My US History teacher is a very left wing democrat, and makes no secret about it. This is not a problem with me on the whole, except that it tends to find its way into his teaching. Before the first Presidential Debates, he wrote up a sheet of differences in Democrat and Republican stances, which was distributed to all of the sections, not just his. Some excerpts from the “Republican” half of the sheet were as follows:
-Anti-Government; unless government can help the wealthy.
-Against taxes but mainly against taxes for the rich.
-Anti civil-rights for minorities, blacks, women, homosexuals.
-Agains affirmative action; tend to believe everything is fine.
-Christian Coalition wants to control gov’t to enforce their ideas and beliefs.
-Pro big business laissez-faire, unless gov’t helps big buisness against regulation.
-Against min. wage.
And the list goes on and on. as you can see, he might as well just have put that Republicans eat babies and burn down orphanages.
I can understand that people have political biases, but in addition to this handout, my teacher puts an anti-republican spin on his day-to-day teaching. He’s supposed to be teaching us about US History, not using the class as a way to mold us into democrats. Should this kind of thing be allowed?
I see what you mean. I agree that Republicans are like that a lot…but it’s not fair that your teacher should force those beliefs onto his students. My US History teacher tries not to let her views influence us…like when we wanted to know who she was going to vote for or had voted for in the past, she wouldn’t say…
So yeah. maybe you should tell him you think he should be less biase…or would that be too presumptous? I definitely think that he should present both sides and let you guys make up your own mind…
Both of my parents are teachers, and I’m a product of the public education system of Southern DE.
It’s my understanding that public school teachers aren’t allowed to air their political beliefs in an overt, influential manner or to use them as a basis for favoritism. Also, they’re not allowed to deliberately offend students. I’ve been in several class debates where a teacher will not state what political party or religion they affiliate themselves with; it’s mostly to protect themselves.
Theory and practice are so different, though… and history classes have a bit more leeway in some ways, because history and politics lend themselves to comment.
The best thing to do if you or other students are uncomfortable with political bias in the class is to go to the teacher privately. If nothing changes, go to the administration.
I remember one time when a teacher was making homophobic comments in class… I just got up, left, went to the principal’s office and informed them why I was there. It didn’t happen again.
Here’s the best way to combat this: teach your kids the difference. Explain to them that there are opposing views and why you believe what you do. Tell them that they are going to encounter this kind of thing in school and to ask you questions when they do.
We have to teach our kids how to have their own belief systems in a world that often has contrary ones. That’s part of growing up.
I’d rather have teachers for my kids that stick to the three R’s, but I’m not going to sweat it if they don’t.
Jester: *And the list goes on and on. as you can see, he might as well just have put that Republicans eat babies and burn down orphanages. *
Not really; there’s a difference between providing a biased interpretation of the facts and stating things that aren’t true. Still, I agree that his biases are showing too much (although I happen to share most of them), and will probably be counterproductive not only in teaching you history but in making left-wing converts out of you—people tend to resist even a worthwhile argument if they feel they’re being coerced to accept it. All historians and all teachers have biases, but the best ones bend over backwards to be fair to the side they don’t like, so the facts can speak for themselves as much as possible.
You might try collecting the responses to this thread after a day or so and showing them to your teacher. It will give him a sense not only of your objections to his approach but of the reactions of outside observers. You could even leave a printout of the thread for him anonymously, assuming that he doesn’t know who “Jester” is.
Yeah its almost impossible to be completely objective. this year we learned that almost every source will be a little biased, even if it tries not to be. Still though…if you’re the teacher, you do have to encourage students to think at higher levels…not just tell them what to think…
My high school History teacher was a Reagan Republican, hard-line conservative, and he made no secret of it. Hell, even people who wern’t in his class knew about his politics.
He was also one on the best teachers I ever had. He didn’t try to convert us to his opinion. More, he used his opinion to goad us into thinking and coming up with one of our own. He liked a good argument.He and I got along famously from the day I brought the Communist Manifesto to class with me. I think he was a lot unhappier with the students who, knowing his politics, went out of their way to agree with him.
And his politics did not stop him from teaching the progressive movement, the growth of Unions, from intellegently discussing Communisim. In fact it had the effect of making the discussion seem actually important.
I think basically it’s that whatever his politics, mostly, he was a teacher.
Jester, it doesn’t sound like that the case with you. I’d probably agree with your teacher about more things, but I’d rather be in Mr Paulson’s class.
Some of my favorite teachers were politically biased, and I loved them for it. One got me to register as a Democrat at 16. The next to join the Young Republicans.
Does this teacher expect you to accept these interpretations blindy as fact, or does this teacher accept and expect debate? I’ve met a few teachers who respected being challenged on points, and one who required it.
All teachers are going to have political views that may come across in their teaching. If its a social studies or government or law class, this is a good thing.
In no way does he expect us to just follow the ideas blindly. He is a great debate, and I have alot of good ones with him. He’s even the advisor to the “Argument Club,” sort of an unnoficial debate club, of which I am a member. This is why I don’t usually mind the bias, because I have fun debating with him about it.
HOWEVER, I think that two of my main peeves about the sheet are that:
a) It was given as a factual handout, not a debate topic, and
b) It was given out to ALL the US sections, not just the ones that he teaches. Therefore, students who have other teachers didn’t get his warning that it was a “bit biased”, nor did they have a chance to debate with him about it, since some sections didn’t even know who wrote it.
I really do respect this teacher; he’s a great debator, and a nice guy, but handing out a biased fact sheet with no explanation to people who don’t even know about his views seems to be going over the line just a bit.
KarlGauss:What do you think of this example of mere bias in interpretating the “facts”: (Republicans are) anti civil-rights for minorities, blacks, women, homosexuals…Fact? Biased interpretation?
Depends how you define “civil rights”, KG; do affirmative action, marriage eligibility, draft status, etc., come under that heading? Depending on how broadly you interpret the term, the teacher’s statement ranges from moderate overstatement to outright falsehood. But I definitely wouldn’t put it on the same footing with canards like “Republicans eat babies and burn down orphanages”; obviously that was a humorous exaggeration on the part of the OP, but we need to be careful about responding to the teacher’s exaggerated mischaracterizations with exaggerated mischaracterizations of our own.
Anecdotally(?), I teach computer graphics at college level, and make absolutely no apologies for being a Mac advocate when 75% (or better) of the students are PeeCee owners. (In my industry, more than 80% of the firms are completely Mac anyway).
I never push my platform on anyone since it is a personal preference more than anything. But, I will talk candidly about my reasons when asked, and if forced to teach in a PeeCee lab I will occasionally vent my frustrations over that platform.
I am proud to evangelize when asked because I feel advocacy of the Mac is part of what I bring to the students as an instructor; they have plenty of other teachers who will vouch for the other side, and students are free to think for themselves on the matter.
Such is as it should be in an educational setting, IMHO.
One of the best classes I ever took was one I really dreaded when staring at the registration sheet: PoliSci 101, taught by a man named Masoud Kazemzadah. “Great,” I thought, “yet another foreign teacher.” (I was still smarting from a semester of Political Geography under an Indian teacher whose accent was very difficult for me to comprehend.) This class, however, was wonderful. It was sort of like the GD forum, except with tests. He was an Iranian immigrant around 30, who had come to the US as a college student. He spoke very good English and passionately loved politics, philosophy, and a good debate. He also presented both sides of an argument to the best of his ability, ably taking on whichever one the student was opposing. I would hold such efforts up as a model for teaching these sorts of subjects, and I wish my other teachers of history/philosophy had his zeal and ability.
Even so, his own personal feelings could not keep from showing, although it was nothing like the teacher in the OP. When asked who the class thought he was voting for (this was during the Bush/Clinton election BTW), the class unhesitatingly responded “Clinton,” and he was quite disappointed that his choice was discernible to us. Despite all his skill at taking an opposing view, he couldn’t get quite as worked up when arguing the side he didn’t really believe in. And maybe he was just a tad less tenacious or animated when trying to argue from the right rather than the left. Nevertheless, his goal was always to engage debate rather than to win over opinions, and I remember that class very fondly, and respect the man’s way of doing business.
The teacher in the OP sounds an awful lot like the politicos and commentators I see and hear on a daily basis. Some facts are stretched and massaged, and couched in disingenuously emotional language, while others are conveniently glossed over or completely ignored in order to sell the teacher’s own view of what constitutes reality. Unfortunately, history instruction has always carried elements of this, yet they aren’t so often so close to the surface. IMHO, proselytizing one’s political viewpoint (as opposed to illuminating it upon request) is best left out of the classroom if possible, especially since there seems to be enough of it outside to sate anyone’s appetite.
I’m a teacher. I don’t think it’s right to be biased (= prejudiced) in any subject. But it is fine to have a personal opinion, which you are prepared to debate.
There’s also a difference in age groups. When teaching 11-12 year olds, they don’t have as much experience to tell facts from opinions. They may also be too respectful to the teacher :rolleyes: .
17-18 year olds should have backup for their views, and be able to express them. After all, they’re going to be voters soon.
Also it’s vital to differentiate between facts (this political party has this policy in it’s manifesto) and opinions (that policy means the following…).
Note that I prefer not to give my opinions to pupils unless they ask. But I figure that once they do, then they are ready to hear my personal viewpoint - and I always add ‘make up your own mind’.
I teach at a school founded centuries ago by an Archdeacon, with the permission of the King. It is not a problem that I am agnostic and republican - and I have had some good debates with pupils over both these topics.
I heard this thing, I think it was on This American Life, about a teacher who performed an experiment of his 7th grade class to teach them about fanatisim, mobs etc. He picked some recent rule change- I think it was about the cafeteria, and started telling them it was a grave injuctice. Bit by bit he started to convice them they were being persecuted. And he was the only teacher on there siade. In a month or so he had them wearing armband and staging protests. Then he put out a rumour that he was being fired for defending them and they rose up as one and stormed the principal’s office.
So apparently you can brainwash student if you want to.
(Not that I’m saying expressing a political bias is the same thing. But if you had one and you WANTED to…)
WAs that the WAVE?
The teacher wanted to teach the kids HOW people could’ve become Nazis, because they kept asking why people followed the movement. So he started someting called the WAVE, and it was Strength through Community, Discipline and something else (I forget). And the students were doing better in classes, but meanwhile, they were seriously pressuring other students to join, etc etc…
It got so that he had to show them a video…he said, the WAVE leader will appear in the gym, at such and such a time.
Then, when everyone was assembled, he said, here is your leader:
And he showed them a slide of Adolf Hitler or something like that…
I’ll try and look it up…I totally forgot about it…
(It was an after school special and we saw it in Class, I also read the book…)
In graduate school, our cohort in Sociology got a heavy-handed anti-feminist professor for the required Statistics and Methodology course. He’d hand out two descriptions of empirical studies, one an methodologically airtight study of banking practices as affected by proximity of ATM machines and the other a mainstream & fairly sloppy skim-through on the subject of domestic violence. (I think it was BEHIND CLOSED DOORS). He used the tactic of picking apart the methodology in the dom vio study as a means of slinging mud at feminist thought and research in general, and tolerated no classroom discussion of anything except the research methodologies. This was something he was accustomed to doing every other semester.
(Some of us changed the tone of the class by going after the bias inherent in allowing some assumptions to be asserted without any defense (e.g., assumptions about the motivations and benefits of various economic behaviors) while others were held up as indefensible without rock-solid verification by empirical data.)
Meanwhile, we had a social work professor who ranted at us in rabidly Marxist terms, essentially accusing us all of wanting to go into private practice instead of serving the poor, and of caring more about office furniture than addressing social ills. He, too, was heavy-handed and didn’t allow much room for alternative ideas to be aired in his classroom.
I don’t find this kind of behavior to be acceptable in a classroom. Some modicum of academic freedom should provide the student with the right to differ openly with the professor on volatile subjects.
