An Amazon box was on the porch the other day. (I get sent a lot of books. It’s a cool perk.) I pulled out five colorful, oversized paperbacks. Great Battles for Boys: The Korean War. Great Battles for Boys: The American Revolution. Great Battles for Boys: WW2 in Europe. And two more. I found the titles delightfully countercultural.

I mean, who writes about military strategy today? Who unabashedly markets stuff to boys? The books, all published between 2014 and 2022, are authored by history teacher Joe Giorello. They all run about 150 to 250 pages with straightforward text, anecdotes, pictures, maps, and suggestions for further reading.

Having never heard of the series, I was curious how these books were faring in the larger world. The answer? Very well. On Amazon, at the time of this writing, Giorello’s volume on WWII in Europe ranked #2 in “Children’s American History of 1900s.” His volume on the Civil War was #1 in “Children’s American Civil War Era History Books.” His book on the Revolutionary War was #1 in “Children’s American Revolution History.” There are thousands of enthusiastic, five-star reviews.

And yet, like I said, I’d never heard of Giorello. I couldn’t find a single mention of him when I searched School Library Journal, Education Week, the National Council for the Social Studies, or the National Council for History Education. As best I can tell, he’s self-published. The stories are interesting, but the narrative is pretty rote, with no gimmickry or multimedia pizzazz. It’s just workmanlike, accessible history. For instance, the chapter on “The Battle of Britain” in WW2 in Europe begins:

By June 1940, Germany had achieved a victory in Norway, but the win came at a steep cost. The battle had damaged or sunk over half of Germany’s warships.

This loss was crucial. Hitler desperately wanted to conquer Great Britain, but with half his fleet out of commission, the German navy was no match for the powerful British Royal Navy.

Hitler decided he would conquer Britain by air.

So, what’s going on? Why have these books been such a silent success? The most salient explanation may be the frank, unapologetic decision to offer books about “great battles for boys” in an era when that’s largely absent from classrooms. This may simply be the kind of history that a lot of boys are eager to read about. Of course, even penning that sentence can feel remarkably risqué nowadays, which may be a big part of the problem.

It got me thinking. My elementary-age kids have brought home or been assigned a number of children’s books on history. Most are focused intently on social and cultural history. I’ll be honest. Even as someone who’s always been an avid reader, I find a lot of that stuff pretty tedious. As a kid, I found books about the Battle of Midway or D-Day vastly more interesting than grim tales of teen angst, and I don’t think that makes me unusual. Moreover, it surprises no one (except the occasional ideologue) to learn that girls generally appear more interested in fiction than boys—or that boys tend to prefer reading about sports, war, comedy, and science fiction, while girls favor narratives about friendship, animals, and romance.

Today, when I peruse classroom libraries, recommended book lists, or stuff like the summer reading suggestions from the American Library Association, I don’t see much that seems calculated to appeal to boys.

One reason that boys read less than girls may be that we’re not introducing them to the kinds of books they may like. There was a time when schools really did devote too much time to generals and famous battles, but we’ve massively overcorrected. Indeed, I find that too many “diverse, inclusive” reading lists feature authors who may vary by race and gender but overwhelmingly tend to write introspective, therapeutic tales that read like an adaptation of an especially heavy-handed afterschool special.

Now, my point is not that kids should read this rather than that. Schools should be exposing all students to more fiction and nonfiction, with varied topics and themes. If that requires assigning more reading, well, good.

Then there are the well-meaning educators and advocates who approach book selection as an extension of social and emotional learning. Heck, while writing this column, I got an email promoting the nonprofit I Would Rather Be Reading, which uses “trauma responsive literacy support and social-emotional learning to help children.” I’m sure it’s a lovely organization, but I’d be shocked if any of the books in question feature stoic virtues or manly courage. After all, the therapy/SEL set has worked assiduously to define traditional masculinity as “toxic.” And all this can alienate kids who find the therapy-talk unduly precious or rife with adult pathologies.

I hear from plenty of educators who say they’re reluctant to talk about the needs of boys for fear of being labeled reactionary. But more boys might develop a taste for reading if they encountered more of the kinds of books they’d like to read. I’d take more seriously those who talk about inclusive reading lists if their passion extended to the well-being of those students bored by social justice-themed tracts and if they truly seemed more invested in turning every kid into an avid reader, which requires a diverse mix of books available—including those about “great battles for boys.”

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Earlier this year, I shared my fear that a glitchy chatbot had seized control of a major education research journal. The editors’ torrent of inhuman gibberish made it hard to imagine that real people were still pulling the strings.

Well, recently, I got a worrisome signal that this same shady AI (or one of its cousins) had seized the presidency of the American Education Research Association (AERA), an outfit that bills itself as the world’s largest organization of education researchers. I know this is a bold claim, so I dusted off my modified Turing Test and interrogated the (very) extensive description of the presidential program. By pulling verbatim takes, we’ll try to determine whether the prose reads like the product of humans . . . or glitchy AI. (To quote Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.” Really.)

It’s got to be AI, right? The punch-list rambling, disinterest in actual learning, rote invocation of ideological tropes, and fascination with oppression are so tritely optimized that it feels artificial. And yet, reading back through this transcript, it bothers me that I can’t confidently distinguish autopilot AI from earnest edu-babble. Perhaps my AI fears are overblown. After all, I guess it’s possible that this detached unintelligibility and politicized liturgy are just the mundane culmination of what gets practiced daily in ed school corridors and conferences.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

I’ve always been a reader. When my kids were born, I looked forward to sharing books I’ve loved with them. Of course, what we read to little kids are mostly, well, little-kid books—not the books we love. And, by the time kids are in school and (hopefully) reading on their own, it’s easy for parents to be sidelined. This is all playing out against a precipitous plunge in the amount of time we spend reading for fun.

