The emotionally heightened political atmosphere surrounding the 2016 presidential election has made teaching civics a minefield, one that threatens the well-being of students and teachers alike. Civics teachers have a responsibility to help students become good citizens by teaching them to stay informed, understand the issues facing the nation and become critical thinkers so that, in the future, they can be intelligent consumers of political information and make wise decisions. The nature of the political discourse today makes this process nearly impossible because teachers are at risk of criticism from parents, colleagues and administrators if they simply do their job.
I teach eighth-grade civics in an affluent northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. My school’s community voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 by one percent in a state that is considered to be a quintessential battleground state. So my classroom is in a battleground within a battleground.
My students start their eighth-grade year reflecting the values and political affiliations of their parents, which normally should not be a problem. I take an unspoken oath to present political information and the issues before the nation in an objective and even-handed manner so that students can make their own decisions based on their own developing values and senses of right and wrong. When my students ask me what party I belong to, I reply, “I’ll tell you on the last day of school, but if you can tell, then I am not doing my job well.” I don’t have the academic freedom that teachers in high school or college professors might have.
Conversely, my enthusiasm for liberal causes, President Obama and now Hillary Clinton is well known among my colleagues. I am my building’s local union representative, and I attended the National Education Association representative assembly in D.C. this past summer. I am politically active in my own state of Maryland as well as Virginia because I see myself as a stakeholder in both states—one where I live, the other where I work and teach. When I arrived for duty in late summer, numerous fellow teachers came up to me and said, “You better be careful this year, or else you’re going to get in trouble.” Not a good harbinger of how things will go in the civics classroom this election year.
I went from being excited about teaching my students about the electoral process to dreading it. And there seemed to be good reason for my premonition. I started my school year with my usual “get to know you” activity focused on family backgrounds and learning about ethnic groups and nationalities by learning about last names. I thought I was putting my equity training to good use. Wrong. My grade-level administrator came in to sit me down on day two with parent complaints about discussing race in the classroom. I suggested to my students to “stay informed by watching the news,” an eighth-grade standard of learning. I informed them that “detecting bias” is also a skill found on our standardized test. Mistakes two and three. A parent called to complain that I was “telling my students which news broadcast to watch.” My comments on the political affiliations of Fox News to the right and MSNBC to the left were too controversial for one parent, who called my principal to complain. There I was, in my principal’s office, justifying my directive to stay informed and be able to detect bias in reporting.
Given that we had just completed week one in my class, I was—and am—scared to death of teaching about the issues and the candidates. If I simply tell the truth about both, I am risking the wrath of everyone in the school community who might be looking for someone to scapegoat or for something to complain about. My principal suggested I teach using the Socratic method by asking the students questions and allowing them to discover the truth for themselves. All well and good, but will it teach the state-mandated standards effectively? Can I teach the content with a steady diet of non-offensive, tip-toe questions around the candidates and the issues?
I love civics because I love my country. I want students to share that love with me as we discuss democracy, human rights, the election and the issues associated with it. But there is a straightjacket on that discussion and tape over our mouths because teachers are being prohibited from dealing with these concepts openly. There is too great a risk of being judged and even terminated for openly discussing reality as we perceive it to be, no matter how objectively we try to present those facts. I never thought I would say to myself about the election or the political process, “Just let it be over.” But even on November 9, the challenges of teaching civics in the age of Clinton and Trump will not have disappeared.
Editor’s note: For resources to help you overcome obstacles to teaching about the election, explore our “Election 2016 Resources” package.
Cassutto has taught social studies in middle and high school for 34 years.
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