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 controversial issues in education.
Many groups, including Democrats, teachers and teens, are divided over whether schools should teach about gender identity — a person’s internal sense of their own gender and whether it aligns with the sex assigned at birth, according to a survey by researchers. from the University of Southern California and a separate survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
But on issues of race, another issue that has driven state restrictions and book bans, there was broader support for instruction. That extended to some Republicans, according to the USC poll.
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 partisan lines.
The USC poll surveyed a nationally representative sample of nearly 4,000 adults, about half of whom lived with at least one school-aged child, and broke down responses by party affiliation.
Democrats generally supported LGBTQ-themed instruction in schools, but were divided when it came to addressing transgender issues for younger students in elementary school.
Less 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 issues.
Republicans strongly opposed teaching about transgender issues at all grade levels. They expressed more support, especially for older students, for teaching about issues about same-sex marriage, which was legalized nationwide in 2015. Nearly half of Republicans supported allowing a high school teacher to display a photograph of a same-sex spouse on your desk. For example.
Republicans showed a similar pattern on debate issues about race, with more support for teaching these topics to older students.
Most 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 opposed the civil rights movement and explore the causes of racial wealth gaps. There was less support among Republicans for teaching more modern concepts, such as assigning a book about a 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 school – have often gone hand in hand in political debates, with conservative lawmakers trying to restrict what the schools can make and liberal politicians defending and sometimes requiring instruction. California, for example, will soon require students to take ethnic studies in high school.
However, the results are the latest to suggest that the American public may have more complex views on the issues, with opinions varying depending on the setting 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 state houses are increasingly partisan, with fewer swing districts, said Eric Plutzer, a political science professor and polling director at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. , who did not participate in the new surveys.
“We are in a period where general public opinion 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 opinions of teenage teachers and students and found that they, too, are particularly divided on whether schools should teach about gender identity.
Half of teachers, including 62 percent of elementary school teachers, said gender identity should not be taught, according to the survey, which included about 2,500 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers. Those who supported teaching about gender identity were more likely to teach older students in middle and high school and identify as Democrats.
(Overall, 58 percent of teachers identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, and 35 percent identified or leaned toward Republicans, according to Pew—a more liberal population than Americans overall, who are divided almost equally).
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 most commonly held by teens who identified as or leaned Republican, but it was also held by more than a third of teens who were more liberal.
About one in 10 teens surveyed said racism and racial inequality had never come up in their classes. Slightly more (14 percent) said the same about sexual orientation and gender identity.