Deep Reads: School turned him liberal. His mom loves Fox News. Will their bond survive?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
For much of his childhood, Mike Lindgren said, he parroted his mother’s right-wing opinions without question. But after Mike failed several classes as a freshman in public high school, his mother, Jennifer Lindgren, sent him to a private boarding school that promised a hands-on, “inclusive” approach to learning. There, surrounded by teachers and classmates he described as liberal, Mike said he grew more curious about his peers’ worldviews — and correspondingly less sure of his own.
Jennifer fought more with Mike after he went away to Ithaca College, and they spoke less. Then, after not seeing Mike for months, Jennifer traveled to Ithaca College for her son’s graduation.
Could they accept each other, even if they didn’t understand each other anymore?
This story is part of our Deep Reads series, which showcases narrative journalism at The Washington Post. It was written and read by Hannah Natanson. Audio narration comes from our partners at Noa, an app offering curated audio articles.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Hannah Naitinson, a National Education reporter for the Washington Post. |
| 0:05.0 | I wrote a story as part of our Deep Read series, |
| 0:08.0 | which showcases narrative journalism here at the post. |
| 0:11.0 | The story is about a mother and son, Jennifer and Mike Lindgren, who were almost |
| 0:15.9 | driven apart by politics. They were really close during Mike's childhood, until he went away to boarding school in Michigan. You know, while he was |
| 0:24.9 | there he was surrounded by these liberal classmates and some teachers too and he |
| 0:30.0 | told me he started to lean left. |
| 0:32.7 | That made him start to clash with his mother, Jennifer, who is conservative and a former |
| 0:36.8 | cop who loves Fox News. |
| 0:39.8 | They fought about everything. |
| 0:42.2 | But the time Mike got to college they agreed on almost nothing, |
| 0:45.4 | from presidential politics to policing in America. |
| 0:49.2 | Jennifer and Mike began fighting as the Education Culture Wars really took off. It was a time |
| 0:54.6 | when the nation was plunging into battles over what and how to teach about race, |
| 0:58.9 | sex, and gender. Pundits and politicians on the right started saying public schools had become |
| 1:05.1 | sites of left-wing indoctrination. Jennifer watched her son change and |
| 1:10.3 | feared school indoctrination was tearing apart her family in real time. |
| 1:15.0 | I wanted to tell this story because as an education journalist I've been wanting for a long time to understand what's behind claims of indoctrination. |
| 1:25.6 | What actually happens when a student changes his or her views at school? |
| 1:29.5 | How does that happen? |
| 1:30.9 | How does it affect the family? But this story really ended up being about a |
| 1:35.3 | mother and a son, about whether they could find a way to love each other, even if |
... |
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