Culture Wars are harming our ability to staff important civic functions

This morning, I got a newsletter from The Washington Post containing this article about America’s teaching shortages. Within said article, you have this passage:

Why are America’s schools so short-staffed? Experts point to a confluence of factors including pandemic-induced teacher exhaustion, low pay and some educators’ sense that politicians and parents — and sometimes their own school board members — have little respect for their profession amid an escalating educational culture war that has seen many districts and states pass policies and laws restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, racism, gender and sexual orientation, as well as LGBTQ issues.

Indeed. Then you have this, about the case for mandatory national service, and this section:

Among the elite classes, the idea of service has mostly been reduced down to a line item on a college application. The much-discussed divides in this country, whether economic, racial or educational, cannot be solved through some feat of wonkery or through pretty speeches by politicians. What needs to exist is some place that can pool a lot of different young people together. College will never accomplish any of that in the way that two years of service — hopefully eventually two mandatory years of service — could.