I’m not comfortable with the idea at all. I’m okay with a button on your bag or coat, certainly a bumper sticker, even though the kids are likely to see those things, but a tshirt is too far.
But I certainly don’t think that teachers should shy away of discussion of politics, as long as they can keep it nonpartisan. I think that it’s really important to get kids thinking about this stuff. Voting participation levels in the US are absolutely pathetic, and as previously mentioned, the only way to combat apathy is through education.
I think at the 7th grade level, that’s about perfect. At the high school level though, I think debate is absolutely worthwhile. And at all levels, I think that the most important thing to teach these kids is how and where to get accurate information. I have to constantly point out to *adults *that a Senate voting record isn’t exactly a deeply held secret. It’s not something you have to take anyone’s word for. It’s on the Senate website, ferchrissake, right along with the text of whatever bill is being voted on! Political discussion strikes me as a really great way to get kids engaged in critical thinking, if you’re doing it right.
I liked the attitude of my ninth-grade AP American History teacher–he made it a point to talk about issues and challenge us to think about whether we knew anything about the candidates other than their parties.
He told us that a year or two before, his students in his morning class had been excited to discover him wearing a pro-Bush (H.W. Bush) button. That afternoon, however, they compared notes with the afternoon class, which had caught him wearing a pro-Democrat button.
He was the same way on Religion–never telling us which church he attended, though he did tell us that his church practiced ceremonial cannibalism–which shocked most of us until our brains parsed it properly as Communion, and realized that we practiced it too.
I won’t say it’s never appropriate for a teacher to wear a t-shirt supporting one candidate or another. I don’t generally think it’s a good idea, though. (Bumper stickers bother me a good deal less–being a teacher doesn’t mean you have to be apolitical outside of school hours).
How much discussion of politics is appropriate in school hours? It really depends on the class, but interesting kids in current-event politics should not replace the ordinary curriculum for the class.
Wearing a T-shirt is inappropriate. If nothing else, it’s distracting.
That said, my kids (all juniors and seniors) know my political views–pretty far to the left–though I try really hard not to let it effect the way I teach. For my particular style, it seems to work better to say “This is my bias. I don’t expect you to agree with me. I’ll respect your opinion and I expect you to respect other people’s opinions.” Then I try to model that. It seems inevitable that they will figure out my position anyway, and I’d rather be upfront about it than try to be coy. But I have seen people hide their views and really been impressed by it. I just don’t have a poker face. I do work very hard to avoid ever being flippant or dismissive towards other political points of view, and I think I am successful overall. Obviously, that’s a subjective judgment, but it is something I take very seriously. As the focus of my class (AP Lang–Rhetoric, basically) is on developing independence of thought, I am constantly telling them to look past what people are telling them to believe!
I am also much more willing to talk about partisan politics with students outside of class. Some of my kids are really pumped about Obama this year–they are reading blogs and message boards and working on campaigns, and I don’t find it inappropriate to talk about these things with them after school. I play devil’s advocate because that’s what a teacher does, but I don’t bother to hide that I am generally like-minded.
I also think that what is appropriate really varies by teacher and by school culture. We have a pretty informal school culture–there are several student/teacher clubs (frisbee club, board game club, etc) and I think that overall our kids know their teachers as people with more depth than what you usually get. I don’t know why it’s like that–school cultures are just funny things. I think this frees us up a bit to be more open because we aren’t monolithic voices of authority with our kids. We teachers disagree with each other (their physics and calc teachers are both very conservative) and they know it.
No government employee may or should promote one candidate over another in any way while punched in. That said, private school teachers are, in my opinion, just as restricted in this. You’re hired to teach the kids about a subject, not urge them, in however minor a fashion, to vote for anyone specific.
Manda Jo,
I really like reading your perspective and about your approach–reminded me of another favorite teacher, who was decidedly feminist. I think honesty and respect for other’s beliefs are to be valued above neutrality–especially fake neutrality.
I had a professor last semester who wore an Obama t-shirt. I support Obama, but I thought it was very inappropriate. How do you wear a damn t-shirt to while giving a college lecture? Very distracting. To make matters worse, she was teaching syntax, so she took every opportunity to use pro-Obama and anti-Hillary statements as her examples. :rolleyes:
The bar I use to go to had a policy of not discussing religion or politics (and usually sports because people were religious about their teams).
I wouldn’t do it out of courtesy for the students. If they asked me whom I was voting for I would avoid telling them. Any political questions would be answered with a brief explanation of both sides of an issue so the student could research it.
I teach freshmen and juniors. The juniors ask me quite often who I’m voting for. I won’t tell them, if only because I’m a fairly new teacher whose political views run counter to the majority of the community. If they sat down and thought about it, though, I think they’d be able to guess correctly.
I don’t think I’d run any risk of indoctrinating them; but I don’t want them trying to waste class time trying to indoctrinate me! It is hard to bite my tongue when one of my students says something I find to be factually wrong, ignorant, or otherwise hard to take.
I think it’s not a negative thing, and possibly a positive. Kids need to be aware that teachers are human beings and have opinions. A lot of kids may have very little exposure to people that have political views different from their own family (or may not be aware that they do). If people are offended that someone supports a different candidate than their own, they need to examine their own reasons for why they feel that way. In 7th grade the vast majority of the students in my school believed that Democrats were evil babykilling god-hating freaks, and I felt weird because my parents hated Reagan. It would have been good for me, and for the other students, if there were some teachers who openly supported the other view.
In class, I would never wear a button or t-shirt for a political candidate, nor even discuss the topic in the classroom, other than tell people to go vote. As a matter of fact, on the first day of my Speech class, they are told the three subjects that they cannot use in speeches: Sex, Politics and Religion. Those are fine subjects for debates, but I don’t teach a debate class.
Outside of the classroom, if a student asks me who I support in an election, I don’t mind offering my opinion. But also, only if they ask me. That is one-on-one and a “private” conversation. They can also ask me if I like Coke or Pepsi, smoke or not, like to travel, eat red meat or anything else…and I can choose to answer or not. But then I am speaking as a private person and not trying to preach dogma in a classroom. Whether or not they mention our conversation later to another student, who knows? BTW, all of my students are college students.
But using the position of teacher as a bully-pulpit, no matter how well-meaning, is simply wrong. I would be pissed off if I had a teacher sing praises of McCain, therefore I will also refrain from singing praises of Obama. All I will tell my students in the classroom this quarter is to Go Vote! I might actually say that quite often in the next few weeks…sue me.
I don’t have a strong opinion either way, I don’t think I’d do it if I was a teacher.
When I was getting my MBA there was a famous professor at that school in the PoliSci department whose class I audited. I was very impressed with his policy, which was basically, “I have political opinions, and no one that I work with and none of my students will ever be told explicitly what they are. I consider it my function to inform and to foster debate on issues, not to preach my ideology or cultivate brown nosers who will agree with my political leanings just to curry favor.”
In order to elicit from me my political views, my students would first have to imprison me for about 5 1/2 years in some hellhole, deny me proper medical treatment for broken bones, etc, torture me into making propaganda statements that I don’t believe in, and so on. I might finally crack, but I am a true-blue patriot who would then go on to use this barbaric treatment to justify any addle-brained, shitty, self-serving behavior I might choose to indulge myself in for the remainder of my life. But I would not easily surrender my political biases to students in the performance of my duties as a classroom teacher.
Death before dishonor!! USA!! USA!! USA!!! Country First!!!