Latest Battles:
Americans are diverse – ethnically, religiously, ideologically – but all must pay for public schools. The intention is good: to bring people together and foster harmony. But rather than build bridges, public schooling often forces people into wrenching, zero-sum conflict.
This map aggregates a relatively small, but especially painful, subset of battles: those involving basic rights, moral values, or individual identities. Think restrooms and transgender students, books dealing with sex, or race and American history. The conflicts are often intensely personal, and guarantee if one fundamental value wins, another loses.
The goal may be peace and equality, but the outcome is too often the opposite.
Incidents are continually added. Note that some years contain few conflicts because the Map lists the year a battle began but cataloging only started in the mid‐2000s. Earlier years reflect conflicts that had a new development after data collection commenced. Conflicts are overwhelmingly drawn from media reports.
Please send any conflicts you know about, errors you find, or questions you have to Cato Center for Educational Freedom director Neal McCluskey. Also, discuss on Twitter using #WWFSchool and follow @PubSchoolFights.
To dive deeper into public schooling and social conflict, see our reading list.
To view the full list of battles, follow this link (download the dataset here).
