The Battle for Democracy Starts in the Classroom

I have been thinking a lot about educational gag orders. PenAmerica is a great resource to learn more about the growing number of laws dictating what can and cannot be taught.

The battle for democracy doesn’t start in Congress, the state legislatures, or even the voting booth; it starts in the classroom. Education is the linchpin of democracy.? Attacks on education are attacks on democracy. They need to be treated as such.

Let me share a personal story to illustrate my point. Almost forty years ago, I took an undergraduate history class on WWII with Professor Larry Gelfand, a well-respected teacher and scholar at the University of Iowa.? Gelfand was in the infantry during WWII and fought the Battle of Okinawa, a fierce battle that resulted in nearly 50,000 American casualties and over 12,000 American deaths. During the class, we examined the United States’ wartime decisions, from whether to enter the war to whether to drop the atomic bomb. Up to this point, I had only been exposed to a one-dimensional view of the war, one in which the United State’s actions were largely unexamined. I remember Gelfand asking why the Battle of Okinawa was necessary if President Truman planned to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.? He didn’t posit an answer, he just left the question hanging in the air.? It was a powerful teaching moment.

I returned home and with all the hubris of a 19 year old and indignantly presented the question to my parents. They did not react well. My dad was a WWII vet and they had lived through the war. They said I didn't understand the complexities of the time. And they were right, I didn't. But it spurred me to think more critically about US history and policies.

Unfortunately, students in many states are now being denied that same powerful moment. Over the last two years, state legislatures have introduced hundreds of laws intended to prohibit or restrict what is taught in public schools, colleges, and universities. Most of the laws target discussions of race, racism, sexual orientation, gender, and even American history. The bills' vague and sweeping language, such as South Carolina’s prohibition against discussing any topic that creates “discomfort, guilt or anguish” based on political belief, combined with the potential monetary penalties, place institutions and educators in an untenable position.? When you add the divisive and sometimes violent rhetoric around these proposals, they effectively chill speech.

But these bills do more than stall a student’s development or chill an educator’s speech; they undermine democracy. The founders believed that an educated public was essential to self-government. Thomas Jefferson opined that we must “educate and inform the whole mass of the people…they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, the very president I was critiquing in Professor Gelfand’s class, echoed Jefferson’s sentiment:

"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education…to prepare each citizen to choose wisely and to enable him to choose freely are paramount functions of the schools in democracy."

In short, education was perceived to be a bulwark against tyranny.

History provides evidence that autocratic governments seek to influence or, in some cases, prohibit citizens from obtaining an education. When Adolph Hitler came to power, he immediately made changes to the school curriculum, seeking to reduce resistance to fascist ideas. The German Student Union burned books deemed subversive or opposed to Nazi ideology. German citizens identified as Jewish were pushed out of public schools. Undermining education was a critical step in securing an obedient citizenry.

In the United States, southern states passed laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read and write. North Carolina passed a statute that made it a crime for any free person to teach any enslaved person how to read or to provide them any reading material. The state feared that if enslaved people became literate, they would question their slave status and rebel.

Today’s laws are presented as protecting students from an undefined so-called woke ideology. (It isn’t a secret; the Florida state legislature adopted a law called the Stope W.O.K.E. Act.)? Woke is thrown around today in much the same way as Communist was bandied about during the McCarthy era. During that time, educators believed to be Communist sympathizers were considered dangerous influences on the public, much like educators deemed to be “woke” face monetary penalties and disciplinary action today.

Forty years ago, Professor Gelfand invited students to critically examine decisions made by the United States. He asked students to recognize the complexity of the moment and the political and moral compromises made.? In some states today, students will not have the same freedom to scrutinize slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the vestiges that linger today.

If we want to move this country towards that "more perfect union" first contemplated in the Preamble of the Constitution, we must critically examine our past to create a better future. I will end where I started, education is the linchpin of democracy. We need to treat the attacks on education with the same passion we treat the attacks on voting rights.