Teaching is political – there’s no way to avoid it

News for teachers has continually gotten worse in the past few years. Florida is taking the lead among conservative states in passing draconian laws intended to force teachers into upholding an “anti-woke” agenda driven by the current culture war — a war fomented by conservatives to rewrite history to ignore racism and enshrine anti-gay and anti-trans policies in schools which should be safe havens for marginalized students, all under the guise of “parental rights.”

In South Carolina, an AP English teacher was told to stop using Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir on being Black in America because, the complaint said, “teaching systemic racism is illegal in South Carolina.” (It isn’t – yet.) Coates showed up at the school board hearing to support her.

Many teachers will enter their classrooms in a few weeks attempting to stay neutral in order to follow the law, avoid being screamed at by angry parents, and keep their jobs.

It likely won’t work.

Either we tell the truth about this world, or we lie to kids. Only one of those is a justifiable choice.

Teaching is inherently a political act, one which forces teachers to either serve the Empire or work for the Resistance. Neutrality is impossible.

A basic definition of teaching

The very act of teaching changes everyone involved (teacher and students). Any definition of the role which forbids or ignores this reality is doomed to fail (or if upheld by force, is destined to break teachers).

Why is such change inherent to the profession? Good question.

When I was in the classical education movement, talking heads there made much of the etymology of the word education: e- is the Latin prefix ex, from which we get words like “exit”; it’s root meaning is simply “out” or “out of.” The Latin verb ducare means “to lead.”

Together, the Latin roots offer a simplistic starting place: the work of education is “to lead out.”

How you fill in the blanks in that starting definition tells me a lot about your view of the world.

Teaching works within a framework of assumptions we cannot avoid

Let’s discuss one of the educational movements which has taken quite a bit of time to delineate its definition of education, forming it around this “leading out” concept: modern classical education. This movement represents a return to an older viewpoint, a collection of methods that surged in popularity about 20 years ago among private and especially Christian schools attached to Reformed churches.

A fundamental gripe I have about classical education comes from the way it nearly always chooses the answers proposed by the dead white dudes held up by Western traditionalist thinkers. They define “leading out” of education as “from ignorance” “to Truth,” and they define truth in a very Western, patriarchal, and religious way. (Not all classical educators are religious, but the movement has found a welcome home in Christian schools looking for ‘rigor.” )

Although the modern classical education movement traces its roots back at least to the early 20th century to the writings of humanist Mortimer Adler (whose How to Read a Book is well worth your time) and Dorothy Sayer’s essay on the grammar of learning, it dovetailed nicely as an educational ideology paired with the growing rejection by White Americans in the1980s of the multiculturalist movement.

“Let’s take education back to its classical roots” sounds great until you consider the power structures, racism, and colonialist oppression inherent in educating wealthy children (the origin of the “real” “classical” education)

ED Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy and Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind came along around the same time to list all the “core cultural facts” that Americans “ought to know,” because they “needed” to be taught in schools to give Americans a unified culture. Were most of those facts tied to the dead white dudes? Absolutely. Did they omit nearly all non-White narratives and contributions by women? Yeah, they did. The cultural canon is chosen by the people who hold the power, and American power structures were overwhelmingly male and white at that time – and I would argue they still are, but that’s a whole other post.

It was easy in the classical education world I found myself in early in my teaching career to plug in some imperialism, add a dash of authoritarianism, follow the clean lines of patriarchy, and arrive at a definition of education which states that teaching is the act of leading a student from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge. Bonus points in the Christian Classical movement for immediately replacing “knowledge” with “Truth” and tying it to the Bible. Voila! Classical Christian Education.

I chose to discuss classical education in order to illustrate how easy it is to fall into a definition of what should be taught and why when it appears to align with your already present cultural values — without being forced to consider the impact of those choices on our curriculum, instructional techniques, or content.