So today, I want to talk about reading to our kids. My kids are 10 and seven now, and I still have a fine time reading to them. Right now, we’re well along in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The great thing is they like it as much as I do—at least they’ll pester me to read during breakfast, before dinner, or at bedtime. It’s awesome.

It’s also not that common. A 2019 survey reported that one-fifth of kids aged nine to 11 are read to regularly. And even that feels like an overestimate. Because while we may not have great data on this, I’ve spent years quietly tallying the friendly (but quizzical) reactions we get when I’m seen quietly reading to the kids in public. There are genial questions and the kinds of huzzahs you’d expect for doing something actually remarkable. It doesn’t feel like a one-in-five deal.

And that’s a shame. There are few things I’m certain about when it comes to education. But one is that it’d be good if many more parents and kids thought it normal to grab their book-of-the-moment to read when heading out for a family dinner or a long family car ride. For much of human history, the rite of telling or reading stories was a familiar source of bonding and connectedness. But it’s not today.

Obviously, most kids can read to themselves by the time they’re eight or nine. Given that, it can feel pointless for parents to read to them. Kids may also perceive a sit-down read-aloud as infantilizing or intrusive. (Do you really expect me to sit here and concentrate on this story for fifteen minutes?) And, of course, the tyranny of devices means that many kids (and parents) don’t spend a lot of time reading books, a pursuit that can feel old-fashioned when there are e-games to play and social media accounts to scroll through.

I get all of this. I do. But family reading has a lot of perks that aren’t always fully understood.

For starters, part of the appeal of gaming and social media is that they’re dynamic, interactive, and social. Reading a paperback can feel like a primitive, slow-mo, 1.0 version of self-amusement compared to the hopped-up options available. Meanwhile, hearing a story read aloud requires kids to listen and focus—this can all seem very old school. But what can get overlooked is that reading to kids adds that interactive, social dimension. Kids interrupt, ask questions, and chatter about who’s the villain and what might happen next. It makes reading feel warmer and more connective.

I’m also struck by how much kids miss when they read on their own. This was something I felt intensely back when I taught high school social studies. In various units, I’d give my high schoolers four-page snippets from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Federalist 10, the Declaration of Independence, or the like. I’d wander around the room, quietly asking questions, and they’d assure me that they were getting it. Then we’d discuss the readings as a class, and it was obvious that 95 percent of them had no clue what they’d just read. So, we’d then take a day as a whole group to reread it closely, clause by clause, until they actually got it.

My kids will blast through books (Magic Treehouse or City Spies or Phantom Tollbooth or Great Brain or whatever), and it’s frequently clear they’ve absorbed little, skimmed unfamiliar vocabulary, or missed a big chunk of the story. Turning pages is not the same as reading. But reading together builds in a chance to rephrase, emphasize, and help the cool stuff land—so they’re not just churning through pages.

So, why isn’t family reading more common, especially among parents who lament the amount of time their kids spend on screens or wish their kids had more affinity for reading? It’s a great question.

I mentioned the awkwardness of reading to kids who are fully capable of reading on their own. Parents may even fret that reading aloud will slow a child’s development as a reader and convince themselves that, if a kid can read alone, they should. But reading a book and hearing a book are different things. They develop the brain in different ways. They’re both good. Why choose? When my oldest turned seven or so, there was a stretch when he asked if he could read by himself at bedtime. I said that he reads a lot, which is great, but that bedtime was for family reading. He complained a bit and then forgot about it.

Look, if you’re not used to reading aloud, it can initially seem off-putting to wade through paragraphs of exposition or to struggle with accents or intonation. (I’m famously awful at accents and impressions.) Sometimes, I’ll read a sentence, realize I phrased it wrong or articulated it clunkily, and have to back up. But the audience is remarkably forgiving.

Some parents say they don’t have the time for this sort of thing. That’s fair. But I also know plenty of families who spend evenings all at home together, just on various devices. If that’s the deal, it’s not really about the time. It’s about priorities and routines.

It can also seem daunting to find a book that suits kids of different ages and interests. I get that. My youngest dug Narnia but tuned out as we slogged through Susan Cooper’s slow-moving, five-book Dark Is Rising series. At a certain point, I just finished reading the last couple books with my oldest while my wife and youngest read separately. There’s a crapshoot element. But reading to your kids over time builds momentum. Even if they are skeptical about a book at the beginning, there’s something special about the experience of reading together.

Now, I’d never suggest that family reading should displace kids’ reading alone. But it can be a gateway for kids who aren’t readers and a fun change of pace for those who are. If making enough time for personal reading and family reading means curtailing the time kids spend on devices or watching Netflix . . . well, good. Avid readers tend to think of reading as a solitary act. That’s certainly been my experience. And that’s great. We all need our escapes. But that view of reading can make books feel like a solitary respite rather than a shared escape. And there’s no reason they need to be one or the other. They can be both.

Will there be a point at which I stop reading to my kids? Sure. But for now, my 10-year-old is still wholly on board. I’m hoping that’ll still be true in a year or two. We’ll see. I’ll tell you this, though: I’m glad I haven’t stopped yet.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Over the years, I’ve had versions of the same conversation with lots of education CEOs, advocates, and entrepreneurs. They’ll explain that they’ve got a good product or program and are trying to go big (promote legislation, launch a national initiative, or what-have-you), but they’re frustrated to suddenly find themselves sucked into distracting “culture wars.”

I usually get called when there’s been unexpected blowback and the questioner wants to know, “How do I get these people to focus on the good work we’re doing rather than on that other stuff?”

For instance, I had a call the other day with someone running a social and emotional learning program. He told me that their program has done well in red and blue states. “It’s not political,” he explained. “It’s about durable, in-demand skills. It addresses shared concerns. So we’ve been able to avoid a lot of the posturing.”

But his organization recently got active in a push for legislation and funding, and he was wondering why he was now catching flak. As he put it, “We’re already in a bunch of red states. We’ve got a track record. Why are they suddenly up in arms?”

