Just to cook heads up y'all the following podcast contains explicit language.

That means it's been to be some custom.

You are listening to Code Switch from MPR, I'm Gene Demby, and this...

This is actually our 300th episode, and go us...

It's not our 300th anniversary because that'll be 300 years.

But what would you get somebody for their 300th anniversary?

It would have to be beyond like, you know, precious jewels or whatever.

It would have to be like, you know, I don't know, a trip to the sun.

That's something like that.

Um, anyway, back to the lesson at hand.

Can you remember another fall, another back to school season,

that was this contentious?

Like, you might have to go back to the fights over integration and busing in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because right now, all over the country, parents and politicians and school administrators

are beefing over how to run their schools when kids come back.

Or, or whether there should even be kids in schools coming back.

You know, because we have this ongoing pandemic that has claimed the lives of 600,000 people in the United States.

People are fighting over whether teachers should be vaccinated.

Whether students should have to wear masks.

Oh, and then, and then...

We have these very ugly fights over what's being taught in those schools.

Intense debate has focused on critical race theory.

...