America’s proximate guardrails aren’t working

What often prove to be enduring shifts in culture are only fully understood to have occurred in hindsight. Seemingly benign social trends, along with more exigent moral or policy questions, are analyzed, debated and ultimately decided in the media and political spheres, but rarely is some figurative bell rung announcing the settled conclusion of an issue. Nevertheless, as societal consensus on any given matter ultimately congeals, the direction so taken is eventually manifested through, and mediated by, the institutions constituting civil society.

In the U.S., this exegesis occurs at a national level. Receiving far less attention is how cultural and public policy shifts are transmitted by the institutions (and their personnel) closest to those most impacted. At the community level, these “buffers” moderate the impact of radical or disruptive change associated with significant cultural temblors. Historically they have served as critical guardrails preserving the public welfare as societal winds shift (and often shift back) on major issues of the day.

Anyone who came of age in the 1970s or 1980s (as I did) — an era marked by rising divorce rates, rampant drug abuse and loosened sexual mores — will remember that schools were decidedly not on board with the fads du jour. More broadly, not just teachers but coaches, cops, medical professionals and others steeped in the milieu of their own upbringing diluted the consequences of cultural cross-currents on those in their care, whether directly or by example.  Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” provided crucial shelter from the storm of accelerating, confusing and sometimes harmful social change.

This essential feature of a functioning society has been upended. Now, those with whom we — and, more critically, our children — interact most directly are often less a buffer than they are a vanguard for social experimentation, the ramifications of which are only now being more fully appreciated.

Why has this occurred? While hard to pinpoint a single reason, there are likely several factors.  The “big sort” reordering society around shared values, ways of life, and communities of interest is not only a geographic but also a professional phenomenon. The democratization of information and communication through technology and social media has reinforced orthodoxy among interest and identity groups. Shifts also have occurred within higher education, with both university-level and professional school pedagogy favoring ideology over functional expertise (recent studies suggest medical schools are devoting considerably more time to social and political issues at the expense of the study of medicine, for example). The rise of organized labor within certain professions and the elevation of interest-group objectives over results delivered no doubt have contributed as well.

Primary school teachers are hardly the only profession to have evolved in this manner, but they represent one of its clearest examples, since they are tasked with acculturating those at their most impressionable and vulnerable stage of development — our children.

American society has yet to find some measure of concurrence on any number of cultural questions, from the significant to the banal, including whether critical race theory should be taught in schools, gender transitioning for minors, pronoun usage, native land acknowledgments, and countless other issues large and small. Nevertheless, the societal shock absorbers that once muted the impact of largely agreed cultural shifts are now more likely to be complicit in pushing radical change without the benefit of a settled consensus, and do so without the transparency such actions require.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s surprise victory in his 2021 race, which in part resulted from Loudoun County Public Schools administrators’ mishandling of sexual assaults involving an allegedly transgender student, brought national attention to this phenomenon. A special grand jury found in late 2022 that school officials displayed a “stunning lack of openness, transparency and accountability”; administrators were widely seen as having deliberately hid the threat to classmates from the student, and when the father of the first victim attempted to raise his concerns at a school board meeting, he was wrestled to the ground and arrested — all of which was captured on video.

Elements of this same phenomenon can even be seen in the recent death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of five Memphis police officers, who were clearly more loyal to the ethos and culture — whatever it may have been — of the “Scorpion” anti-crime unit to which they belonged than to promoting public safety.

The common thread in these and myriad other examples of the failure of such proximate guardrails is the prioritization of some competing agenda over the outcomes traditionally associated with a given occupation. Citizens and parents have continued to naively assume that function (teacher, police officer, doctor) dictates conduct, and how these actors see their respective roles and objectives.

What can be done in an era with failing societal guardrails?

Just as corporate America has learned to “re-shore” in the face of supply chain disruptions and an increasingly mercantilist China, citizens and parents need to see themselves as primarily responsible for overseeing functions previously assumed to have been responsibly and safely outsourced. This starts with disabusing ourselves of the notion that societal mediators will of course do what’s best for students; a teachers’ union, for example, wouldn’t insist on extending remote learning solely out of self-interest, would they? Seeing self-serving and other agendas clearly for what they are is a necessary initial step.  

As has been observed in school board elections in Virginia, Florida and around the country, another critical component is for citizens — the “customer” — to engage more actively in their communities. While school boards are a good start, there is much more to be done on the electoral and civil society fronts to improve transparency, accountability and the primacy of results over agenda.

Another vital aspect is to push back on the woke corporatism infusing and empowering sectarian agendas over functional outcomes at all levels. In particular, private-sector advocacy for societal change, which typically ensues from one or both of self-interest — as is often the case with Big Pharma — or a desire to be seen as progressive (i.e., buying protection), provides air cover for misdeeds at the community level.

Lastly, it is imperative to call things what they are. Teachers and medical professionals should not advocate for the mutilation of minor children. We must remember that not all change is progress — otherwise, lobotomies to treat mental illness and eugenics through forced sterilization of “undesirables” would remain with us.

Many of us over 40 grew up in an age in which our institutions acted “in loco parentis,” a legal doctrine in which school and other authorities acted in the place of a parent. When did “non compos mentis” displace in loco parentis?

Richard J. Shinder is the founder of Theatine Partners, a financial consultancy, and a frequent lecturer, speaker and panelist on business and financial topics. He has written extensively on economic, financial, geopolitical, cultural and corporate governance-related issues. Follow him on Twitter @RichardJShinder.