I never heard this story but I do believe that modern education is getting out of hand. There is a certain type of learning that needs to be done in the classroom with a teacher, another type that should be done at home with the parents, and another type that the child/teen simply must learn on his or her own as part of the growing up process. The problem I see is that public schools for the most part are trying to do all three.
Classroom education should primarily focus on knowledge learning (such as the three R's). In other words the type of learning so that when the kid is 18 years old he or she knows how to read and write at an adult level, understands intermediate mathematics, and has a general knowledge of history, science, classic literature, art, and music, geography, and other things that would be expected of an adult functioning in society. Moral, ethical, and safety education primarily relies on the parents. If parents don't take this responsibility that is sad but it really isn't the school's job to be doing this stuff. Aside from following the laws of the land, morality, ethics, and belief systems will vary from family to family. There is no way for a school to expect all students to have the same personal values. It is a private thing to be taught in the home. A school may want to regulate certain social interactions for the protection of the students but only where it actually applies to the safe functioning of the school (i.e. you can't beat up a trans kid, you can't smoke pot in the bathroom, etc.).
The worst thing that is happening is schools are trying to customize kids' personal feelings and emotions. These are things that neither the school or even the parents (or anyone) can teach. Yet schools do this all the time. They are always concerned about making children and teens feel a certain way at certain times about certain things. Happiness, sadness, anger, depression, joy, humor, etc. are all natural human emotions children and adults experience. The school can help kids deal with those emotions in a mature manner but they shouldn't be customizing those emotions.
Sorry for the rant but I think you get the point. Teachers should be teaching information. They should not be attempting to make and mold every aspect of every student's life who walks in their doors. You wonder why both students and teachers snap and make the news, maybe this is part of the problem. This is done in universities and workplaces as well. Most people want to simply go to class, learn the material, and get their degree. Most employees simply want to clock in, do their job, get their paycheck, and go about their life. They don't want group hugs, forced sharing and caring, and having their private lives extracted and then homogenized.
