FREE THOUGHT IN THE CLASSROOM

At the fantastic Eschaton blog site, one can post comments on each of Atrios's blog posts. Last weekend, I got myself caught up in a bit of a debate about issues surrounding the racist comments by and subsequent firing of Missouri middle school teacher Jendra Loeffelman. Read about it here (they may move the story into their archives soon; if that's the case, there should be a link in the right margin). If you've been reading Real Art for a while, then you probably realize what some of my views on race and racism in the US are: we live in a very racist country but propaganda tends to make most whites not realize it. Anyway, because I am a teacher myself, I am a bit worried about the outright firing of an educator for expressing a controversial opinion, despite the fact that her opinion is abhorrent to me--to quote Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it." Such a point of view is absolutely crucial in the classroom: without it, critical thought is impossible.

Anyway, lots of liberals still tend toward the decidedly uncritical "politically correct" point of view. This was the point of conflict for the debate on Eschaton. I'm going to post my comments only; you ought to get the gist of what it is that I am responding to from context.

the Eschaton debate (Ron's statements)

my first comment:

I, too, am a high school teacher and I find that I've got to agree with Elias for the most part. The everyday reality of public education is that it is ultimately impossible to keep a "fair and balanced" kind of ideological neutrality on political and cultural issues. As Elias pointed out, students and teachers talk; this seems impossible to avoid, even if I wanted to. Avoidance of hot topic issues is a statement in and of itself: no, can't talk about sex; no, can't talk about dirty words; nope, not religion; drugs, just say no; shut up: do as I say!

Kids are smarter than that contrary to popular opinion.

Another problem is that teachers' spoutings of conventional political wisdoms, no matter how stupid, are often tolerated or encouraged. For instance, the school where I work in Texas has a government/economics teacher who openly wore an "impeach Clinton" button during the weeks of the impeachment and trial process; nobody seemed to be bothered by this.

Given this pathetic reality, there's no way I'm going to keep my mouth shut when teenagers ask me about condoms, for instance--Texas is, by law, an abstinence-only sex ed state. Personally, I do try to tell my students that I'm one of those "crazy liberals" and to take everything I say with a grain of salt. I've also, at the beginning of every school year, taken to reading University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen's teaching philosophy (posted on his homepage) to my classes to cover my tail; it's a good essay on critical thought, objectivity, and the classroom.

Actually, one could argue that, in many ways, the main thrust of public education is ENTIRELY ideological in nature.

School heirarchies are based on a 19th century Prussian military model (this is no joke; check it out!); that is, discipline and order almost always prevail, while the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and civic responsibility take only a secondary role. In the most important ways, American public education is about indoctrinating children into the culture of authority and obedience. School is an ideological institution to begin with but nobody wants to admit this.

The real point to consider given the unreliability of "objectivity" is the ideology being taught, or what some have called the "unofficial curriculum." I bet that Loeffelman was not the only faculty member with such views; these views are understood by students whether openly spoken or not.

my second comment:

Dominion said, "a feature of Houston High Schools..." I teach in a community right outside of Houston and my experience is a bit different from Dominion's.

Dominion said, "'free speech' rights are curtailed all the time...that is exactly as it should be." This is just not true. The part of the Houston metro area where I work is arguably far more fundamentalist than Houston in general. Here, the reality is that teachers have all kinds of free speech rights as long as they parrot the prevailing community values. That is, teachers openly bash evolution, even biology teachers. Teachers openly advocate drilling for oil in the arctic. Teachers openly profess their Christian beliefs and speckle their talk with religious innuendo. "Student sponsored prayer" is actually just a facade for school sponsored prayer. The list goes on and on.

Given this circumstance and my own progressivism, I must be very careful about how I speak. But I do speak because teenagers are very concerned with precisely those issues that Dominion says we should not talk about. I must speak because nobody else at my school seems to lean leftward--my school's students are being deprived of alternatives to their community's extremely narrow point of view.

