Through the years, our public schools have provided consistency in American life.

Every kid was exposed to a basic body of knowledge. It was up to us to absorb it.

In Missouri, where I finished high school, we all took three years of science; three of English; three of social studies, including civics and history; three of math, etc.

As we emerge from the pandemic, schools are under scrutiny on several fronts, some coming from the pandemic but others already hot long before COVID-19 changed almost everything.

The backlash against public schools may have begun with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1962. The court held, in Engel v. Vitale, that making children pray in school violates the Constitution’s establishment clause, that to use any prayer in school amounts to establishing an official religion.

Twenty-one years later, our second-grade son was required to pray in school in Warren, Ohio. When my (now late) wife asked the teacher if she knew about Engel v. Vitale, the teacher said, “That doesn’t apply to me.” Apparently because she was a “Christian.”

Conservatives are becoming more active in school affairs. Nowhere more than in Florida, where teachers fear that new state laws won’t let them teach even that slavery existed. Some teachers there have emptied their classrooms of books, fearing censorship.

Last month, a parent of a second-grader in St. Petersburg complained that the movie “Ruby Bridges” would teach her child that “white people hate black people.” The Disney movie is about a 6-year-old integrating New Orleans schools in the 1960s. St. Pete has pulled the movie for now.

The Ruby Bridges protest is about age-appropriateness. Is it OK for, say, ninth-graders, to see the movie, but not second-graders? “Health” classes I took in grade nine wouldn’t have been suitable in grade three. But where do you draw the lines? Suitability is a continuing issue in schools.

Age-appropriateness may keep school administrators and boards busy for years. Few rules are forever, so guidelines merit review over time, although the reason Florida is banning teaching about sensitive topics is purely political. It has nothing to do with educational value.

Here in Maine, school challenges rose this week in Hampden and Farmington. In Hampden, Shawn McBreairty sued the schools for not letting him criticize teachers by name at a board meeting. It’s his second suit against Hampden, where he moved from Cumberland.

McBreairty’s issue seems to be race. When he lived in Cumberland, he charged the schools were teaching critical race theory after the superintendent sent parents a letter about equity. No schools below the graduate level use critical race theory as a tool to study equity.

In the past two years, conservative challengers have lost bids for seats on the Hampden school board, and in Ellsworth, voters returned moderate directors to the school board in the past two elections. On Monday in Farmington, moderates won, too, defeating conservative challengers. Disclosure: I served nine years on the School Administrative District (Regional School Unit) 9 board, two as chair (1992-94).

A Spruce Mountain school director last week questioned a statement by Pender Makin, Maine’s education commissioner. Holly Morris said Makin had told a legislative hearing that “social-emotional learning, gender and race and diversity, equity and inclusion will take priority over academic subjects such as math, reading and science,” the Sun Journal reported.

I can’t find a copy of Makin’s testimony, so I don’t know its full context, but I have to agree with Morris that academics needs to come first. Especially now that we find students have fallen behind even the lowered standards of the past couple of decades.

PBS reports sharply lower basic skills. Reading scores in 2022 were below those in 2019, math scores even lower. Among eighth-graders 38%, up from 31% in 2019, couldn’t figure the third angle of a triangle if they knew the first two. Testers say a 10% drop equals the loss of a year.

“This is more confirmation that the pandemic hit us really hard,” said Eric Gordon, chief executive of the Cleveland, Ohio, school district. “I’m not concerned that they can’t or won’t recover. I’m concerned that the country won’t stay focused on getting kids caught up.”

Gordon and Morris, the Livermore school director, are both correct. We need to stay focused on catching up to where we were in 2019. And then improving.

I like the ideas of Petula Dvorak of The Washington Post, who wrote in a column printed in the Sun Journal, “Parents are responsible for being informed about their teachers, the curriculum, the library. It’s all public and available to anyone who asks.

“They are responsible for managing the biggest influencer in their kids’ lives, the digital world in the palm of their hand(s). There’s stuff (online) far more scarring than a book about a gay penguin and more provocative than any work (e.g. ‘The Bluest Eye’) by Toni Morrison.

“Parents (should be) teaching their kids respect and tolerance … championing a solid work ethic and an open mind. You want teachers to teach the basics? Stop leaving the parenting to them.”

Bob Neal worries about grade inflation more than some social issues. Athletes today commonly finish college in three years. How do they do it when they have two full-time jobs, student and athlete? Neal can be reached at bobneal@myfairpoint.net.