No, parents do not know best

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If it had been true, the world would not move forward. Or maybe it had stopped somewhere in the 1950s, probably long before. Homosexuality had been banned, girls denied education, children had come with the stork. If parents still had to decide, we would be less free. We already knew that as children.

I barely had sex education, except for an hour with Trond-Viggo Torgersen long before he made the slightly revolutionary TV series for children about the body. There were no gays at the school I went to. Not that I knew about at least. Because we talked so little about it that it was not even an insult. Shouting gay after someone had to mean that gays existed. I did not know the word trans person, much less what it meant. I think I had handled it just fine, because children do. There are always adults who struggle.

Not everyone thinks openness is a step forward. The same year that the government officially apologizes for discrimination against queers, several parents are upset that the Oslo school informs about Pride and invites to participate in one form or another in Saturday’s big train. Of course completely voluntary, but just inviting seems too much for some. It can confuse young children, it is claimed.

Immediately, there are “parental appeals” and Facebook groups for grandparents who are opposed to gender confusion, but not their own confusion. Pride is portrayed as an ideological train that ends in gender reassignment, not as a celebration of equality and love. There are men in leather there, it is warned, as if children think of sex as soon as they see dressed men dancing in the streets. It is probably those who warn who think about it.

The excitement is recognizable and seems imported from the United States as so much other identity politics in recent years. American parenting activists are a formidable force forcing schools to ban books they do not like, to ban gender and racial theory teaching, to ban blindfolds during a pandemic. Parent meetings have developed into pure battlefields, where teachers are threatened with death. Conspiracy theories linking sex education to pedophilia have become a common theme in the debate. All in the name of worried parents.

It has gone so far that a parental rebellion has built up against the parental rebellion. The so-called “soccer moms” will no longer be taken as income for a growing conservative opposition to LGBT rights. Because that is often what happens. One or two loud speakers speak on behalf of many, and the many are silent and so full of doubt.

Norwegian parents have that usually been more restrained, brought up in the social democratic unitary school as they are. They have high confidence in the school and do not yet suspect it of indoctrination and abuse. Of course, parents have rights and opinions. But they are not alone. The public school belongs to everyone in Norway, even me who is childless.

It is paid with our tax money to create enlightened, open-minded and informed citizens; what was once called benefit people. It should be open and inclusive. Highly educated teachers and professionals have in all years adapted curricula and teaching to the time we live in and preferably with a view to the time we are going into. It is researched, it is investigated, it is discussed in the Storting. It is the school’s task to lead, to be a school example simply. We expect and demand that.

Parents’ concerns more often seem to be about the time that was; that things have gone too far, too fast. It’s too much and too little. We just do not like it.

Fortunately, they come most children who grow up today to be even freer than today’s parents, not least thanks to school. Then they have to find something else to worry about when they have children themselves.

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