Social studies teachers are eager to discuss the election -- students might actually care! -- but also very nervous about out-of-control classroom debates and angry parents, writes Elizabeth Heubeck in Education Week.
Jennifer Morgan teaches social studies at a Wisconsin middle school in a “really, really bright red” district, she says. Her views are different. “I plan to stick to the facts,” she said.
However, “some of the teachers I’ve talked to have been told by their administrators not to teach it," said Morgan, president of the National Council for the Social Studies. "And others are just really nervous about teaching it, because they’re fearful of what will come out of students’ mouths.”
I was taking AP U.S. history in 1968, the year Vice President Hubert Humphrey faced former Vice President Richard Nixon. I had no idea which candidate my teacher favored.
That attitude is old-fashioned, writes Rick Hess in Education Next. He worries that teachers are being urged to take a side in "a noble crusade between the forces of light and dark."
It's not hard to find educators unabashedly urging colleagues to use classrooms as a platform to promote personal ideological and political agendas. . . . teachers union presidents, academic associations, and teacher surveys make clear that too many have embraced the notion that pedagogy is (and should be) explicitly political.
That's a great way to intimidate students with minority views and drive even more parents out of public schools.
A former civics teacher, Hess recommends that teachers read Joe Klein’s roman à clef Primary Colors about the ’92 Bill Clinton campaign. "It is notable for how viscerally it captures the stew of ambition, belief, delusion, decency, sin, sincerity, compassion, and conviction that defines democratic politics."
Jack Stanton (Klein’s faux-Clinton) tells his aide that politicians "live in an eternity of false smiles" and favors, telling people what they want to hear. "You don’t think Abraham Lincoln was a whore before he was a president? He had to tell his little stories and smile his shit-eating, backcountry grin. He did it all just so he’d get the opportunity, one day, to stand in front of the nation and appeal 'to the better angels of our nature.' That’s when the bullshit stops."
Students should learn "that motives are tangled and often self-serving," Hess writes. It's always been that way. And the idea that "America’s future is on the ballot" goes back to Adams-Jefferson in 1800. "That kind of awareness can create room for reflection, tempering certainty and giving students more room to ask and inquire," instead of picking a side and rushing to the barricades.
He also recommends the speech by Freddy Picker (Klein’s faux-Perot) in which he tells a stadium crowd to "calm down."
"This is a really terrific country, but we get a little crazy sometimes. I guess the craziness is part of what makes us great, it’s part of our freedom. But . . . there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to continue this — this high-wire act, this democracy. If we don’t calm down, it all may just spin out of control."
The world is complicated, says Picker. "Eventually, instead of even trying to explain it, we just give up and sling mud at each other — and it’s a show, it keeps you watching, like you watch a car wreck or maybe wrestling."
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