Twenty-five years ago, I was teaching kindergarten in Wisconsin. It was time for the annual unit on families. As any good early-childhood teacher knows, when you teach a family unit, you need picture books that resonate with the young kids in your room—each and every kid needs to see their family in the books.

Decades of research has shown the power of children’s books to act as both mirrors and windows. Mirrors let kids see themselves in the world, while windows allow kids a vantage into worlds beyond their immediate life.

That year was particularly memorable: My last year teaching kindergarten before becoming a principal and then an education professor. But it was even more memorable because of the unit on families.

In preparing for the unit, we collected picture books that represented the Black families, the white families, the Hmong families, the Christian, the Jewish, and the Buddhist families in the class. We included picture books with adopted kids, with kids living with their grandparents, with kids with divorced parents, with single parents, as well as kids living with both Mom and Dad.

One of the little girls, Madi (short for Madison), made this unit indelible in my mind. Both Madi’s mom and dad reveled in Madi’s love of learning, but they worried about her, as their family was going through a transition. Madi’s mom had recently come out as a lesbian. Madi’s mom and dad coparented closely, but they were no longer together. Both Madi’s parents had started dating new women. So, of course, the family unit bookshelf included picture books for Madi’s family too.

While picture books contain a wide variety of magic in their pages, the affirmation kids feel in seeing themselves mirrored in the story is some of the best magic. During “quiet” time, Madi picked up one of the books on the shelf placed there specifically for her. Was this a coincidence or more picture book magic? We’ll never know. “Mr. T, will you read this to me?” (Anyone who grew up in the 1980s appreciates the awesomeness of being called Mr. T in the kindergarten classroom.) So, we read Three Days on the River in a Red Canoe.

This gentle story features a little girl who goes camping with her mother and another woman called “Aunt Rosie.” Who Aunt Roise is in the family is not clearly defined—she is not named as the mom’s sister—but it is clearly a warm, loving, and familial bond. When we got to the part where they are camping, Madi shrieked with glee, “I go camping with my mom!” When the mom in the story did camping chores with Aunt Rosie, Madi beamed and exclaimed, “My mom has a girlfriend too, and now she comes camping with us.”

After we finished the book, Madi asked if the whole class could read the book during story time. We read it. Madi proudly told the class how her mom and her mom’s girlfriend took her camping. Twenty-five years later, I can still feel Madi’s pure joy from the reflection she found of her life in that book. 

I have been thinking about this class of kindergarteners a lot lately, particularly, as the Mahmoud v. Taylor case makes its way through the courts. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April and is expected to rule on the case any day now.

The central issue in Mahmoud v. Taylor is if parents should be able to opt their kids out of curriculum they feel conflicts with their religious beliefs as they practice them. Specifically, some parents objected to a handful of books with LGBTQ+ characters and content. While the case does not involve the same book that Madi felt reflected her life, there is a clear connection to little Madi’s experience 25 years ago.

Montgomery County School District adopted the books in question as part of its curriculum in 2022. The school district went through a deliberate curriculum selection process engaging the community and an array of stakeholders, as well as making time for public comment. And, as Megan Stack wrote at The New York Times, “There wasn’t much fanfare or outcry when, just as a school year began in 2022, the district added a handful of LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks to the elementary English curriculum.” Most schools and districts have opt-out procedures relating to sex-ed and health classes, but in this case, the school district took the position that these picture books were not part of sex-ed or health education but part of the regular elementary school curriculum.

Some families were angry about the change and resisted. The parents in the case—a group of Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents—felt they should have been able to opt out of curriculum with LBGTQ+ characters and content because it conflicts with their religious beliefs and relates to sex-ed and health. Unsurprisingly, there have been different views of this issue. Some folks argue about the importance of parental rights in issues that relate to sex while others center the importance of a curriculum that reflects the diversity of the nation, which is not an undue burden on religious liberty.

Looking at this case from a wider perspective, Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized the reasoning from these parents’ lawyer during oral arguments: “You’re asking for the ability for schools to provide you with information about what’s being taught and, if you object to it on religious grounds, to opt out.” She gave possible examples of things people had previously objected to on religious grounds. “You see interfaith couples all the time walking around. You see interracial coupleswomen on this court in positions of work outside the home,” raising a salient issue about where the line is about opting out of curriculum for religious beliefs.