Why? Well, when you’re selling a product or program, you’re pitching someone a solution. But when you’re promoting policies or engaging in advocacy, you’re offering something very different: an agenda, a worldview, a value-laden vision.

It’s the difference between setting up a free health clinic on the one hand and promoting a vision for reforming Medicaid on the other. It’s safe to say you won’t get many complaints about free, optional pediatric visits. But things get much more complicated when that friendly offer of assistance morphs into something bigger, more compulsory, and more intrusive.

You’ve now moved beyond talking about a product or service to what should be mandated, whether public funds should be spent, or how the rules should be written. Entering that fray can generate a lot of conflict and requires a lot of trust. It’s why skeptics or muckrakers who haven’t paid much attention before will (quite appropriately) start scrutinizing what you say, write, or tweet and who’s funding you.

It can be easy for those who’ve built terrific programs to drink their own Kool-Aid. Their success attracts plaudits and funding. They believe in their model, and they’re confident that they can help solve a problem “at scale.” The difficulty is that they very quickly leave behind the things they know and wade into areas where they’re no longer on firm ground.

That distinction is crucial. I’m not suggesting that their success is phony or that their expertise is fraudulent. I am saying that there’s a tendency to confuse one kind of expertise (running a discrete program) for a very different kind (changing rules, regulations, funding, and policy).

This kind of dynamic comes up all the time with reading and math programs. Entrepreneurs and CEOs will often explain, with much exasperation, that they don’t want to get caught up in the reading and math wars. They’ll denounce the politics of it all and say, “I just want to do what works. I don’t want to take sides.”

Okay. But those “sides” are almost inevitable when we move from an optional, discrete program to determining what standards, texts, curricula, or instructional methods will (or won’t) be mandatory for classrooms in a school or state. It doesn’t matter if you dislike “politics”—politics is just the label for how these (inevitable) disagreements play out.

There aren’t easy answers here. After all, when promising models exist, I understand the inclination to want to extend their reach—even if the results often disappoint. (For one of the best treatments of this, even 30 years later, check out Richard Elmore’s classic 1996 article “Getting to Scale with Good Educational Practice.”)

For what it’s worth, here are two things to keep in mind.

First, those who’ve created successful models tend to soft-pedal the off-putting particulars in favor of language calculated to woo education insiders. But they often fail to appreciate how this same soft-shoe routine can alienate the many people who are skeptical of ed-school buzzwords and attracted to rigor, fueling pushback in red and purple states. And if the program does get adopted, it’s a denuded version that’s primed to disappoint. It’s vital to understand that tension and manage it from the get-go.

Second, recognize there are many kinds of expertise. Knowing how to run a program is different from knowing how education finance works or what it takes to adapt a program to new circumstances or how to navigate an unfamiliar political context. A successful program applied at scale calls for an honest-to-goodness “diversity” of skills, knowledge, relationships, and experience. This means finding ways to identify the requisite mix of expertise up front, then assembling a team that can cover all the bases, before you’ve stumbled hip-deep into the muck and mire.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Paul Banksley—the 22nd-century skills guru, founder of “Tomorrows Are for Tomorrow,” and former vacuum salesman—called with big news. “Next week, we’ll be announcing a partnership with Massachusetts to bring SEL and 22nd-century skills into sportyball.”

As much as I admire Banksley, I was a little nonplussed. “Umm, what’s ‘sportyball’?” I asked.

“You know, stuff with balls,” he said. “Like that game where they put balls in hoops. Or the one that Taylor Swift likes where they run with balls and knock each other down. It’s a great opportunity to apply 22nd-century skills. The Center for Healing and Justice Through Sports’s Megan Bartlett puts it so well: ‘In a sports environment, you’re having real-life interactions with other people, you’re having stressful things happen that cause you to need to practice regulating your emotions.’”

“I don’t want to be a wet blanket,” I said, “but it seems like sports already do that pretty well. Kids make friends. They get mentored. They fail. They sweat. They strive toward a common goal, together with teammates of varied races and backgrounds. They learn about practice and persistence. Why fix what’s working?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Banksley said. “I mean, there are no consultants. No worksheets. Hardly any trainers or workshops. Almost no focus on combating microaggressions. We can do so much better. Just imagine you’re a sportyperson. You’re on the field. The other team has more baskets. Time is running out. You’re feeling pressure to hit a touchdown, and your coach yells, ‘Focus out there!’ But what if you’ve never practiced that?”

“Umm, maybe that’s the kind of thing that you mostly learn by doing,” I offered.

“You’re sounding like a real mouth-breather,” he admonished. “Maybe that’s all we knew in the 19th century. But today, we can do so much more. When a child commits a foul and the opponent reacts harshly, we can ask ourselves questions like, ‘What’s going on at home? At school? Personally?’”

“That’s deep. What do coaches do with that?” I asked, curious.

“There are lots of possibilities. It might involve breathing exercises or a privilege worksheet. Maybe coloring in a feeling thermometer. We might want to pause the contest to convene a restorative justice circle.”

“Are there other strategies?” I asked.

“There are so many,” Banksley said. “For instance, Open Phys Ed urges coaches to practice SEL techniques by going for ‘wellness walks’ and asking questions like ‘What are you enthusiastic about?’ and ‘How do you support the wellness goals of the people you care about?’ That’s some powerful stuff right there.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admitted. “You mentioned that you’re doing something with Massachusetts. What’s up?”

“Exciting stuff!” Banksley said. “The legislature has drafted a bill that would require the state department of education to require an SEL curriculum in middle and high school sports.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s what our sportypeople need,” he said. “It’ll ensure that students and coaches learn to create a ‘safe, supportive, and bias-free team culture.’ There will be lessons to ‘address hate, bias, and negative behaviors.’ Teams will be required to provide kids ‘with age-appropriate leadership roles.’”

