Recent news that a fairly insane rant by a geography teacher about politics was caught on tape by one of his students supports my contention that parents and local schools can be trusted to deal with this sort of thing. The school is dealing with the issue carefully and one cannot doubt that the end result will be less ranting and more geography in the class. On the other hand, though I find the teacher’s views amusingly insane, I cannot take the comfort some conservatives do if he is not allowed to express them as part of his teaching.
Strong parent control may restrict the content of his speech, and I would willing to live with that, but then conservatives (and the religious) will have to live with restrictions on their speech when they express minority views. This runs the risk of making education boring and inoffensive.
I do not think most parents or school administrators want such boring education. They must be trusted with the education of children, because (after all) these are their children! The situation with insane teachers like this geography teacher is that the system has been messed up by union protections and Big Government censorship of some ideas (such as intelligent design).
What is the danger of too heavy a hand on teachers? This leftist teacher was in a geography class and geography will have political overtones. As any social studies teacher knows, a good way to motivate discussion is to stake out a position and let students react to it. This Socratic style of education is good for students and good education as it forces the student to think outside the box.
Now of course if the teacher spends the bulk of every class advancing his or her agenda in an area that touches on, but does not consist of the core curriculum, has created a problem. Who should make the call to prevent boring education on the one hand and ideological rant fests on the other? Teachers, parents, and administrators can (in general) be trusted to make that call if left alone by courts and the state. This is not a perfect solution (is there one?), but it is better than Big Government imposing oat meal flavor education on everyone. . . the intellectual equivalent of Oliver Twist’s gruel.
The strength of the reaction to this teacher is partly a result of a feeling of impotence on the part of parents and taxpayers. They don’t feel that they have a say in creating or choosing the education they are forced to support. In a freer system if parents did not want someone in the classroom with the ideology of that ranting leftist teacher (and I am sure I would not want him for my own children!), they would be free to work through the school board and find someone else. . . but at the moment they are prevented from doing so by teacher’s unions and Big Government. Both groups tell them what can and cannot be said in the classroom and traditional conservatives know that this has not been done evenly.
The fundamental problem is a lack of educational choice combined with this government control. I have chosen private education to avoid exactly this sort of leftist agit-prop and to expose my students to ideas now banned in the classroom. All parent’s should more easily have this option as well by being able to take their own money (now taken from them by taxes) as credits to the school of their choice. Until then, as long as we must have government schools, we should allow teachers and local schools as much latitude as possible in picking their faculty. After all, the liberal is more likely to be protected in his opinions in today’s government schools than the maverick conservative.
Fundamentally, parents should be the ones to decide the nature of the education their children should receive.