Many students are finding themselves in the midst of an escalating cultural conflict in which political activists are demanding that books dealing with sensitive topics relating to race and sexuality and those that include coarse language and explicit violence be removed from school libraries. The teaching of race and sexuality also proven to be politically controversial in recent years, so much so that following the COVID-19 pandemic, support for parents' rights in deciding their children's educational contents and school choice, or the redirecting of tax money via vouchers to fund private schools chosen by the parents, has grown considerably. Many parents have also used school vouchers to send children to religious or parochial schools, taking advantage of a 2022 Supreme Court ruling. To pacify angry parents and to comply with new state laws, many schoolteachers have opted to remove certain items from their lessons altogether.
