Crypto News: The culture wars hit classrooms

Welcome to Bw Daily, the Bloomberg Businessweek newsletter, where we'll bring you interesting voices, great reporting and the magazine's usual charm every weekday. In this issue, we are showcasing all the stories we published as part of our Culture Wars special. Let us know what you think by emailing our editor here! If this has been forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Here's the latest on the Sam Bankman-Fried fraud trial.
Senate Democrats want to subpoena Harlan Crow, the billionaire who made undisclosed gifts to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Calls are growing inside Israel for Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.

Linda reached her breaking point when all the books were removed from her daughter's elementary school library. Ashley got there when her twins were taught in sixth grade that Manifest Destiny referred to Native Americans who'd decided to move away from their homelands. For Jessica, it happened after the passage of Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, often described as the "Don't Say Gay" bill. Kate made the decision when she and her husband learned that teachers were being discouraged from using the word "slavery" in units about US history. For Emily, it was when she found out her trans son wouldn't be able to use the boys' bathroom.

None of these mothers had ever imagined they'd home-school their children, but then their local public schools became unrecognizable to them. (Some of the people in this story requested we use pseudonyms or only their first names, for fear of repercussions.) Conservative state governments have been engaging in an educational culture war, pushing curricula further to the right than at any other time in recent history. The clear leader has been Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has led an overhaul of the education system, shaping it to his ideological vision: placing restrictions on many books and pedagogical matters such as the teaching of race and gender; banning mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic; forcing trans and nonbinary students to use bathrooms corresponding to their biological sex; requiring parental signature for a teacher to use a nickname or different pronouns for a student; and arming school staff in response to shootings. His administration's policies have weaponized the conservative home-schooling community's values and language—using phrases such as "family choice," a "parental bill of rights" and "indoctrination" (to refer to teaching about historical wrongs perpetrated by White people)—pushing liberal families out.

"I always thought home-schooling was for people who didn't want their children to be vaccinated or to learn accurate science," says Lindsay Poveromo-Joly, who lives in Coral Springs and started home-schooling her children in 2022 because of book bans and changes to Florida curricula. "But it's the opposite, and the anti-vax free-for-all is what's happening in the public schools."

"There is an enduring and substantial increase in home-schooling that has persisted into when in-person public school options reopened," says Thomas Dee, an economist at the Stanford Graduate School of Education who collaborated with the Associated Press on a study of the recent exodus of students from public school. There's been an increase across the country; his analysis of the 22 jurisdictions (21 states and the District of Columbia) with available data found that for every student who left public education for private school, nearly two left to home-school.

A typical home-schooling day for one family in Florida. Photograph by Michael Adno for Bloomberg Businessweek

The numbers are especially significant in states that already had a strong tradition of home-schooling. In Florida, for example, about 106,000 students were home-schooled in fall 2019; by fall 2021, when schools had reopened, the number had swelled to more than 152,000. That increase has driven an ideological shift among home-schooled families. Historically, the movement was predominantly religious and right-leaning; in 2019, the most recent year for which federal data are available, 59% of home-schooling parents selected religious instruction as a factor in their choice, and three times as many were Republicans as Democrats. A 2023 Washington Post poll found that only 34% of parents had decided to home-school so they could offer religious instruction and that Republicans outnumbered Democrats by a narrower 2 to 1.

A survey from the National Home Education Research Institute found that families of K-12 students home-schooled in the 2021-22 school year spent an average of $600 per student annually, which would make home-schooling a $1.9 billion industry. Overall, in the past year, they say there are 3.1 million kids being home-schooled. "It's been a very observable and marked shift," says Tiffany Petty, who founded Torchlight Curriculum, which offers literature-based secular lessons. Demand for her materials more than doubled during the pandemic, she estimates, and it continues to grow. Petty, who also runs a discussion group for Torchlight users, says she's seen an increase in parents asking about materials for children with particular backgrounds: a neurodivergent daughter, a biracial son.

Michelle Parrinello-Cason, who offers online classes and resources for home-schoolers through her company Dayla Learning, has seen a steady increase in demand for her courses since schools reopened in person, especially from families who've come to home-schooling because of concerns about banned books, the whitewashing of history curricula or an unsafe environment for LGBTQ students. "There is absolutely an overrepresentation of children who are nonbinary and transgender in my online classes, and it breaks my heart," she says. "I love having them, but they are, by and large, students who I believe would have absolutely been thriving in a classroom situation if they felt welcome and safe there."

As conservative politicians bring the rhetoric and beliefs of the evangelical right into mainstream classrooms, reshaping American public education, liberal families are using the right's hard-won home-schooling protections to give their children a secular education in kitchens and living rooms across the country. Their rationale goes beyond curriculum: In the absence of protections at school, many of these new home-schooling parents have opted for a safe environment for LGBTQ kids and those of color. But the growth of this extreme adaptation to changing public school conditions comes at a huge cost, both for individual families and America's education system at large.

