Teaching Elections and Getting On With Things

In my county, election day means a day out of the classroom for some high school seniors. Thanks to a collaboration between government teachers and local officials, high school seniors serve as poll helpers. It's a win-win--the county needs volunteers, and the students get a first hand look at what a day at the polls looks like. 

Meanwhile, at least one elite high school has offered a day off tomorrow for students who are overwhelmed by the results of the election (spoiler alert: I strongly suspect we won't know the results for a few days) and at least one major university is planning a "self-care suite" with Legos, coloring, milk, and cookies. While it's entirely possible that students will turn their noses up at such offerings, I have to agree that these kind of post-election kinder-care for non-infant humans is a bit too much. 

I am a huge fan of kindness and empathy, but I'm also a big believer that sometimes kindness means encouraging someone to Suck It Up and Get On With Things. 

In the K-16 world, some folks have always suffered from a serious disconnect. In K-12, they want to see students protected and sheltered, kept in a relatively safe bubble. And yet, somehow, the day after high school graduation, they're supposed to emerge from their bubbles and vault into the world as fully-formed adults. 

Conventional wisdom used to be that the bubblers were mostly lefties, but the past few years of culture panic have unleashed on the right the snowflakiest snowflakes that ever flaked. The various laws against discussing "controversial topics" in the classroom have not been aimed just at squelching discussion, but so much as a mention. The worst LGBTQ panic rules are aimed at keeping students from even knowing that LGBTQ persons exist. 

And here comes Daniel Buck (the youngest old man in reformsterdom), writing at The Hill, "Almost a decade into my education career, I cannot fathom a reason that any teacher should cover the election in their classes."

Really? I can think of several, especially the reason that those students will, hopefully, vote in elections. In some cases, they'll do it today. Add to that the problem we have with too many adults whose knowledge and understanding of civics is less than optimal. Maybe with some more studying and discussion of the election, students wouldn't need a safe space to recover from the shock of the actual event.

Buck's point is that teachers are hired to do a particular job, and he's pretty sure that there are clear boundaries to that job.

In the case of classroom teachers, they too are hired to teach specific content, only their patrons are society itself and their charges are a collection of students. They fill a clear, prescribed role: to teach math, American history, or whatever other course to the students in their class. A teacher of ninth grade English has no more business discussing politics than a chef at a high-end Italian restaurant has preparing lutefisk for a diner who ordered pappardelle.

I have to point out that Buck goes off script with "their patrons are society itself," when the culture crowd demands that parents alone are the "customers." I happen to agree with what he actually said-- teachers do work for the community that hires and pays them. And that's why they should be discussing politics, controversial topics, current events, and other features of the actual world in order to better prepare students to become functioning adults in that actual world. None of those subject areas are as cut and dried as Buck (and others) suggests, a fact that he immediately acknowledges in the next paragraph. All school subjects inevitably intersect controversial and timely topics.

Yes, age matters. The approach to any of these topics, including an election, must vary according to grade. 

And there is one group that will be satisfied with only one answer. For some folks (you'll find many of them gathered around the Classical Education banner) there is only One Right Answer-- only one way to understand the issues and features of the world. For them, it's wrong to even acknowledge another viewpoint's existence because to do so is to challenge The One Truth and to invite confusion. Years ago, a colleague set out to teach a unit on world religions. Said one student, "I'm not going to do that. There's no reason to study those other religions, because they are all wrong." 

For those folks, the preferred model of education is a bubble in which only one set of views is presented, which is a challenge once the student enters the actual world. One Right Answer folks have been working hard to build bubbles in the world or, in the case of Dominionists, trying to take command of the world and squash all other views. The sheer amount of energy and effort required to pursue these goals is a clue about the viability of the One Right Answer approach.

Finally, there is one legitimate concern about allowing current events and controversial subjects into the classroom, which is the crusading teach who wants to sell students on their preferred view. I reckon everyone has met at least one. 

In tenth grade, I had Honors History with Miss Anthony, who really wanted us to see the liberal light, to the point of bringing in a local politician to explain why we needed to get out of Vietnam right away. We reacted in one of a couple of ways. Some of us simply argued with her about everything, because it was fun. Other members of the class simply mimicked the point of view she wanted to hear. I'm pretty sure she indoctrinated zero students.

The problem with crusader teachers is not that they successfully indoctrinate students because mostly they don't. The problem is that they don't teach nearly as much as they ought, because students learn to fake a viewpoint instead of learning the content (even young students who aren't fully conscious that they're doing it). Students learn to store a bunch of stuff in their brain in a school basket, the part of their brain that is separate from the part of their brain that deals with the real world.

Buck doesn't want teachers to bring their bias to the classroom. That's a foolish hope, and poor  preparation for the world. Just look at the campaign we're watching enter the new phase--the whole country is steeped in bias, including biases of people who base their conclusions on stuff that isn't even real or true. 

In today's world, keeping bias out of the classroom is like keeping students ignorant of fire and sending them out into a world that is a raging inferno. Can teachers teach an election without bias? Probably not. Can they teach an election without their own bias damaging the lessons? Absolutely.

Bring biases and controversy into the classroom. Bring them all. But you must do one critical thing--you must scrupulously and pointedly make it clear that the room is safe, that nobody will be shamed or downgraded for the views they express. Hand in hand with this is the classroom rule that everyone is treated with respect. 

Your role as teacher is to bring multiple viewpoints into the classroom, representing each as authentically as you can. If I told my students once, I told them a thousand times, "I am not here to tell you these folks were right or wrong, or that you should agree or disagree with them, but to explain as best I can how they saw the world." 

It's not always easy. Some students bring some odious beliefs into your room, but then, so too the country. If they're going to become functional members of a pluralistic society where they live cheek by jowl with people who have different ideas, different beliefs, different ways of understanding the world, then they must have a place to practice doing that. (This is one reason I'm opposed to the idea of a system that lets families withdraw their children to special homogenous isolated silos to get their education).

You don't do this instead of teaching them to read and write and math and understand history and art and all the rest. You do it while you teach all the rest. You acknowledge the controversy even as you Get On With Things. This is the how, not the what. 

The notion that school can somehow stick to just the content and create a completely objective viewpoint-free setting is a snare and a delusion. It cannot be done. 

I'm not suggesting that every lesson every day should be dominated by controversy and viewpoint discussion. I am saying that if we want young humans who can function in a pluralistic society without having to retreat to a milk and cookies room every time there's a big scary controversy and culture clash, then we have to model and practice dealing with current events and controversies in classrooms so that students can better deal with days like today and weeks like the ones ahead of us.