Said Jeff Taff, a high school social studies teacher, quoted in "Burlington teacher suspended after allegedly directing students to watch video questioning election results" (Wisconsin State Journal).
He told students he would be gone from school Tuesday through Thursday and planned to return Friday. In the online lesson plan, he directed students to review materials that included a video discussing debunked claims calling into question President-elect Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election over incumbent President Donald Trump....
Last fall, after students raised questions about the Black Lives Matter movement, fourth-grade teacher Melissa Statz taught a lesson regarding the movement and led a classroom discussion about racial injustice. BASD School Board members later held a public discussion about the situation, and permitted supporters and critics alike to publicly evaluate Statz’s teaching methods, with many complaining that the lesson was not part of the curriculum. Darnisha Garbade is president of the Burlington Coalition to Dismantle Racism, a group that has rallied behind Statz and called out incidents of alleged racism in Burlington....
Garbade said she believes it would be wrong for Taff to use the classroom as a forum for promoting the pro-Trump beliefs that spawned Wednesday’s riot in Washington.... Statz said she was aware of Taff's situation, but she does not think her working to promote racial tolerance can be equated with what she considers to be evidence of Taff's blatant politicizing in the classroom. "I don't think it's fair of people to compare the two," she said.
I don't think the classroom should be politicized at all, but if you think it can, what a teacher can do shouldn't depend on which way it is politicized. If you want to say some politicizing is permissible, but the line must be drawn at blatant politicizing, then we'll have to sift through the evidence, and we're likely to disagree, and disagreements about when the line is crossed are going to be intertwined with politics.
Teaching law school for 30+ years, I especially liked keeping my political opinions out of the discussion. It was already my predilection. But I knew plenty of law professors who not only put their politics into the classroom discussion but argued that what they were doing was good, because it's better to be transparent. They thought politics would always be in the discussion anyway.
According to his page on the BASD website, Taff... is engaged in “self-directed leadership education that teaches one how to think for oneself.” Taff was scheduled this school year to teach courses titled “Modern American History” to sophomores and “Modern World History” to juniors.
You never know with these teachers who say they want the students to think for themselves!