“How do teams provide kids with ‘age-appropriate leadership roles’?” I asked. “Do they need to make every kid a captain of something?”

“Something like that,” he replied. “Rather than treat leadership as a scarce privilege, everyone should be a leader. Think how much more equitable that kind of leadership would be.”

“I don’t think I’m tracking,” I said. “Have the folks who dreamed this up ever even played sports?”

Banksley paused for a moment. “Don’t know,” he mused. “Doesn’t really matter, does it? More anti-bias lessons are always good. And there are some wonderful resources. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, for instance, has posted amazing videos about “Understanding Race and Its Impact on Leadership Development” and the “Power of Language and Practical Allyship.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Some of the particulars need to be worked out,” he said briskly. “But that’s why we’ve got consultants and teacher trainers. I can imagine, for instance, a practice that’s half devoted to chasing balls and half to socially relevant activities that nurture anti-racist awareness. Mitch Lyons, the founder of GetPsychedSports.org, has suggested that sportyballers be taught SEL skills the same way they’re taught to pass a basketball or do a butterfly stroke. I think that’s a great approach.”

“I’m still not totally getting this,” I admitted.

Banksley sighed deeply. “Okay, let me put it another way. You know how racers run around the track, seeing who can get to the finish line fastest?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, that’s a case study in emotional damage. Some students always finish first. Others are always last. And we do nothing to make the race more equitable. How is it fair that whether students are happy or sad, speed-challenged or not, everyone has to run the same exact distance? That’s not just outdated; it’s frankly cruel,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So . . .?”

“So, we can put the science of SEL to work. We can make those races more equitable. We can adjust how far each kid has to run. We can provide counselors and rest stops. We can make sure there are supportive spaces with coloring books and comfort dogs.”

It finally clicked. “Oh, I see,” I said. “You want to do for sports what restorative justice, SEL, and equitable practices have done for academics.”

“Exactly. It’s a chance to make sportyball so much fairer, more socially conscious . . . so much better! And don’t you worry, youngsters will still be kicking home runs, too!”

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

I was telling a reporter about book bans as I got into the Uber. “PEN America has reported exactly 3,362 book bans in public schools during the 2022–23 school year,” I said. “There were over a thousand in Florida alone. This is a crisis; we have to sound the alarm!”

As I hung up, my Uber driver looked at me in the mirror. “Sounds like you know about books and schools,” she said. “Maybe you can give me some advice.”

“My 7th-grade daughter brought home this book called Gender Queer from her monthly visit to the school library. She wanted to read it to me at bedtime. Well, I’m no prude, but my little girl—who still likes Disney movies—was suddenly reading to me about this kid’s ‘standard method of masturbation’ and imaginary blow jobs. She’s twelve! I’ve set her iPad to block adult content. So why is her school librarian allowing her to check out this stuff?!”

“Well,” I said, “it’s good to keep perspective. There’s kissing in Harry Potter and Snow White. You’re not troubled by that, are you?”

She looked at me like I was nuts. “You don’t think there’s a difference between a kiss and this stuff?” she asked. “I reached out to a parents’ group about this book. They said that it wasn’t just me, that they’ve heard from other parents about kids getting library books where preteens are doing stuff you’d expect from a porno. They tried to bring it up to the school board, but they weren’t allowed—the board said it was too explicit for their meeting!”

“Well, I can’t help but wonder if you’d have the same reaction if the book wasn’t about a queer kid,” I said.

“You kidding me?” she asked. “You think I’d be okay with my 7th grader reading about sex toys if the kids were straight? Why would you think that?”

Some issues are so tough to explain to amateurs.

“Look,” I said, “schools are trying to be inclusive and ensure there’s LGBTQ+ representation in libraries and reading lists . . .”

“That’s fine,” she said. “But I’m guessing there are books about gay kids that are more like Harry Potter or Snow White and less like some adult website. Why don’t they put those books in my daughter’s middle school?”

She wasn’t getting it. “In our schools,” I explained, “we don’t believe librarians should censor what students read.”

“But school libraries don’t stock Penthouse or Playboy,” she said. “There are millions and millions of books, and I’ve heard that something like 99.99 percent of them aren’t in school libraries. I also heard that the author of that Gender Queer book even said it wasn’t written for kids. So why is the school so focused on having that book instead of something that was intended for kids?”

I shook my head. “The American Library Association put it powerfully: ‘When we ban books, we’re closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book.’” I sat back. I figured that must clear things up.

“Maybe I’m not smart enough to get that,” she said, “but that just sounds like a word salad.”

I sat there reflecting on just how frustrating it can be to try and enlighten the unenlightened.

She continued. “I heard on the radio that, during the pandemic, President Biden’s people told Amazon it should stop selling books that said the vaccines were bad. Where were your librarians then? That sounds like the kind of censorship they should be yelling about.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ve been very busy,” I said.

“And didn’t some Dr. Seuss books stop getting sold because people claimed the pictures were insensitive? Again, where were these librarians?” she said. “I’m no expert, but that sounds like real censorship. I mean, I’m not even saying someone can’t sell books about preteens getting it on with sex toys; I just don’t want those books in my twelve-year-old’s school library.”

“That’s a red herring,” I said. “If we allow parents to start dictating what gets read, some will oppose important high school books like Beloved, Huckleberry Finn, or The Bluest Eye for addressing issues like racism and sexual assault.”

“That’s just dumb,” she said. “If you can’t tell the difference between sexually explicit material in a kids’ library and a complicated book for 17-year-olds, something’s wrong. If we were talking about those high school books, you’d be making sense. But we’re not.”

“It’s important to draw bright lines,” I said. “That’s why PEN America explains that ‘if a book that was previously available to all now requires parental permission, or is restricted to a higher grade level than educators initially determined, that is a ban.’”