What does it mean “to teach”

I could write whole chapters about the flaws I find in the classical education movement, but let’s leave that for now and ask some questions about this basic very definition of teaching, because I do believe “to lead out of ignorance to a higher state of understanding” is a workable starting point, especially as a definition that many non-teachers might come up with on their own.

(To be clear, I am not advocating for this definition, I’m saying we can start with this, as it probably will strike people as familiar or reasonable.)

Education leads students from their current state (usually defined as a lack of knowledge or skill or understanding) to another, hopefully “better” state: more skilled, more knowledgeable, more capable, more able to contribute to society.

Sure, this type of teaching requires passing along information, but it implies — and the act of teaching IS — so much more.

Our assumptions are showing!

No definition exists in a vacuum. By defining teaching in this way, we are implicitly assuming several more ideas:

Both parties must participate for the act of education to occur. A teacher cannot “lead” an unwilling or resistant student. (Politicians seem ignorant of this; any teacher with more than a few hours in a classroom setting knows it’s true.)
It is assumed that students are in a state of lacking something — knowledge, skill, understanding, context, ability, maturity — which education can remedy.
- More progressive definitions of education would contest this point and suggest that a community of learners have much to offer one another, with both students and teachers bringing their funds of knowledge into the classroom, benefiting from the exchange, and emerging as changed people. My primary support for this viewpoint is Paolo Freire, and I urge you to read his Pedagogy of Freedom (Amazon link). The “funds of knowledge” concept is explained well here.
To “lead” implies that one is a leader and others follow — an inherent power dynamic.
This leadership element reveals a clear power structure and raises more questions: Who picks the destination (“leading” to where)? Do students get any vote in it? Do teachers? What if the school community as a whole cannot agree?
As this definition is written, the wisdom, experience, and current knowledge of the learner is easy to overlook (whether accidentally or purposefully excluded). Again, I refer you to the “funds of knowledge” concept linked in the point above.
Information and knowledge are important to the definition, but they are not the only elements. Skills and morals can fit under this definition as well (note the rising “character education” movement in many schools, especially in schools serving marginalized or poor populations, including charter schools).

How does a teacher remain “neutral” when the activity of teaching itself 1) assumes students lack something (or in a more positive view, that students will benefit from the shared experience of learning in community) and 2) the teacher is “responsible” for the outcome of this exchange, at least in the vast majority of school systems in the United States under the current test-driven regime?

Teaching has always been a political act.

To deny the political (or non-neutral) nature of teaching is to deny the nature of education itself. It’s what makes teaching dangerous, and why Republicans in Florida are doing everything they can to tie teachers to one cultural narrative: a fictional, White American, “God and apple pie and the American flag,” anti-LGBTQ+ narrative in particular. But that only highlights the current state of American politics. Teaching was equally political under President Obama or FDR.

Sidebar: Power

My mind always notices structures of power. When we begin asking questions about power, we rapidly run into questions like these — so many of them that I made a document for myself as a researcher so I don’t forget to run my own work through these questions.

What assumptions lie beneath the definitions we’re using? Who got to define the terms? Who sets the tone of the discussion?
Whose culture gets to be celebrated or taught, and who is being marginalized or condemned or ostracized? What’s missing from the classroom discussion?
Who controls the production of “knowledge” — in this case, who is training teachers? Who writes the textbooks? Who influences their selection? (*coughs* Texas)
What are the motives of those involved? What power structures or people are they trying to protect?
Who wins and who loses in this power exchange?
Whom does the status quo most benefit?
Who controls the power to make decisions? What happens to the opinions of those who disagree?
What systems or structures are affecting the power differential? How easily can those systems or structures be changed? Who’s in the “in” group and who’s “out”?
- Hegemony (see the writings of Gramsci): Who has a preponderance of influence or power over the situation, often with the result that people end up participating in their own oppression because the situation seems impossible to change or inevitable?
- Ideology: What dominant ideas are running the table here? What movements, concepts, or ideas are challenging the dominant cultural narratives?
- Words: Because words do shape reality and how we perceive reality, who’s making the rules for what we can talk about and what words we can use to define it? (There will be both spoken and unspoken rules – it’s important to uncover both.)
How are people, ideas, or values represented in the debate about what teachers should or should not teach? ccept their viewpoint.
Who has the power to control the narrative?

