Dear Duke, although you are not from Brazil, I’d like to know your opinion about an educational matter of my country: people have been discussing about something they’ve called “school without party”. Some politicians have said that education, in Brazil, is doctrinal and partial, encouraging children and young people to become socialists and, because of this, some subjects (such as philosophy, sociology and history) shouldn’t be taught in schools. [1/2]

dukeofbookingham:

For some politicians, teachers shouldn’t be allowed to say their opinions, and there are some students who are secretly filming their teachers in class. Teachers have been censored, criticized and ostracized for being opposite to Jair Bolsonaro’s election as president, who openly is against human rights, and defends torture and weapon-carrying. [2/2]

This is a thorny issue the world over. Being a teacher is kind of like being a juror: if you can’t put aside your personal politics, you’re not doing right by anybody else in the room. Your job as a teacher isn’t to indoctrinate your students; it’s to give them the tools they need to read the world around them critically, and then let them make their own informed decisions. So, I agree with the basic assertion that teachers’ personal politics don’t really belong in the classroom, in much the same way that we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state and religion shouldn’t have any influence on governance. However, that does not at all extend or equate to the belief that we just shouldn’t teach the humanities–because the humanities tend to shed light on humanitarian issues, regardless of pedagogical politics. In fact I think it’s exactly the opposite: I think we have an obligation, like I said, to help students learn to read the world around them, and that means sometimes challenging the beliefs they are comfortable with and asking them to engage with media from outside their own worldview. So, did I make my class (which is 90% white boys) read an article by a lesbian woman of color for their first assignment? Yes. Am I telling them how they have to respond to it? No. Am I going to have them read Roxane Gay’s article on voting? Yes. Am I going to insist they agree with her on everything? No. Am I going to encourage my students to vote? Absolutely. Am I going to tell them how they should vote? Absolutely not.

Obviously the situation you’re talking about is an extreme one and teachers are in a horribly difficult place, because they have to think not only of their responsibility to their students but their own personal safety and job security. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what the answer is, except for teachers to try to help students see the big picture without letting their personal opinions encroach on the curriculum–because that seems like it’s going to be what’s best for everybody. This is not to say that teachers are not allowed to have personal opinions and convictions; only to say that overtly biased political opinion does not belong in the classroom, because it pressures students to conform to a teacher’s opinion for the sake of their grade, which is uncomfortably similar to teachers themselves being forced to conform to a hostile political regime.