“Wait a minute!” she said. “Now I’m just confused. I mean, the school district has sent home notes saying that they’ve taken the advice of the School Library Journal and removed a bunch of books from our K–12 summer reading lists, including To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Lord of Flies, and a bunch of Shakespeare. Isn’t 1984 partly about book banning? And they’re banning it! That’s nuts.”

“No, no, no,” I replied, rubbing my temples. “They’re not banning books—they’re ‘refreshing the canon.’ The School Library Journal doesn’t want those books banned. Students can still check them out, buy them, or read them. They just don’t think these books should be officially encouraged by the school. They want schools to offer alternatives.”

“Umm, do you even hear yourself?” she asked. “How is that any different from what I’m talking about? Why is it ‘refreshing the canon’ when you all tell schools to remove famous books from reading lists but ‘book banning’ when I don’t want pornography in my daughter’s middle school library?”

I gave up. There’s just no arguing with book banners.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

We’re in the midst of spring soccer. This means weekends spent shuffling from one field to the next, folding and unfolding those ubiquitous canvas camping chairs. It’s heartwarming: the neighborly chatter, sunny days, and good cheer. (I’m tempted here to rant about the wonders of youth sports or the pathologies of anti-child nihilists. But I want to focus on something less zeitgeist’y.)

Like I was saying, the games are heartwarming. You know what’s not so much? Refereeing those games. And this has some lessons for those in and around education.

Back in my much-younger days, as a teen, I used to referee on Saturdays and Sundays for pizza money. Well, I hadn’t been out on the field in decades. Then this year, for whatever reason, the referee didn’t show up one Saturday for our nine-year-old’s rec league game. So, I got pulled out of my extended retirement. In flip-flops and fleece. With no whistle. Not an auspicious set-up.

And you know what? I’d forgotten how bloody hard it is, even with preteen players, genial coaches, and low-key parents. Although I see referees at work every weekend, it’s easy to overlook how much harder it is to regulate the action than to watch it.

Fourth graders fall down a fair bit. They throw elbows. They’ll cluster, which makes it hard to see who touched the ball last. They’re energetic and lack finesse, yielding sharp reversals in the flow of play and leaving a referee chuffing to catch up. And even at a low-stakes game with a forgiving audience, like the one I handled, it’s hard to wholly tune out the occasional complaint from parents or coaches who think you missed a call.

When I’m comfortably perched on the sideline, I rarely notice any of this. In fact, I hardly think of the referee at all. But the referee is out there dealing with all of this, noticed or not. When a referee does well, it mostly goes unnoticed. When they fare poorly, it can have big repercussions for the behavior, safety, and mindset of the kids.

Refereeing well is a lot tougher than it may appear. After all, it’s not always easy to tell when a push should be whistled rather than waved off. It depends on how often the kid is pushing. The intent. The size of the pushee. How clearly the referee could see the play. Even the general tenor of the game. Multiply this by lots of incidents, involving lots of kids, for an hour. Calling this push inevitably raises questions about why the ref didn’t call that one. It’s tempting to just let the kids play. But if a referee does so, the kids soon sense it. The restraint that helps keep things in check can start to unravel.

If that passage makes you think of what’s happening with school discipline, chronic absenteeism, or grade inflation, you’re probably onto something. We’ve become less and less willing to appreciate the referees charged with enforcing expectations around behavior, attendance, or academics, or to extend them much in the way of grace or deference. And they’ve responded in predictable ways.

After all, it’s easy for activists, attorneys, and academics to pick apart decisions made in the heat of the moment. Indeed, they’ve done this so vociferously that educators are hesitant to enforce norms—fueling disorder and a sense that behavioral rules are exceptionally elastic.

When it comes to student misbehavior, one-third of teachers report that they don’t feel safe at work and 29 percent that their largest source of job-related stress is “managing student behavior.” Meanwhile, almost half of teachers say they put up with misbehavior due to a lack of administrative support. Administrators have become hesitant to support firm behavioral norms, seeding chaotic classrooms.

There’s been much attention paid to the astonishing increase in chronic absenteeism. This winter, USC researchers asked parents why their children are missing so much school. The most common reason was their kids “oversleeping or not being able to get out of bed in the morning.” In response, there’s been a reticence to firmly and frankly tell parents that their kids need to be in school—and remind them that getting kids out of bed in the morning has been a challenge since time immemorial.

Grade inflation has eroded expectations, with the ACT reporting that more than 89% of high schoolers receive an A or a B in English and math—even as tested performance has declined. What’s going on? For one thing, educators reported last fall that “students often ask for better grades than they’ve earned,” with 82 percent saying they’ve “given into demands” to change grades—38 percent having been harassed over grades by students and 33 percent by parents. Tough grading even gets critiqued as “inequitable.” The routines that support firm expectations have atrophied, with predictable results.

Refereeing can be thankless work. Enforcing standards is tough at any time, doubly so when you’re tired and in the thick of things. Educators know all of this, which is why they’re much more likely to play that role if they’re urged to do so and supported when they do. Today, though, too many educators don’t feel encouraged in that work—whether by school leaders, parents, or social norms. And that has had troubling consequences.

Healthy institutions need members who enforce norms in reasonable and consistent ways. The challenge is that the path of least resistance is to go with the flow and let someone else do the hard work. As my AEI colleague Yuval Levin has observed, ensuring rigor or enforcing rules isn’t as fun as performing or proclaiming. And today I fear that refereeing—as much on the soccer pitch as in the classroom—is less appealing and less appreciated than ever.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Last week I got to attend one of the nation’s premiere education gatherings, the celebrated North by Northwest gathering in Hudson, New York. Ed tech visionaries, celebrated funders, and “rock star” reformers gathered to share kind words about one another and enjoy those little salads with pine nuts and spinach leaves.

