Teachers are self-censoring for fear of upsetting a given political constituency

Note: This article appeared as a Guest Column in the Fort Myers News Press. Click Here to read in the News-Press

This post was written in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial. A good source on the trial is the book, Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, also has some good articles on the Scopes and our current challenges. Click Here, Here, and Here.

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This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial.  In 1925, teacher John Scopes was put on trial for having the audacity to teach a scientific theory in a science class. The theory in question was Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection. In Tennessee, it was illegal to teach, “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The trial was noteworthy for devolving into a circus. It became a headline fight between the three-time presidential contender and noted evangelist William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, and the notorious agnostic litigator Clarence Darrow defending Scopes. The apex of the trial was when Darrow managed to get Bryan on the witness stand as an expert on the Bible. The aging, and it turned out ailing, Bryan defended his faith for two hours under relentless questioning from one of the greatest lawyers of all time.

Despite the fanfare and drama, the trial ended in anti-climax. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. This fine was later overturned on a technicality. The debate between Darrow and Bryan, however, became a thing of legend, amplified by the popular press. In the rhetorical contest between Darwin and Jehovah, the underdog came out on top. However, the litigants involved never touched on the real debate at issue in the trial.

The evolution vs. creationism debate was huge, but at issue in Scopes was rather, who gets to decide what children are exposed to in schools? Should teachers have the right to expose their students to knowledge that some parents find offensive?

The answer is yes—with caveats.

Sixty-five years after the Scopes trial, when I was attending teacher school, it was understood that Darwin’s theory would be taught in science classes. Evolutionary theory is, after all, the foundational theory of biology. Without a knowledge of Natural Selection, the student does not understand biology. Period.

Biblical literalists, however, were not done. They presented the argument that there was a theory counter to Natural Selection, called Intelligent Design Theory. The latter held that life was so complex that it could not have happened at random. It must have been the result of an “intelligent designer,” a la God. Proponents of Intelligent design argued that both theories should be taught in conjunction.  They challenged science teachers to “teach the debate” and to give equal time to both perfectly equal theories.

This is clever politics, but it is awful science. Intelligent Design, by scientific standards, is not a theory and therefore should not be taught in a science class. From a scientific standpoint, a theory must satisfy two requirements. It must explain the phenomenon, and it must be testable. Intelligent Design is not testable.

Today’s iteration of this debate is the Parental Rights movement. Ideologically, this movement shares many of the same beliefs as the “creationists” and “Bible literalists” of old, but their approach is much more comprehensive. Central to their approach is the idea that parents should be in charge of what their children learn. The parent should have veto power over a teacher introducing their children to “divisive concepts.”

This is, of course, a facially absurd argument. Philosophically, it does not pass the “Universalization Test”. In other words, if every parent exercised this right, it would be impossible for a teacher to teach anything. Of course, Parents’ Rights activists have no interest in universal rights. They are more selective. By “parents” they mean conservative, white, Christian parents. Other parents don’t count.

If you are the parent of a trans or gender non-conforming student. You don’t count. If you want your child to have a critical understanding of history and to learn how their lives might be influenced by racism or systemic oppression, you don’t count. If you think that history lessons should be more than indoctrination into patriotic propaganda, you don’t count. You and your children are excluded from this notion of rights. Which means, they are not rights. They are privileges.

Clarence Darrow recognized that if interest groups, like Moms for Liberty or the Florida Citizens Alliance, can dictate what is taught, then this power will escalate into book banning and censoring the press. “If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding…Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private.” He warned that under such a regime we would, “with flying banners and beating drums [march] backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century.”

Whereas that may be appealing to some in Lee County, most of us are dedicated to this twenty-first century and would like our kids and grandkids to walk confidently into the twenty-second.

So, if parents should not dictate curriculum, who should? After all, teachers are not immune from the busy feeding of ignorance and fanaticism. How do we secure the right of the teacher to teach, while at the same time guaranteeing that they are not abusing their position?

The answer is by protecting academic freedom, not restricting it. Academic freedom is not totalizing. Teachers exercising academic freedom are bound by professional ethics (In Lee County, see po3210 in the policy manual) to do so in a responsible way. Academic freedom does not give them license to say whatever they want. Ethically, teachers are required to expose students to valid and reliable information, and to offer a wide view of more abstract ideas using multiple perspectives. Most teachers take this ethical requirement very seriously. If they don’t, administrators do.

Teachers, especially secondary teachers responsible for a more targeted content, should also be bound by the values established by professionals in that particular field. A history teacher, for instance, is bound by teacher ethics, but also by the standards of professional historical groups like the American Historical Association (AHA), that set the rules for the field. The AHA recognizes that, “The political, social, and religious beliefs of history teachers necessarily inform their work,” but this is not an excuse for “falsification, misrepresentation, or concealment.” A guiding principle for history teachers is the right of students to disagree with points of view, and the knowledge of given debates and interpretations assigned to historical phenomena.

In other words, what teachers teach should be shaped by professional ethics, and by the standards of the fields that they are presenting. A history teacher should teach what professional historians determine as necessary to “master” history at that level. A history teacher cannot teach that the Holocaust did not happen even if they believe that to be true. Professional historians overall reject this position, so the teacher is not free to teach this lesson by claiming academic freedom. Doing so is a violation of professional ethics and the standards of history as an academic field.

That’s not to say that parents should have no input. As a former social studies teacher, many of my parents were great resources. I had parents who were eyewitnesses to historical events. Some were talented enthusiasts in certain topics, especially the Civil War and World War II. I valued their input.

Also, when parents came to me with moral concerns about the content I was teaching, I did my best to accommodate them. I found that in doing so, many of my lessons actually improved because I had to be more thoughtful in their presentation. I never censored my content, but knowing the moral motivations of some of my students shaped how I approached a given topic.

If a conflict arises between the teacher’s curriculum and the wishes of the parent, resolution should rest on the answer to two questions. First, does the teacher’s curriculum conform to professional ethics? Secondly, does the teacher’s curriculum conform to standards of the field being taught? If both conditions are satisfied, deference should go to the teacher, not the parent. 

Our current politics has flipped this process, often allowing parents with no background in education and no expertise in any academic field to dictate the terms by which professional teachers and scholars can present their subject. Teachers are self-censoring for fear of upsetting a given political constituency. In fact, current laws and policy often force teachers to violate their professional ethics and to ignore the standards of the fields they teach. This is a regression toward that sixteenth century feared by Darrow, where teachers are condemned if they try to “bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”