Recently, I posted a photo to a teaching group of an art project I was really excited about for my students. The project included a raised fist. In my case, I had meant the fist to
connect to the Black Lives Matter movement, but the symbol has been used by so many movements across time and space to represent solidarity with so many marginalized communities it could have had a broader meaning. It didn’t. The response from this national group of teachers was shocking to me. A significant number of educators reacted, some in all caps, that “Politics don’t belong in the classroom” and suggested I was indoctrinating. An even larger number of educators said their administration wouldn’t allow this.
My point in writing this is not to ask how taking a stand that all lives would be valued in our classroom has become a political statement, it baffles me, having been raised in a land where “we are all equal” and “be kind to your neighbor” were claimed as values alongside apple pie and cheeseburgers, to find that those values are not in fact held by all. These weren’t values I was just taught at home, they were in the Pledge of Allegiance I was required to say at school every morning. Maybe that pledge was political, but nobody suggested we keep it out of school. So let’s accept that equality is a political issue, that there is a party that supports equality and a party that doesn’t. I don’t necessarily believe that, and I have friends on both sides of the aisle who would disagree, but it seems to be a common belief so I won’t spend my time disputing it here.
Instead of disputing that, I’ll say “so what?” There are two minds of what public education is meant to do in our country. One, is for education to be the great equalizer- it will come as no surprise that this is my view- the other, is that education is meant to maintain the status quo. Sadly, this latter one is something that many still seem to believe. This idea lives alongside beliefs to “keep politics out of t
he classroom.” The cry to keep politics out of the classroom is really a cry to keep critiquing our current systems out of the classroom, to ensure students continue to believe whatever they are told to believe. Yet this distracts from the fact that the politics of those with power are already in the classroom. Whether or not schools have enough funding for an arts program is determined by politicians. What is required of individuals to become the leaders of a classroom is determined by politicians. The textbooks chosen for most districts, the curriculum they present and propagate, are chosen by politicians. Politics have never been separate from the classroom because schools exist as a service of our political system of government. Henry Giroux put it well when he said “It is impossible for education to be neutral so those who argue that education should be neutral are really arguing for a version of education in which nobody is accountable.”
As Mr. Giroux expressed, when teachers give up “politics” in the classroom, they are also
ceding their accountability to the existing systems of power that are already politics in the classroom. In her book “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and other Conversations about Race”, Dr. Beverly Tatum offers an analogy that has always stuck with me. She offers it to talk about racism, but I find it applies to all status quo systems in our society. Dr. Tatum asks that we imagine being on a moving sidewalk. You can stand still and do nothing on a moving sidewalk, but you’re still going in the direction it is taking you. To stop yourself from being taken in that direction, you have to turn around and start walking backwards. Similarly, as teachers, to prevent students from continuing forward into a society that devalues some lives compared to others like we do today, we can’t just “go with the flow,” we have to have classroom conversations about issues that some would call politics. We have to assume accountability for the minds we are molding. We have to mold them to think of others who may be different from them with care and respect.
For those teachers who cannot bring themselves to say “Black Lives Matter,” I wonder, could you say “the lives of Black children matter?” I certainly hope so. What about “the lives of LGBTQ students should be cherished” or “the children of immigrants should have a genuine chance to enhance their lives?” On issues of respect for your neighbor, regardless of their skin color or sexual orientation or gender orientation, if making those statements is “political” because certain politics have historically suggested otherwise, then yes, it is our job as teachers to turn students around and get as many of them as possible walking the other way, walking back towards freedom and justice for all.
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