Granted, it would be suicide to push, say, the validity of evolution but it's pretty safe to say something like, "evolution is biology's organizing principle; you don't understand modern biology if you don't understand evolution--you don't have to believe it, but you do have to understand it." Or, "feminists believe that no woman can truly be socially equal to men unless she can choose the circumstances under which she has a child; pro-lifers, however, define a fetus to be a person and therefore abortion is murder--from that point of view, America is drowning in blood." I've got to kiss a few rings, but just getting the liberal view into consideration at all is subversive given the community.

I think Elias defends Loeffelman for the same reason that I do: stifling classroom discussion from the left also means stifling classroom discussion from the right. I totally disagree with Loeffelman's comments and I also believe that she should have taken the opportunity to have a larger, more wide-ranging classroom discussion (this was her true misdeed). But teachers must be allowed to state their opinions and challenge students' notions. This is how to teach "critical thinking." Refraining from controversy makes apathetic students who make C's into apathetic adults who do not vote.

Don't get me wrong, I do not hold up Loeffelman to be a paragon of critical thought. However, the ideas at stake here are hopelessly interwoven with the controversy her comments created. Is she being fired for stating her taboo opinion or for not allowing for dissenting points of view (or telling students about them if no one knows how to or that they should dissent)?

If she can be fired, maybe I can be fired for talking about condoms in my abstinence-only, high-teen-pregnancy-rate school. This is what's on the line. The real problem is that schools in general almost never allow for a diversity of opinion. Change that and things should be better: athiest teachers, Christian teachers, feminist teachers, neo-liberal teachers, etc. Everybody gets numerous points of view.

And finally, Dominion said, "It is not, never, ever the teachers job to supplant the morals that I teach my kids at home." Get over it. School is already and always has been an ideological institution of control and discipline; this is the main lesson that ALL children graduate with: follow orders when you are a subservient; give orders when you are a superior--you are on your own. Do you really want that taught to your children? Well, it is. Given that reality, I, for one, will continue to talk with my students about morals, culture, ethics, politics, sex, drugs, rock and roll and dirty words.

my third post:

Actually, I don't equate the value of left and right opinion at all. (I'm pretty far left and my personal view is that conservatism is quite evil.) Rather, I believe that conservatism as a philosophy has become so overwhelmingly dominant in the public discourse that the United States effectively no longer has a "marketplace of ideas" (if we ever truly had one at all...). No "marketplace of ideas" equals no democracy. This is a factual reality. Obviously, it's much worse in Houston.

My point is that if students don't get multiple views all the way across the political spectrum, they never learn how to think. Unfortunately, this is the situation the country is in: people don't think and this really frightening civic problem can be blamed squarely on the schools (and the corporate media, I suppose, as well). Public education is far more about "do it because I told you to or else" than about debate and thought; questioning authority is seen as the worst thing a student can do, worse, even, than fighting. Even the major teachers' unions (unions are supposed to be liberal, right?) want more classroom discipline. The entire educational system is in on the racket. There is seemingly no hope for the situation changing.

Furthermore, in order to understand the importance of liberal philosophies, students must understand conservative philosophies. I might even venture to say that most adult conservatives don't fully understand their own points of view, ditto for liberals. That's why there is effectively no real debate in this country at the political level: political beliefs are, for most people, simply strong, emotionally image-laden slogans. Rarely do I ever encounter a true clash of ideas in the public realm.

I stand for real debate because I believe that on a fair playing field, liberal views will win. But the public is unaccustomed to true debate, to a true clash of ideas, and is, therefore, wary of that which truly enables democracy.

Just because I think that conservative views should be heard does not mean that I equate right and left thinking. In fact, I always tell my students what my opinion is on almost any subject and that I believe I'm right--I also admit that there are lots of other seemingly intelligent people who disagree with me. But my point gets across and recognizing that there are other points of view besides my own makes me all the more credible.

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