In considering where that line is, University of Michigan Law School Professor Leah Litman recently said on her podcast that allowing parents to opt out of all parts of the curriculum is not feasible because public schools cannot “provide a bespoke curriculum for each child.” Allowing parents to opt out of any curriculum they have religious objections to is a slippery slope toward our nation’s establishing that some religious beliefs are favored by the government.

Elie v. U.S.

Fridays. A weekly round-up of outrages and outtakes not covered elsewhere, from justice correspondent Elie Mystal.

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Several folks who see themselves as relatively liberal supporters of the LGBTQ+ community have staked out a position that this conflict and unrest is giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to strike another blow against the LGBTQ+ community, leading them to wish that the school district had allowed families to opt out. Also, devout Christians, including ordained clergy in my family, reject the idea that Christian beliefs prevent students from learning about, being in community with, and supporting LGBTQ+ families, and have argued that their Christianity is violated by denying the humanity of their LGBTQ+ neighbors. LGBTQ+ families express that it is both stigmatizing and demeaning to allow children to opt out of learning about families like theirs. Very similar to the ordained ministers in my family, these LGBTQ+ families feel that allowing for opting out about LGBTQ+ issues establishes that other parents’ religious beliefs matter more than the existence and values of their families.

Professor Litman is right. As someone who has taught, run, studied, and partnered with public schools for over three decades, I know that given the size and complexity of our public school classes, a kindergarten classroom, a fourth-grade classroom, a 10th-grade classroom cannot possibly have a meaningful curriculum that is different for each child, where parents select each week what pieces they do and do not find questionable. Over time, teachers and schools will do their best to avoid issues that will attract attention and controversy, causing important content and crucial learning to disappear.

This tells us that the heart of Mahmoud v. Taylor is not only about whether parents with religious objections can opt out of curriculum for their child. Opting out will necessarily lead to denying other students equal learning and standing in the classroom. Practically speaking, some families’ religious objections will become gatekeepers for what other kids at the public school learn. That is dangerous and runs contrary to the history and tradition of not favoring specific religious beliefs in public schools.

Coming back to my kindergarten class from 25 years ago, while no one objected to Three Days on the River in a Red Canoe, there were times that year when families did challenge the curriculum because of their religious beliefs. We were in the midst of “color days” to support teaching early literacy—“red day,” “pink day,” “blue day,” and so on. We found these color days helpful in developing our kids’ zest for becoming readers and writers. On red day, we found things around us that were red and wrote about those red things. For each color day, the teachers and kids also tried to wear the color of the day somewhere in their outfit to build excitement. One mother objected to “pink day” because she felt her son’s desire to wear pink as part of the curriculum “violated their family’s Christian beliefs about raising boys” in the traditional way.

A few weeks after pink day, an evangelical protestant family objected to how we taught about Hanukkah. We had two Jewish families in the class, and during Hanukkah they made time to come into the classroom. Our class learned about the menorah and the story of the miracle of the oil. And, not surprisingly, the Jewish kindergarteners, Moira and David, wanted to teach their friends their favorite part of Hanukkah: the dreidel. So, we all learned to play dreidel. The family that objected felt that learning about the menorah and playing dreidel violated their Christian beliefs and their child should not have participated. They wanted no part in that.

Justice Sotomayor’s line of questioning about “where is the line?” is the same question I have had for months about this case. I cannot stop thinking about Madi, Moira, David, and the rest of their classmates. Will the Supreme Court allow parents to opt out of Madi’s formative experience with her classmates and Three Days on a River with the Red Canoe? Will the Supreme Court allow families to opt out of learning about Hanukkah? I wrestle with how this decision could lead to a steady removal of Hanukkah and other Jewish content from the curriculum under this administration. In the midst of the national conversation about what is and is not antisemitism in education, letting certain people’s beliefs reduce and eliminate curriculum that teaches about Judaism is clearly antisemitism.

Far from being a case about parents’ religious liberty, this is a case about young people—about whether Madi is rendered lesser in the classroom—and about whether we will march toward antisemitism and demonstrate once and for all that certain religious beliefs are indeed favored. Heaven help us if this is a mirror reflecting who we have become and we close the window to seeing anyone else.