I absolutely agree with you here, Dana, in the context of what happens in the classroom. Schools are, after all, there to provide the intellectual stimulation that families can't necessarily offer. Whether that's differential calculus (please don't quiz me on that but I seem to remember it's a thing) or moral and ethical issues.

And we can assume that a majority of families will tend to be fairly conservative about gender issues, simply because as parents we are, by definition, a generation behind the times, and not all of us have wanted or been able to keep up with shifting social realisations.

If kids aren't coming back from school telling you about a moon of Jupiter or deep sea shrimp that didn't even exist in the text books you had when you were their age, you'd be disappointed.

But.. (there was always going to be a but, right?)

I do worry that by taking a boldly proactive approach, with the best of intentions, to move the debate forward and equip the next generation for a different, better, more open-minded future, educators may go too far and trigger an aggressive overreaction from conservative sectors of society.

And I think we can unquestionably say that is already happening. And if you feel they've gone a little further than you instinctively feel comfortable with, but are happy to rationalise, come to terms with and ultimately appreciate that, then I bet there are other parents who will already be painting their signs to mount a protest at the school gate.

I don't mean by this that liberals should just roll over and let the reactionaries dictate the terms of debate. Far from it.

But I do think that when engaging in a dialectic approach, institutions and their public-facing representatives need to be very sure about who is on the other side of the debate, both the median mass and the outliers at either end of the scale, how they might react, and whether it's in their interests to trigger that process at any give time.