A is for Activist. Or…no wait, turns out A is for Apologetics. No matter what your cultural politics, it seems everyone wants to indoctrinate the children. As SAGLRROILYBYGTH know, that’s just not how education really works.

Here’s what happened: I couldn’t help but notice the odd coincidence I stumbled across recently. From the progressive-y-est progressives to the staunchest fundamentalists, everyone seemed to be shilling similar sorts of books for young people—books meant to inoculate children politically or theologically against their environments.

A recent story in the New York Times describes the trend among lefties. Board books such as A Is for Activist have sold tens of thousands of copies. As one bookseller noted, prog parents seem to want to protect their children from Trumpism. As she put it,

When racist, misogynistic and hateful rhetoric has become mainstream, offering affirming and respectful messages to my children seems more urgent than ever.

The books offer cute lines for young readers, stuff like this:

‘F’ is for Feminist. For fairness in our pay.

‘J’ is for Justice! Justicia for all.

L-G-B-T-Q! Love who you choose.

Who buys such stuff? Progressive parents who worry that their children might not come to these conclusions on their own. As one mother told the Times,

Because we are a white, heterosexual, cisgender family living in a racially homogeneous area…we strove to have people of color in our books, or families, maybe, with two dads or two moms.

Will it work? Not really. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t shared across culture-war trench lines.

Among his summer outreach projects, for example, creationist impresario Ken Ham announced a new set of books for fundamentalist youth. Instead of A being for Activist, though, Ham’s books make A for Apologetics. (B, by the by, is for “Biblical Authority.” C is for “Chronological.”)

If we ignore the content of his warnings, Ham’s attitude sounds almost identical to that of the nervous progressive parents. Why do parents need new ABC books? Because, Ham warns, his “national research” has determined that too many fundamentalist children end up abandoning their faith. In these perilous times, Ham warns, parents and churches need new resources to help keep their children on the straight and narrow.

On both sides, parents are nervous about the future beliefs of their toddlers. Both sides worry that their environments are politically or religiously dangerous. And both sides hope that a well-placed book will make the difference between faith and failure.

And, of course, both sides are wrong. Books matter. But no book can turn any child into something he or she is not. No kid today, for example, would turn into a Puritan if he or she stumbled across the New England Primer.

Whoops! Turns out “A” is actually for “Adam’s Fall.”

Rather, books—like formal schooling itself—are only a small part of the education of young people. If progressive parents raise their children in a homogenous, anti-diversity community, their children will probably think those values are right on. And if fundamentalists raise their children to inquire deeply into their faith, those children will probably grow up to do so.