Support for teaching gender identity in schools is divided, even among Democrats
Americans are deeply divided over whether gender identity should be taught in school, according to two polls released this week that underscored the extent of the divide on one of the most contentious topics in education.
Many groups, including Democrats, teachers and teens, are divided over whether schools should teach about gender identity — the internal sense of one's own gender and whether it aligns with the sex assigned at birth, a study by researchers shows from the University of Southern California and a separate study by Pew Research Center.
But on issues of race, another issue that has fueled state restrictions and book bans, there was broader support for education. That was also true for some Republicans, the USC survey found.
The results highlight nuances in opinion on two of the most divisive issues in public education, even as the American public remains deeply polarized along party lines.
The USC survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of nearly 4,000 adults, about half of whom lived with at least one school-age child, and responses reflected partisan affiliation.
Democrats generally supported LGBTQ education in schools, but were divided when it came to addressing transgender issues for younger students in elementary school.
Fewer than half of Democrats surveyed supported teaching about gender identity in elementary school, or using a transgender student's pronouns at that age without asking parents. About a third of Democrats supported assigning a book about a nonbinary author's personal experiences to elementary school students.
But for high school students, a large majority of Democrats supported teaching these and other LGBTQ topics.
Republicans strongly opposed teaching transgender topics at all grade levels. They expressed increased support, especially for older students, for teaching issues surrounding same-sex marriage, which was legalized nationwide in 2015. Nearly half of Republicans supported allowing a high school teacher to display a photo of a same-sex spouse on their desk. For example.
Republicans showed a similar pattern on issues of discussions about race, with more support for teaching these topics to older students.
A majority of respondents – including a majority of Republicans – supported teaching the following topics in high school: slavery as the main cause of the Civil War, discussing the ways some white Americans resisted the civil rights movement , and exploring the causes of racial wealth disparities. There was less support among Republicans for teaching more modern concepts, such as authorizing a book about the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, or discussing the use of race in college admissions.
The two issues — teaching race and history, and addressing LGBTQ issues and gender identity in schools — have often gone hand-in-hand in political debates, with conservative lawmakers seeking to limit what schools can do and liberal politicians to defend and sometimes require instruction.
Still, the results are the latest to indicate that the American public may have more complex views on the issues, with opinions varying depending on the scenario and the age of the students involved.
State laws don't always reflect the diversity of opinion, even within a state's majority party, in part because statehouses are increasingly partisan, with fewer swing districts, said Eric Plutzer, a professor of political science and polling director at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. , who was not involved in the new studies.
“We are in a period where public opinion in general is probably less important than the opinion of grassroots and primary voters” for both parties, he said. “That's an important context for understanding this.”
The Pew survey examined the views of teachers and teenage students and found that they too are deeply divided over whether schools should teach about gender identity.
Half of teachers – including 62 percent of primary school teachers – said gender identity should not be taught, according to the survey, which included about 2,500 primary and secondary school teachers. Those who supported gender identity education were more likely to teach older students in middle and high school and were more likely to identify as Democrats.
(Overall, 58 percent of teachers identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, and 35 percent identified or leaned toward the Republicans, according to Pew — a more liberal population than Americans overall, who are about evenly split.)
Similarly, about half of the 1,400 teens surveyed by Pew said they didn't think they should learn about gender identity in school. That view was more likely to be held by teens who identified or leaned Republican, but was also embraced by more than a third of teens who were more liberal.
About one in 10 teens surveyed said racism and racial inequality had never been discussed in their classes. Slightly more – 14 percent – said the same about sexual orientation and gender identity.