Well, no panel had more star power or drew a more enthusiastic audience than the keynote featuring two of our era’s towering eduthinkers: 22nd-century Skills guru (and former vacuum salesman) Paul Banksley and “actionizing thinkiness” impresario Tait Smoogen of the Extraordinary Learning Foundation. It sounds like a humblebrag to mention it, but I got asked to moderate this pairing of titans. Now, they dropped too many pearls of wisdom to possibly recall them all, but I do want to share some highlights.

I kicked things off by asking if they could share just a few thoughts on why their work has been so impactful.

Tait Smoogen mused for a moment. “I think it is all about relationships and connection,” he explained. “And engagement. Yes, relationships, connection, and engagement. And kindness. Yes, relationships, connection, engagement, and kindness. And . . .”

Banksley jumped in. “For me, it all comes back to words. As a salesman, it’s about teaching the customer to want more. If they’re satisfied with 21st-century skills, it’s probably because they haven’t considered the 22nd-century alternatives. If they’re happy with fourth-wave cognition, I’ll bet they don’t know there’s a fifth-wave option. And I know the importance of relentlessly focusing on that north star: for a school reformer like me, that means always asking, ‘What do foundation executives want to hear next?’”

“Good point,” Smoogen interjected. “Which industrial revolution are we up to now? Is it the fourth, fifth, sixth?”

“Such a great question,” Banksley said. “Why don’t we call it 6.5?”

Smoogen nodded, “That sounds very funder-worthy.”

Feverish snapping swept the room.

I was so busy fanboy-ing, I almost forgot to ask the next question. “Tait,” I said, “You’ve often noted how you try to hook learners with the nounification of verbs or the verbification of nouns. Can you say a bit more about why that’s so powerful?”

Smoogen tented his hands for a moment and then offered, “Let me put it this way. At the Extraordinary Learning Foundation, we know that Extraordinary Learning^TM needs an extraordinary vocabulary. Take ‘learning’, which is usually a verb. What about turning it into a noun such as in, ‘What learnings have we taken from today?’ That’s just an obvious example, but we can also introduce new words entirely. Instead of simply ‘thinking’ about something, we can make it more engaging and potentially subject to the Trademark Act of 1946 by promoting ‘thinkiness.’ That’s how the Actionizing Thinkiness^TM strategy was born.”

“And that’s why I’m Tait’s biggest fan,” said Banksley. “The guy is an inspiration.” There was a thunderous wave of snapped agreement.

I brought up the question of expiring federal pandemic funds, asking Banksley for thoughts on what schools should do now.

“I think it’s crucial that schools recommit to using the right words,” he said. “School improvement plans need to be about co-creating equitable and dynamic learning environments. They need to promote innovative partnerships to advance social justice and cultivate the opportunity to thrive. Far too many plans leave out some of these words. And schools must seek out vendors as committed to the words as they are.”

“Co-construction is key,” agreed Smoogen. “It’s essential that we co-create environments with all stakeholders so that all learners’ perspectives are valued, honored, and allowed to collaboratively deliver, via rounded and inclusive partnerships, the development and progression and construction of co-constructed objectives and aims.”

He paused before adding, “In practical terms, this requires meetings. Lots and lots of meetings.”

“With slide decks,” added Banksley. “And consultant-supported strategic planning.”

This time, the snapping echoed off the walls.

I asked about their take on the state of education research. “What kind of research makes a difference?”

“Well, first and foremost, research needs to provide the results we want to see,” said Paul. “There was this terrific study I read about in The 74 recently. A professor did a half-dozen virtual focus groups with almost two dozen school nurses in Minnesota in 2020, and he’s just reported some powerful stuff. The nurses told him that, with more money, they can get kids to school and be difference-makers. Reading that, I thought, ‘Right on! That’s change-making research right there.’ And I know it’s careful because it took him four years to share his findings.”

I closed the session by asking if they had any tips for edupreneurs in the audience. Smoogen took the first swing and hit it out of the park.

“For me, it’s crucial to wrap words up in proprietary concepts. Take my four learning limbs idea. Imagine a hog. The head of the hog represents curiosity because it’s got eyes and ears. The legs represent struggle because they are the base of all learning—it used to be ‘grit’, but that’s so 2017. The arms represent adaptability because arms are adaptable. And the torso, well, it represents creativity because that’s what’s left over. Four learning limbs and a colorful PowerPoint slide. Simple. Then, when a district buys a use license, teachers can ask questions like, ‘What learning limb did you use to solve that math problem?’ and then spend class talking about that rather than math which, let’s face it, can be really boring.”

Banksley paused for a moment before answering. He kept it short and sweet. “Remember,” he said, “an innovation is just an old idea that hasn’t been funded lately.”

No snapping this time. There are times when the presence of genius simply commands silence.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

There may be no more familiar question in education than, “Why can’t we put politics aside and do what’s best for kids?” The answer, which is obvious to anyone who’s ever sat through a school board meeting, is because we don’t agree on “what’s best for kids.” It’s not even clear what it would mean to “put politics aside,” given that politics is how we resolve public disagreements—and that public education entails the use of public funds to hire public employees to educate the public’s kids.

Today, politics have taken on new urgency for education leaders navigating polarized debates about CRT, SEL, DEI, gender identity, and more. Especially in red and purple communities, a lot of frustrated conservative parents are squaring off against equally frustrated educators. We suspect that’s the reason, since the publication of our recent book Getting Education Right, why we’ve heard from so many school and system leaders asking some version of, “Any advice on how I can better get through to those conservatives?”

Unfortunately, few school and system leaders get much preparation or support when it comes to building trust on the right. Education leaders are immersed in a world of conferences, associations, degree programs, and trainings with a pronounced leftward tilt on hot-button issues such as race, gender, and parenthood. Indeed, they can grow so used to certain assumptions and phrases that it’s easy for them to get blindsided by conservative pushback. This is bad for schools and students alike.

Education leaders can fall into a reflexive disdain for conservative perspectives, even those that are otherwise innocuous and broadly popular. For instance, a wealth of evidence points to the obvious benefits of following the “success sequence”—finish high school, get a job, and get married before having kids. Seventy-seven percent of Americans, whether they’ve practiced it or not, say schools should teach it to kids. Yet, in education circles, those who promote the success sequence have become accustomed to being attacked as racists. Heck, we’ve repeatedly watched an accomplished Black educator get derided as a bigot for insisting his school teach his mostly Black students about the success sequence, as we note in the book.

In talking to leaders (whatever their own views) who are seeking to engage better with right-leaning parents, teachers, politicians, and community members, we’ve found ourselves repeatedly hitting on a few themes that seem to be helpful and thought it worth sharing those here. We aren’t communication pros or politicos, so this isn’t about PR or pandering. Rather, it’s about engaging with parents and other stakeholders in principled, productive ways.

Respect the whole community. Including those on the right.

Sitting through a professional development session as a conservative teacher or a community workshop as a conservative parent often means feeling like an interloper. Trainings and workshops routinely feature speakers who go on at great length about the virtues of DEI, restorative justice, and other “equitable” initiatives while casually deriding “right-wing book banners.”

Leaders can become inured to all this. At the institutions that prepare them for their roles, at district-sponsored events, and at the professional conferences they attend, such rhetoric is commonplace. As a result, they can make the mistake of assuming that everyone regards it as forward-thinking, even inclusive. Well, for those on the right, such talking points feel less like accepted truth than disingenuous barbs. They see divisive practices that have nothing to do with diversity or inclusion, “restorative” practices that fuel chaotic classrooms, and “equity” wielded to eliminate advanced math (as in California) or basic graduation requirements (as in Oregon). Conservatives find those denunciations of “book banning” to be politicized misrepresentations of attempts to remove genuinely pornographic texts from the shelves of middle-school libraries.

Heck, at the National Book Awards, beloved children’s entertainer LeVar Burton threatened to “throw hands” if there were any members of Moms for Liberty in the crowd. The room’s response? Laughter. So, in this bastion of progressive inclusiveness, it’s apparently cool to winkingly joke about violence against women . . . as long as they’re right-wing. If you’re seen as tolerating or accepting that kind of double standard, understand that conservatives will inevitably regard you with distrust, no matter how unfair you may think they’re being.

Here’s a simple standard for school and district leaders: presume that all of your parents deserve respect, no matter their politics. Do your homework on the speakers you hire to address students, teachers, and families. Are they going to engage constructively or peddle ideological agendas that denounce whole swaths of your community as rubes and racists? Are they going to allow for respectful discussion and disagreement or spew lazy stereotypes? When it’s a question of race, ethnicity, or immigration status, today’s school leaders intuitively accept that schools can’t appear to dismiss whole swaths of their community. That same moral compass ought to apply here. The ranks of teacher trainers and DEI consultants include too many incompetents and ideologues. Don’t invite those outrage artists into your school or system.

Engage with parents, even when you disagree with them

Conservatives tend to agree with Russell Kirk that, “The family always has been the source and center of community.” This primacy can seem discomfiting to some educators, counselors, and administrators (especially the ones with the “I’m your mom now” posters in their classrooms). After all, if an educator contends that first graders should learn about gender identity or middle schoolers about their “white privilege,” they think they’re just doing what’s right and that parental objections must be evidence of troubling personal agendas. We get it. Leaders who choose to hide a child’s in-school gender identity from parents are convinced they have the child’s best interests at heart.

But parents, in good faith and without any agenda other than their child’s well-being, may see things very differently. There already exist protocols for when teachers suspect that parents or guardians are abusing their charges. If such concerns exist, teachers should act on them. Where they don’t, schools should not be in the business of keeping things from parents. Given that parents rightly expect to be notified when the school gives their child an aspirin, it’s ludicrous to imagine that schools would hide the fact that their child is adopting an entirely new identity at school. You personally disagree? Okay. But understand that the thousands of schools that have adopted a policy of hiding a student’s in-school gender from their parents have taken an aggressive, ideological stance—and that it will be interpreted as such.

School leaders do well to appreciate that conservatives tend to think they’ve very temporarily entrusted their children to the care of their schools and have learned to be skeptical about what that entails. There are, of course, practical limits on how much influence parents should have on discipline or curriculum. And we’re all acquainted with problem parents who may be inclined to create conflict just because it’s in their nature, or because they can’t conceive that their child would ever misbehave. But a commitment to communication and transparency strikes us as a nonnegotiable baseline. A leader who can’t (or won’t) agree to that is unlikely to win the trust of conservative parents.

Take “true history” seriously

Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, has observed, “Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.” These competing dispositions emerge when it comes to teaching American history. In their most extreme iterations, such perspectives can, on the one hand, lead to teachers turning a blind eye to the mistakes and shortcomings of our nation—or, on the other hand, becoming entirely consumed by them.

Conveniently, the vast majority of Americans occupy a reasonable position on the teaching of American history. In fact, 90 percent of Americans agree with some version of the statement, “Schools should teach American history, warts and all.” Contra the social-media rhetoric, conservatives know that America has a checkered history and agree that students need to learn about the Three-fifths Compromise, Jim Crow, Korematsu, and the Trail of Tears.

We fear, though, that far too many classrooms tilt toward vilifying America rather than teach a balanced and accurate history. The enthusiasm for the New York Times’s factually-challenged 1619 Project-based curriculum, the architect of which describes America as a “slavocracy,” is illustrative. There’s little pedagogical or public purpose in approaching history as a series of overwrought, oft-dubious tales of American villainy.  Educators need to tune out the noise from the extremes—both from the parents offended by books depicting Ruby Bridge’s harassers as white (they were!) and from the activists seemingly intent on convincing children that America is irredeemably evil. There was a time when schools leaned too far to the right on all this. Today, many lean too far to the left—and educators shouldn’t be surprised by the backlash that can result.

