Should party politics be kept out of the classroom?

YES
Douglas Buchholz:
Talking politics shifts attention off learning

Recently, a colleague of mine invited some officials of our college to register her students to vote. These officials used the opportunity not just to urge the students to register, but to vote for John Kerry for president. This, in my view, is illegitimate. It is playing upon the vulnerability of students and misusing the authority of the podium.

Effective teaching depends upon a relationship of trust and respect between teacher and students. Building this relationship is the hardest part of the teacher’s art. A professor’s declaring his or her position on party politics shifts the classroom discourse outside of the classroom and the immediate learning process to a field where other criteria apply. It is analogous to a professor’s putting sexual pressure on students—substituting criteria that are external to the learning process for those appropriate to it.

I think there are legitimate ways to introduce political issues in the classroom. This semester, students in my freshman composition classes are reading and writing about Ernest Hemingway’s depictions of World War I. I chose this material with the war in Iraq in mind. When the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was starting, for similar reasons I taught Ulysses Grant’s memoirs about the Civil War. Hemingway on World War I and Grant on the Civil War are very different works: Grant’s memoirs are 19th-century nonfiction about a war Grant regarded as just and necessary; Hemingway’s early novels are 20th-century fiction about a war Hemingway regarded as unnecessary and absurd. What these texts have in common is a focus on the realities of war: brutality, nastiness, extreme suffering of soldiers and civilians. The “political” point they have in common is opposition to lying about war: that whether or not one concludes a war is just and necessary, war is brutal and cruel, and has its own dynamic that eludes generals’ and politicians’ control.

Perhaps this point may seem commonplace. Yet we face a presidential election today in which both major-party candidates are committed to lying about three of the most gruesome and ill-advised wars in U.S. history: Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Teaching students to detect political lying seems to me a way of introducing politics in the classroom without manipulating students. In this way, the “political” aspect of the learning experience will correspond to its other aspects.

Douglas Buchholz, an assistant professor of English at Community College of Philadelphia, belongs to the Faculty Federation of CCP/AFT.

YES
Mark James Miller:
Instructors, students alike must be free to speak their minds

To say that professors should keep their personal politics out of the classroom is the equivalent of saying keep controversial subjects out of the classroom. Self-expression, both by the instructor and by the students, would be limited as a result. During my teaching career I have led discussions on topics as diverse as party politics, abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, affirmative action and the death penalty. I encourage my students to express themselves freely (just don’t attack anyone personally) and I ask questions intended to make them think for themselves and arrive at their own conclusions. As a rule, I only give my opinion if it’s asked for, but I would hate to think I couldn’t give it. Creative discussions would be stifled, and teaching made much less effective, if I felt I couldn’t express myself in class.

An essential part of an education is having your beliefs challenged, being exposed to points of view that differ sharply from your own. This means asking questions you may never have asked before. It means exploring new ways of thinking, hearing new ideas and opening up new horizons in your life. It is a process of discovering your own potential, a process that hopefully will be lifelong. But it is a process that cannot take place if restraints are put on personal expression, in the classroom or anyplace else.

Some of the greatest moments in the development of knowledge and ideas have come when someone had the courage to go against long-held or traditional beliefs. Galileo looked up at the stars and concluded that the earth revolved around the sun. Albert Einstein blew the top off traditional physics when he said energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. John T. Scopes dared teach the theory of evolution in his biology class. These instances, all hallowed now, were controversial in their time.

A teacher’s job is to attempt to get people to think on their own. This can mean bringing up topics that may be unpopular or unfashionable. But, if you have done it well, you might help change someone for the better. You may have been a part of opening up new vistas for them to explore. This may take them right back to where they began, but they will be better off for having taken the journey. This can only be done if all of them, instructors and students alike, are free to speak their minds.

Mark James Miller is president of Allan Hancock Part-time Faculty Association/AFT, Local 6185, in Santa Maria, Calif., and teaches in the English department.