What happens when liberal parents opt for home-schooling? Read the whole story here.

Around the world, cities have embraced a climate change tax aimed at reducing driving (or at least increasing the cost of it) in crowded streets. Congestion pricing can be controversial—but until it hit London, it hadn't become a kind of conspiratorial culture war. Daniel Zuidijk explains:

In 2019, London became the first major city to require people to pay for access to certain roads if their vehicles don't meet emissions standards, establishing what it calls an Ultra Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ. This inspired some grumbling when initially introduced, but the implementation is now widely seen as a successful, relatively uncontroversial measure to improve local air quality. But even with the wave of populism that inspired the Brexit movement still in the air, city officials weren't expecting the vitriol that would come when Mayor Sadiq Khan last year announced his plans to expand the zone to suburban areas on the city's outskirts.
The anti-ULEZ coalition was notable not only for its enthusiasm but also for many people's radical theories about city officials' motivations. There were the standard complaints that come with any new municipal fee, accusing the local government of squeezing money from drivers. But opponents quickly began to circulate theories that the expanded ULEZ was the first step in a sweeping program of social control. Like many prominent figures in the more extreme parts of the anti-ULEZ movement, Nick Arlett has been less than clear about his views, avoiding specifics in favor of vague references to the road fee being the "thin end of the wedge."

So what kinds of social control were opponents worried about?

When the anti-ULEZ crowd began showing up at Khan's public appearances, they brandished signs endorsing all kinds of conspiracy theories describing everything from government-backed digital currencies to plans for more walkable cities as shadowy tools of oppression.

It would be one thing if the protests were contained to the fringes. But that's not exactly what happened. Read here about how this thinking reached the top of British government and, potentially, beyond.

Fashion is never just about garments. As Derek Guy explores in his extremely fun (and interesting) piece, American fashion history is dotted with moments of contention, when a previously unremarkable item became the center of a culture war. Here is a sampling; for the full buffet, go here.

Motorcycle Jackets
When brothers Irving and Jack Schott designed the first motorcycle jacket in 1928, they built the garment around function: an asymmetrical zip that would block wind, a snap-button collar that could be fastened to the neck and material cut from heavy horsehide or cowhide to protect the wearer from unforgiving pavement. Their jacket, dubbed the Perfecto, replaced the leather aviators that motorcyclists wore in the early 20th century. But in 1947 the leather motorcycle jacket transformed from being a simple utilitarian garment to symbolizing a new American menace.

That summer, a procession of 4,000 bikers thundered into Hollister, a small California farming community hosting its annual Fourth of July carnival. Members of motorcycle clubs such as the 13 Rebels and the Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington descended upon the rural town, engaging in brawls, shattering store windows, participating in illegal drag races and overrunning the small local police force. Life magazine soon published an exposé titled "Cyclist's Holiday: He and Friends Terrorize Town." The article featured an image of a young biker, later identified as Eddie Davenport, slouched astride his Harley-Davidson, shirt open and surrounded by smashed beer bottles. Notably, he was pictured wearing what seemed to be a naval deck jacket—a possible indicator that he, like many, was an ex-serviceman who found solace in motorcycle organizations upon returning home from war. Debates persist regarding whether subsequent media coverage inflated the extent of violence and destruction, but this event indelibly transformed the perception of black leather jackets in the eyes of the nonriding public.
From that point on, black leather jackets became the very essence of rebellion—a powerful symbol of anti-conformity, inner turmoil and an aversion to the rules of law. In quiet corners of small towns, residents fretted over the specter of motorcycle "hoodlums" and the prospect of destructive escapades. The indelible image of the leather-clad rebel found its apotheosis in Marlon Brando's role in the 1953 classic, The Wild One. This symbolism continued through the 1970s and '80s when punks such as Sid Vicious wore studded motorcycle jackets with skin-tight jeans, metal chains and spiked hair.

Today, the black leather motorcycle jacket is a form of professional dress, particularly for women. Political figures such as Cindy McCain, Sarah Palin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wear leather motorcycle jackets during television appearances. Executives like Michelle Gass (president of Levi Strauss & Co.), Adena Friedman (president and chief executive officer of Nasdaq) and Mary Barra (CEO of General Motors Co.) have worn them in lieu of a blazers. The motorcycle jacket still stands for power and strength, but by transitioning into a luxury item that elites wear, it's lost some of its countercultural subversiveness and sense of danger.

75 million

That's the number of horror movie tickets sold so far in 2023. The genre is Hollywood's most reliable moneymaker, with 46 films released and $798 million grossed domestically this year.

"We were thinking gentrification would take 20 years. Now we're thinking of a five-year gentrification."

Alex King

Real estate agent in Fort Myers Beach, Florida

Fort Myers Beach, destroyed by Hurricane Ian's winds and flooding, is being remade by those who can afford to build stronger structures—and face future storms. Read the full story here.

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