Politics In The Classroom: How Much Is Too Much?
Gun control. Climate change. Donald Trump. Affirmative action.
The first presidential primaries are just weeks away and with all these debates and issues in the headlines, there's no question that students are going to want to talk about them.
But how should teachers handle these discussions?
Do politics belong in the classroom at all, or should schools be safe havens from partisan battles? Can teachers use controversial issues as learning opportunities, and, if so, to teach what? And then, the really sticky question: Should teachers share with students their own political views and opinions?
In their book, The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education,Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy offer guidelines to these and other questions, using a study they conducted from 2005 to 2009. It involved 21 teachers in 35 schools and their 1,001 students. Hess is the dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and McAvoy is the program director at UW-Madison's Center for Ethics and Education.
Schools, they conclude, are and ought to be political places — but not partisan ones. I talked with them recently about how, in today's highly polarized society, teachers can walk that very fine line.
Sometimes it seems there's a belief that schools should be political ... sort of. With students taking on issues — like smoking — that are political but not too political. Did you find that in your study?
Hess: You're absolutely right, there are a number of schools that encourage students to get involved in political campaigns, but they tend to be political campaigns that really aren't very controversial. They'll encourage kids to form a campaign about something that everyone agrees should be done. For example, that we should clean up the litter that's around our school, or that it's important for people to eat healthy food. ...
We have evidence that kids learn a lot from doing that. It's not necessarily a terrible thing. My view is that if you're going to have students involved in authentic politics, then it's really important to make sure you have issues for which there are multiple and competing views, and you don't give students the impression that there's a political view that they should be working toward.
McAvoy: How political do we want students to be? That's really a question that a lot of communities struggle with and a lot of teachers struggle with. And the point of the book is to say that, in general, to be able to talk about politics is a skill that people need to learn. And it would be great if it were learned in school because these are great moments in which you bring a group of young people together who are forming their Politics In The Classroom: How Much Is Too Much? : NPR Ed : NPR:
