Poll: id your teachers and professors try to influence your political thinking?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Not directly.

Indirectly:
I went to a very weird middle school that had what many would consider very extreme egalitarian/anti-authoritarian ideals and tried to live by them. So, no one brought up politics directly, but there was a lot of discussion about how a society (in this case the school) should function in order to make a good environment for everyone. A lot of the conclusions would probably be considered liberal. In an environment like that, your view of “normal” shifts.

In high school, most of my teachers were liberal to very liberal. However, I know that the conservative people in the school (which was most of the school), didn’t get graded down for expressing or arguing mainstream conservative ideas (mainstream for the 80s, that is).

College/Grad School: I have no idea what the majority of my professors thought. I can guess for a few; but it wasn’t a central part of the class nor was it something I gave any thought to when doing my assignments or taking tests.

62

Maybe. The teacher in high school who most exemplified political influence definitely didn’t fit this mold.

Mr. Hancock (I don’t remember his real name) was a hard-boiled conservative. He subbed for my Middle East/African History class once and spent much of the class period telling us how slavery was the best thing that happened to Africans, because it brought them out of savagery and introduced them to Christ. When I was manning an anti-war/environmental issues table in the cafeteria during lunch, he’d come up and argue with me about how increasing gas mileage requirements was the sign of an authoritarian government. He told a friend during a civics class that homosexuals should be imprisoned.

But when I pushed back against his gas mileage claims, at some point he said, “That thing you just said is the first legitimate point you’ve made, and I respect you for making it.” When my friend wrote a paper for his class in which she came out as lesbian, he gave her an A. I never found out the degree to which his beliefs were sincere versus being trolling versus being a warped Socratic tool; I’m not sure he even knew. But he absolutely wanted dissent and pushed and pushed until he got it.

Other teachers who tried to influence my thinking or the thinking of my friends:
-The algebra teacher who was strongly religious and who refused to read morning announcements that mentioned the pagan club (a la Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but for Wiccans and Druids) that I’d started, instead telling students that it was sinful.
-The health teacher who made us all write persuasive papers arguing in favor of abstinence until marriage.
-My girlfriend’s business school professor who dedicated many lectures to the joys of union-busting.
-Another business school professor who, when she objected to his paeans to unrestrained capitalism, called her aside after class and told her never to contradict him again.
-Any teacher who requires the Pledge of Allegiance

And, of course, I had them on the left:
-The professors who had me read Karl Marx and John Locke both, but clearly sided with the former.
-The biology teacher who focused on human impacts on the environment (a quarter century later, I count him as a good friend)
-The sixth grade teacher who fantasized in class about taking one of those tri-pronged garbage-picker-uppers and skipping down the beach popping all the Confederate Flag floats, and who told us how we could call in to Camel Cigarettes and claim to be smokers so we could get a free T-shirt to deface (I think of him, these years later, like the Norse God of teaching, brilliant and terrifying and tricky and not necessarily moral but always compelling)

If a teacher holds forth a view, but makes it clear that it’s their opinion, and is open to age-appropriate pushback, I don’t see it as being a problem at all. It’s only the teachers who don’t allow pushback that I think are acting unethically.

63

Many, many times. I was thrown out of Social Studies 30 because I interrupted a teacher’s anti-American rant with some facts. She claimed that America was a nuclear terrorist nation because it had dropped an atomic bomb on completely innocent people. I pointed out that they were, in fact in a declared war, and she said, “That was with GERMANY!” I reminded her of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war, and she replied, “Ok, technically it may have been a war. But it was NOTHING compared to the war in Europe.” To that I started reciting casualty counts in the battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and that’s when I was kicked out of the class for being ‘disruptive’.

I had an english prof who was so committed to seeing everything through the lens of feminism that I cynically wrote my final paper on ‘Pride and Prejudice’ - a book I didn’t even read. I just prattled on for 1000 words on the poor state of women in Victorian England, and got an A.

In grade 9, my son was forced to watch an execrable propaganda video called ‘The Story of Stuff’ which was essentially a far-left screed against corporations and global capitalism, dripping with scientific and economic errors. Just remember kids, all you need to know about factories is, 'toxins in = toxins out!"

In grade 12 social studies my kid was taught that the difference between the left and right was that the left is altruistic, which means they love their families and the little children of the world, while the right is materialistic, which means they love money and power. Wrong on just about every level. Then immediately after being primed with this bullshit they had a ‘mock election’ in which almost all chose to vote for the cause of puppies and children by voting for the left-wing candidate. I have rarely seen such blatant manipulation. That teacher also had posters of Mao and Che Guevera in her classroom.

When I went to college, we had to take ‘breadth’ courses, and being in science I had a number of arts and humanities electives. Now, my kid goes to the same college but many of those electives are forbidden unless you first take two social justice classes to ‘prepare’ you for them. So, no anthropology or archaology or sociology electives for him… All fall under the category of programs too dangerous to take until your mind has been put through the social justice filter first.

Also, as a math major he of course had to take the mandatory course in sexual harassment and microaggressions that all freshmen have to take now…

Anyone who doesn’t think public education is heavily biased against conservative and libertarian thought is living under a rock.

64

I don’t think you need to be a conservative to have issue with a lot of those, Sam. I’ve had to watch some questionable movies that seem to be propaganda or woo in the guise of a documentary. Some form of ethnic or women’s studies are pretty much standard in every public and most private universities, though I don’t really hear of them being prereqs.

A Pol Pot poster would’ve been deliciously ironic.

In the news lately is an online teacher who docked points because they insisted that Australia wasn’t a country and generally being a cock about it. In this case they lost their job because of it.

65

I voted “not paying attention” because there wasn’t a flat “No,” I don’t recall a single instance of any teacher trying to feed me a political line. It’s simply not something that ever came up.

66

Freshman Intro to Biology, my professor made it very clear on the first day of class that anyone who had a problem with Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution should get out of his classroom, he was not going to waste valuable time refuting creationist nonsense. Some students thought this was because of his politics. I side with based on scientific reasoning however.

67

I can almost see where this is coming from, if the teacher was a complete screw-up on a power trip who made a mistake out of not doing the research and then doubled-down on it.

(does some research)

This is probably it:

OK, that rationale is dumber than I imagined. I’d guessed someone who saw the Queen on the currency and the Union Jack on the flag and concluded that colonies aren’t countries.

SNUH, er, SNHU is a tiny little private university and this little piece of idiocy is likely the most publicity it’s ever had.

68

It’s both, and don’t forget it: It is impossible to hold some political views if you accept certain facts.

For comparison, an example of a teacher doing that in an apolitical context is when one of my calculus teachers proved that 0.999… = 1 in class, and made it very clear that this was true, and not up for debate.

(For the record, nobody in that specific class challenged him.)

69

I attended a Baptist university and as far as I recall the professors either kept their politics out of class (the science and math professors) or did not try to push their politics on us (language, social studies, and philosophy professors). I think the question turns on whether or not you define certain positions as political or not. Are beliefs in evolution, the Big Bang theory, etc. Democratic positions? Are beliefs that the universe is only a few thousand years old and was created in seven days Republican positions? If so then the professors did support Democratic positions. If not, then no they didn’t push their politics.

70

I asked a question about something from an evolutionary perspective and a student answered with “I don’t believe in evolution but biologists would say X” I accepted that as at least the answer was right.

Yeah sorry, should’ve linked.

SNHU is sort of one of those online-heavy ones that advertises on TV but they appear to be more legitimate than the University of Phoenix type places.

How Baptist? There’s places like Wake Forest (who apparently had a President who was a stinking evolutionist), where the affiliation is irrelevant and somewhat severed, and then there’s Liberty University.

The Big Bang was of course discovered by a Catholic priest at a Catholic university.

Republicans have a stronger tendency toward creationism and abstinence, etc. but neither party is uniform.

71

I was unaware of the political opinions of the vast majority of my teachers. Now I could go back and see that a few of the social science teachers probably leaned one way or the other, but, at the time, I wouldn’t have known any of that.

I would assume, based on where I live, that most of my teachers would be conservatives. But I do not buy into conservative thoughts. Granted, I made this decision after school.

Unless you consider being anti-bigotry to be political. Then, hell yeah, my teachers influenced me. So did Sesame Street and pretty much every TV show I watched. So did my church. It’s why I find it so strange that it’s still around. If media and teachers and all that could make people think a certain way, then why in the world is bigotry still a thing?

And, yes, I was taught proper science, not creationism. The most creationist we got was a teacher pointing out to us that evolution did not in any way invalidate the religious beliefs, and that is just meant that organisms changed over time. I still don’t know if she was actually Christian or actually believed this.

I did have an American History teacher in college who decided to focus on the religious history of the US instead of the normal way we look at history. I know he is Catholic, but I still don’t know his actual politics.

72

I went to Baylor. Even though it’s well known as a Baptist University I didn’t feel like I was attending a bastion of conservatism. I know some of my professors were religious (including some in the biology department) but there was never even a mention of creationism in any of my biology classes. When we discussed alternatives to the the theory of evolution by natural selection it was to discuss other scientific theories that have been shown to be incorrect and to learn about the evidence showing why they were incorrect. In other words, we did learn about Lamarck’s theory of evolution but did not discuss non scientific theories based on a religious text.

73

Belief in creationism is not really a christian thing, but more of an evangelical protestant thing. I tutored my neighbors kids in biology, who went to a few different Catholic schools in the area. The science education was in general poor, but each Catholic school taught evolution.

When I used to teach a non-majors biology course, I had one student refuse to answer questions about evolution. I explained that he was not required to believe it, but explain the principles as understood by the scientific community. Still, he probably felt I was “indoctrinating” him for teaching these theories and expecting the students to learn what they are. And yes, he lost points on his exam when he refused to answer them.

74

It was always very obvious to me which teachers were liberal. I’d say about 90%. I’d write papers with a marxist or feminist slant for easy A’s. Did they influence me? No, I’d actually say they were very gullible. This only didn’t work on ONE teacher, the entire time.

There were a few teachers who would talk to me privately about politics and when I expressed I was a conservative acted shocked and disappointed. Did they influence me? No. But I didn’t consider their reaction very professional.

I will say that all teachers of Comparitive Religion have the overt purpose of creating atheists.

75

my experience in Catholic school was similar (though the actual science ed. was pretty good where I went.) the story of Genesis was presented more of a folklore in that God didn’t literally create the world in 7 days (what’s a “day” to an infinite being?) nor did he literally pull a rib out of a man and create woman. Mostly that evolution and Creation aren’t incompatible, God just kicked the whole thing in motion.

76

Same here. I got several 4.0 on papers by questioning the very assumptions of the questions assigned.

77

Exactly- the theory of evolution never intended to explain how life began, but how it differentiated. Many religious people reconcile biblical stories of creation and the theory of evolution quite comfortably, in just the way you just described.

Oh, and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that Catholic science education is poor in general, it was just astonishing how poorly done it was in these local schools.

78

wasn’t taken that way :slight_smile:

79

Pitt mid-70s was big on Professors fairly vocal towards Marxist/Communist philosophies. It didn’t stick with anyone I know/knew.

80

It’s really interesting to me that you listed “many, many times,” but you didn’t list a single one in which a conservative teacher tried to indoctrinate you. Why is that, I wonder? Is it because you magically never had a single conservative teacher who tried to indoctrinate you? Or is it because when liberals do it, you see it as indoctrination, but when conservatives do it, that’s just plain common sense?