Volume Introduction: The Next Generation

Education and drug policy are paired in this volume because both are, at bottom, about what we do to – and for – the young. One debate asks what we put into children’s minds; the other asks what we allow into their bodies. On the surface they belong to different policy domains: school boards and curriculum standards on one side, criminal justice and public health on the other. But beneath the surface, both are proxy wars over the same terrifying set of questions. How much authority do parents hold over the formation of their children? How much power does the state claim in that same project? And will the next generation turn out alright?

Every parent who has ever lain awake at night worrying knows that these two fears – what are they teaching my child to think, and what is my child putting into their body – are twin expressions of the same primal dread. The education wars and the drug wars are fought with different vocabularies and different weapons, but the combatants on every side are motivated by an identical impulse: the drive to protect the young from a world that seems determined to devour them. That impulse is universal. The disagreements about how to honor it are what fill the pages that follow.