Why do public schools create lots of conflict? Because, as I labored to explain in my Policy Analysis Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict, they force people with diverse views to support a single system of schools, making battles over whose values the schools will teach almost inevitable. Well, in Shenandoah, Iowa — where the people are in a huge row over sex ed – district superintendent Dick Profit summarized the problem much more colorfully, and effectively, than I have:

It’s a political hot potato; it’s a religious hot potato; it’s a parental hot potato…It’s all of these things that cause a crack in the system between society, parents and schools, and we’re still required to do it.

Diane Ravitch, give Mr. Profit a call.