> Issues of “indoctrination” aside, I find the rampant bad behavior and lack of action far more concerning.
Prioritizing safety over education becomes prioritizing process over purpose. There will never be perfect safety anywhere, and if being safer than home isn't perfect enough, we logically should be intervening a lot more at home. The content and structure of education, however, we have almost complete control over (aside from the latitude of individual teachers who we hire and fire.) It's very convenient to ignore the thing we can control for the sake of the thing we can't.
It's to postpone fixing the thing we can fix (matching educational content and process with our agreed upon intentions) for the sake of the thing that no institution in any place or culture has ever fixed (ending all crime, discomfort or suicide.)