There are, however, sensible remedies. The teacher unions and ed school activists urge schools to teach “true history.” We think that’s a terrific idea. Teach about America’s shortcomings but also its successes at expanding the franchise, incorporating wave after wave of immigration, fending off genocidal fascists during World War II and murderous totalitarians during the half-century-long Cold War, creating shared prosperity, cleaning up the environment, combating the scourge of ethnic and racial hatred, erecting stable governing institutions, and pioneering deep and enduring protections for civil liberties. Teach it all, the good and the bad. If your educators haven’t been exposed to the good in their teacher training or fear being labeled naïve for discussing it . . . well, that’s when an unabashed commitment to “true history” will be especially useful.

Effective public stewards forge relationships with their whole community. There have been laudable efforts to make sure that educators reach out across racial, ethnic, linguistic, and sexual identity differences. Making every child and every family feel welcome and respected is important. Given intense polarization and roiling tensions between conservatives and their schools, leaders who haven’t gotten much useful counsel when it comes to engaging the right will find it an especially propitious time to apply this advice to a relationship that’s on the ropes.

Frederick M. Hess is an executive editor of Education Next. Michael Q. McShane is director of research for EdChoice. They are the authors of Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K–12, and College (Teachers College Press).

Amid K–12’s culture clashes, I’m constantly struck by how often we seem to be talking past one another. On this count, I observed a conversation last year that’s stuck with me ever since. It was late, on a D.C. sidewalk, after the bar had closed on the last stragglers from AEI’s K–12 Working Group.

The exchange took place between an influential education school professor and a leading parent activist. In response to a session earlier that day, they’d been arguing (heatedly, but respectfully) about anti-CRT laws. They were discussing the incidents relating to teacher politicking, of the sort that show up on Libs of TikTok. You know, teacher rants about how awful the Founding Fathers were or the necessity of having students pledge allegiance to the Pride flag.

The academic acknowledged such instances were problematic; his point was that the laws intended to combat the problems were far more worrisome than these occasional incidents. As we said our goodnights, it occurred to me to ask something that had never come up during their back-and-forth.

“How common do you think these incidents actually are?” I asked.

“They’re rare,” the ed school professor said. “They should be addressed on a case-by-case basis when they happen, but these are outliers. We shouldn’t treat them as more than that.”

The parent activist looked incredulous. “They’re not rare. They’re happening all the time.”

The professor looked skeptical.

“We get a steady stream of parent complaints,” she said. “In most places, parents don’t have any good way to share this stuff. When they have someone who is listening, they reach out. Once they have a way to let you know, it’s remarkable how much there is.”

The professor was unimpressed. “If you cherry-pick across the country, you can find examples,” he said. “But there are 100,000 public schools. You can find 50 examples, and that’s not even one-tenth of 1 percent of those schools.”

“Given that,” I asked him, “What percent of classrooms do you think have one of these incidents in a given year?”

“Across the whole country?” he asked. “I mean, a tiny, tiny fraction.”

“Are we talking about 1 percent of classrooms?” I wondered.

“Nothing close to that,” he said. “It’s way, way under 1 percent.”

Now it was the advocate’s turn to roll her eyes.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“Over the course of a year? It’s got to be over half,” she said.

“Of classrooms?” the professor asked in disbelief.

“Absolutely,” she said.

They looked at each other. None of us had any way of knowing the real figure, but the two of them were clearly confident they had it right—and that the other was in la-la land.

And that’s the heart of the issue. Most people are of two minds on all this. The vast majority of parents and voters want schools to promote tolerance and understanding but with no ideological agendas or political posturing. So they want schools to be honest about slavery and Jim Crow without resorting to “privilege” exercises which shame some students based on their race or ethnicity. They want schools to make all students feel safe, but not encourage first-grade teachers to lead class discussions about gender unicorns. This tension requires gut-checks and balancing acts.

For instance, over 90 percent of Republicans and Democrats say students should be taught about slavery in school, but more than 85 percent of both groups also think that “classrooms should be places for learning, not political battlegrounds.” EdChoice has found that, by a margin of 84 to 10, parents don’t want their kids’ teachers to share their personal politics. In theory, there’s no tension here—one can readily teach about Jim Crow without promoting an ideological agenda. But a lot of advocates, curriculum developers, and teacher trainers have made it clear that they think “honestly” teaching about slavery entails teaching politicized doctrines regarding “systemic racism” or intersectionality.

How much of what ensues is problematic? We just don’t know. One survey of youths aged 18 to 20, for example, found that four out of five said they were taught at least one Critical Social Justice concept in school, including: “America is a systemically racist country,” “Discrimination is the main reason for differences in wealth or other outcomes between races or genders,” and “In America, white people have unconscious biases that negatively affect nonwhite people.” But we should be skeptical of this kind of nudge-aided recollection and, in any event, it’s not entirely clear just what it means to have been “taught” these things. Yet, even if this proportion is a massive overstatement, it certainly allows parent activists to argue their concerns are rooted in much more than outrageous anecdotes or viral videos.

The point is this: both camps can offer evidence to make their case. And, if the troubling stuff is vanishingly rare, it’s easy to appreciate why anti-CRT laws or a “parental bill of rights” might strike some as threatening or over-the-top—like a matter of censorious right-wingers seeking excuses to squash uncomfortable ideas. If dubious conduct is common, though, legislation looks a lot more like an appropriate, democratic response.

Here is a crucial opportunity for sufficiently intrepid and entrepreneurial researchers. I’ll grant that devising a research strategy out and obtaining access to schools for this kind of inquiry would be extraordinarily challenging, and funding and conducting it even more so. Absent such investigation, though, it’s a safe bet that the debate will roar dumbly on, with all parties confident they’re in the right.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”