WaPo’s Hannah Natanson provides an anecdote-filled report titled “‘Slavery was wrong’ and 5 other things some educators won’t teach anymore” with the subhed “To mollify parents and obey new state laws, teachers are cutting all sorts of lessons.” The titular anecdote is representative:
Greg Wickenkamp began reevaluating how he teaches eighth-grade social studies in June 2021, when a new Iowa law barred educators from teaching “that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.”
Wickenkamp did not understand what this legislation, which he felt was vaguely worded, meant for his pedagogy. Could he still use the youth edition of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”? Should he stay away from Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” especially as Kendi came under attack from conservative politicians?
That fall, Wickenkamp repeatedly sought clarification from the Fairfield Community School District about what he could say in class, according to emails obtained by The Post. He sent detailed lists of what he was teaching and what he planned to teach and asked for formal approval, drawing little response. At the same time, Wickenkamp was fielding unhappy emails and social media posts from parents who disliked his enforcement of the district’s masking policy and his use of Reynolds and Kendi’s text. A local politician alleged that Wickenkamp was teaching children critical race theory, an academic framework that explores systemic racism in the United States and a term that has become conservatives’ catchall for instruction on race they view as politically motivated.
Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”
Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”
“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”
She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”
As Wickenkamp raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, she added, “I’m sorry, on that part.”
Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.
Contacted for comment, Noll wrote in a statement that “the district provided support to Greg with content through a neighboring school district social studies department head.” She did not answer a question asking whether she thinks teachers should be permitted to tell children that slavery was wrong.
It strikes me that Wickenkamp was being absurdly provocative here while Noll was being absurdly bureaucratic. The state law was new and controversial. There’s just no way that the superintendent was going to give a teacher permission to express an opinion on a racial matter—even one so benign and obvious—on a recorded Zoom call.
I happen to have an 8th grader and she has no doubt that slavery was wrong; I doubt anyone in her class thinks otherwise. Hell, I went to 8th grade more than 40 years ago and similarly had no doubt that slavery—or Jim Crow laws—was wrong.
But, frankly, teachers can teach kids that slavery is wrong without uttering the phrase “slavery was wrong.” Indeed, outside of kindergarten-level lessons about manners, I’m not sure it’s ever necessary for teachers to express moral judgments of the materials they’re teaching. With regard to slavery, detailing the manner in which they were acquired, transported, and treated would almost certainly lead young minds to grasp the horrors of the institution independently.
Some of the other examples given were perhaps more debatable. For example, the inclusion of a chapter from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was of course going to be seen as ideological since it’s an ideological tract.
Others were examples of schools responding to parent complaints or, again, pressure from politicians passing new laws and administrators being unsure as to how they were going to be enforced. And, while most of the examples were of teachers being pressured—or self-censoring themselves—over teaching things that might get a rebuke from conservatives, there was also pressure from the left over teaching Huckleberry Finn and Of Mice and Men because of the inclusion of racial slurs.
In all cases, it appears that teachers were trying to be inventive and include materials likely to appeal to their students. But, yes, they were also trying to make a point beyond that of the state-mandated curriculum about societal values.
The takeaway is this:
The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.
While we’re in a particularly contentious period in this regard, the broader phenomenon is hardly new. The nature of public education is that the public has a say in what the schools teach. During particularly contentious periods, not surprisingly, that fight is ratcheted up. Parents, not shockingly, don’t want their kids’ teachers imparting values that contradict the ones being taught in the home.
But, of course, if every parent gets a veto over the assigned materials, teachers are going to be frustrated. And the materials will be bland, uninspiring, and less likely to actually teach.
