Republicans are more likely than Democrats to want parents to be the only decision makers when it comes to protecting their kids from both the coronavirus and controversial ideas. In polls, they are more inclined to say that protecting personal liberty is more important than the common good; that masks and vaccines shouldn’t be mandated in schools; and that parents should get a say in what children are taught. “I feel like, as a parent, we know what’s best for our children,” Erica, a Virginia mother whom I agreed to identify by only her first name because she’s concerned for her job, told me. “If you want to wear a mask, please do. But please don’t force me to have my child wear a mask.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are more likely to express interest in protecting the common good. They’re more likely to feel that, in school, students should learn to fix social problems. And in polls, they’re more likely than Republicans to trust teachers and public-health officials. Caroline Pharr, a Democratic mom in Helena, Montana, supports universal masking in schools in part because it “protects communities, including those that can’t choose to get vaccinated yet,” she told me. “Wearing a mask doesn’t just impact you; it impacts everyone around you.” She thinks that public-health officials, not individual parents, should be the ones to decide when masks come off in schools.

“Education for a long time was an issue that tended to be somewhat less polarized than other issue areas,” says Sarah Reckhow, a political scientist at Michigan State University. “And now it just looks a lot like other highly salient policy issues where Republicans and Democrats come down on opposite sides on key questions.” Her data show that in 2000, liberals and conservatives in Michigan diverged little on their attitudes toward charter schools; by 2012, support for charter schools was 26 percent higher among conservatives.