought, and on and on. As a former high school English teacher, I do not know how you put together a curricula in these circumstances. As someone who writes policy now, I do not know how you write policy for this.

And someone who believes deeply that we have public education so that we have a democracy in which we all participate, I recognize this as undermining its very foundations.