I took time for this sidebar because every one of us needs to have this list of questions on speed dial in our brains. Ask these questions out loud — in meetings, in political discussions, to yourself when confronting the news.

Schools are the very definition of an entrenched system, one that is part of a power structure as well as creating a power structure for everyone working inside it. Ask questions.

Challenging any power structure is an act of resistance.

Teaching as Resistance

Teachers are enmeshed in a web of conflicting requirements and cultural values. They are now asked to remain neutral in a setting where one side is saying “don’t let my kids find out that slavery existed and White folks are still mad about the Civil Rights movement!” or “gay people are hated by God and are going to hell; don’t you dare encourage any child to express an LGBTQ+ identity” … while serving populations of students who are directly affected by the ongoing, horrific effects of racism, poverty, and discrimination written into America’s history from our very founding.

The Culture Wars™ being fought by (predominantly White, Evangelical) Republicans across America are an attempt to enshrine a particular code of morality (anti LGTBQ, anti trans, and anti anything not coded as “nuclear family” values) alongside a view of history (one that rejects the idea that American imperialism, Western hegemony, or White power could be bad). To claw back any progressive improvements made over the past 70 years in an attempt to return to a mythical Mayberry that never existed.

To remain neutral in this setting, under laws such as Florida’s, would mean working for the Empire. Throwing away the part of teaching which prioritizes the needs of the children over the desires of their parents to stay comfortable and unchallenged.

Resistance in practice

I taught high school for many years. Kids came out to me. They trusted me with some of their darkest and hardest feelings. They knew they could trust me and my colleagues to keep confidence and to protect them from adults in their orbit who would only be able to see them as aberrant, dysfunctional, diseased, immoral, or “sinners.” I broke confidence only in the rare cases that a student was heading toward self-harm or was being abused. (Teachers are mandatory reporters.)

I worked hard to get helpful, sympathetic adults into the lives of kids rather than people who would reject a student out of hand because (this is a true story) they got their nose pierced or (also a true story) they came out as gay.

If you think teachers can simply “not talk about their politics at school,” you are living in a dream world.

A classroom isn’t the office where you stare at a spreadsheet for 8 hours and then drive home. Creating a learning community means engineering an environment where teachers and students encounter Big Ideas on the regular and pull them apart, examining every angle and asking good questions.

Is this type of classroom a safe space for kids with all kinds of opinions? Yes, it should be — with the boundary that intolerance will not be tolerated.

Good teachers encounter and reject / redirect racism, sexism, classism, homophobia into better, more aligned ways of thinking. Mutual respect means people have the right to think and ask questions, but they do not have the right to expect others will approve of of their views or accept them as valid.

I am glad I am not a classroom teacher in Florida right now, or Chapin, SC. I’d probably lose my job. I cannot imagine trying to teach in a setting where simply speaking the truth about reality is a punishable offense.

Now what?

How you can support teachers if you aren’t one:

Go to your local school board meeting and take up a chair that some crazy asshole would otherwise be in, shouting conspiracy theories.
Vote in every election, especially the local ones.
If you have kids in school, express support for your kids’ teachers.
- Don’t be afraid to speak out if you think something is off (obviously), but resist the temptation to make this an adversarial relationship when you should have a partnership instead. I worked well with very conservative parents. Mutual respect goes a long way. We both want something good for the student.

If you are a teacher in a current Culture War battleground state, I wish you godspeed.

Don’t sacrifice your integrity just to keep a job. Stay as long as you feel you can be a part of the resistance, if you feel that it is your calling is to stay. However, no single individual can overcome the weight of an entire system facing against you – protect yourself and take care of yourself.

just:words