Teaching and Politics

 I’ve seen memes around the web asserting that teachers should never reveal their political leanings to students.  The point of education, the meme continues, is to get students to think, not to indoctrinate them.

And that is true enough.  Indoctrination is for churches and parents, and more power to them.  Or rather, wouldn’t it be nice if they too got young’uns to think instead of to follow doctrine!  On the other hand, when it comes to teachers not revealing their political prejudices, as those same young’uns say, YMMV.

 

I think back to my 12^th grade social studies class.  The course was titled Problems of Democracy.  It was a terrific class.  We didn’t have a textbook.  Rather, the teacher, Mr. Kocher, had us read real documents.  The Declaration and the Constitution, of course.  But also a series of Supreme Court cases. I remember three in particular:  Marbury v. Madison; Plessy v. Ferguson; Brown v. Board.  Those are almost a gimme, verging on trite, if you will, from the point of view of being essential to the development of American democracy.

 

Mr. Kocher took us through the documents and the cases.  We talked about them, discussed them, took positions pro and anti, debated the merits and demerits.  It was a really immersive experience.  It introduced us, more than introduced us to the bones, tendons, and muscles of the American system of government.

 

It just so happened that Mr. Kocher, besides teaching that crackerjack couse, also ran for Congress.  As a Republican.  Of course we all knew that he was a Republican—how could we not.  Did his political leanings leach into the course?  I suppose at the margins they did, since it’s impossible to keep one’s fundamental beliefs out of any discussion.  But did Mr. Kocher indoctrinate us with his beliefs?  Nope.

 

On the contrary, Mr. Kocher always encouraged independent thought.  That extended to his third occupation back then.  He was the teacher who sponsored the school’s debating team, of which I had the honor of being captain—an honor not at all deserved, I have to say, since I was both a lousy leader and a lousy debater.  But faut de mieux, I suppose.

 

I point to that third of Mr. Kocher’s tasks because the topic for debate that year was profoundly political.  We're talking 1969-70, the middle of Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War, with the bombing of Cambodia and Hanoi and the Tet Offensive and . . . .  The royal mess that we got into in Southeast Asia, in short.  And the topic for debate?  “Resolved:  that Congress should prohibit unilateral United States intervention in foreign countries.”

 

The political division of hawks and doves back then was not entirely clear cut.  Sure, there were Democrats who wanted to get out of the war ASAP—hence McGovern and McCarthy, for instance.  But the war had been a Democratic enterprise from 1960 onwards—hence “hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go.”  And for the most part (I don’t recall an exception, but no doubt there were), Republicans were all for continuing the war—hence the peace demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, but not, at least not so extensively, at the Republican Convention in Miami Beach.  We could influence the Dems, but not the Reps.

I suppose that "we" is revelatory of where I stood!

 

Despite that fundamental division between the two parties, and knowing full well that as a Republican Mr. Kocher would probably be in favor of continuing the war—he never indicated one way or the other, as I recall—we debaters took direction from Mr. Kocher without any doubt at all that he would be as forthcoming for the affirmative as for the negative on the resolution to be debated.  And Mr. Kocher was helpful, suggestive, full of insight and encouragement for those of us on the affirmative, arguing against what probably were his deeply held beliefs about the war.

 

So yes indeed, it’s a good to say that teachers should not impose their political, or almost any other belief on their students.  Deliberate imposition is always always wrong.  But that’s not the same thing as saying that teachers should keep their beliefs secret.  Indeed, it might even be worse, from the point of view of indoctrination, to keep the teacher’s politics hidden away.  The impression that the students then get is that the instruction they are getting is entirely neutral.  As far as I'm concerned, that's never the case—bias always creeps in.

As I see it, better to know where the bias lies and correct for it, than to assume that what comes from the teacher is straightforward, unbiased truth.