By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
The teacher in the next room down-the-hall from me was fired. I was teaching biology at a university lab school in 1973, where we gave college students their first teaching experiences in our high school classes. My colleague was an older, tenured math teacher who decided one week to begin preaching religion to his secondary students. “If you don’t get right with God, you are going to...” was what he said to his students, several of whom reported this to the principal. He admitted this to the principal when asked, and was told to cease and desist. If it happened again, he would be fired. It happened the very next week. And yes, he was fired.
“Free speech” is a concept for public arenas. And despite the belief that it is unlimited, there are limitations to public speech that beyond yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.
But speech in a K-12 or college classroom is more limited. Our “academic freedom” has professional constraints. My lab school colleague crossed that red line when he began proselytizing in school. That very same year, in CPERL v. Nyquist, the Court ruled that the First Amendment does not forbid all mention of religion in public schools, just its purposeful promotion or inhibition. And ten years earlier, in Abington v. Shemp, the Court ruled that if the study of the Bible and religion is presented objectively in a non-religious program of study, it is not unconstitutional. But my colleague was teaching a math class, not history or a survey of religions, and he was not being objectively informational.
A geology teacher would likewise be professionally incompetent teaching students that the world is flat. It violates our current professional understanding. And a population that believes the world is flat could never successfully launch a satellite.
This is not an abstract problem. From 1999 to 2005, I was on the Kansas committee of teachers who faced a State Board of Education that removed evolution from the state standards. Many biology teachers across the state chose to double down on teaching about evolution despite the anemic standards.
But when a teacher in California in 1994 asserted he had an academic freedom right to teach a non-science alternative to evolution in science class, the Court ruled in Peloza v. Capistrano that he did not.
It should be obvious that science teachers should not be using class time to promote religion or politics or other non-science.
But that brings us to the question of social studies and history teachers, where political institutions are the subject being studied. As teachers confront the dilemma of students talking about and asking questions about the storming of the Capitol on January 6, considerable concern has been expressed by teachers in the pages of Education Week (K–12) and even the Chronicle of Higher Education. Students who have witnessed their relatives and classmates emotionally disturbed over this event will likely find that this will become a flash memory for years to come, similar to 9/11 and other public tragedies. This will require teaching strategies that will differ from kindergarten students to college graduate seminars.
Meanwhile, three bills have been introduced by state legislators in Arkansas, Iowa, and Mississippi to ban the use of the “1619 Project” that frames U.S. history around the legacy of slavery. Rationale in those bills to ban this project includes their being “a racially divisive and revisionist account” or attempting to “deny or obfuscate the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded.”
Another attempted political intrusion into teacher professionalism was the short-lived “1776 Commission” formed by the previous President last September to support “patriotic education.” That commission included no professionals in United States history.
Just as professional medical doctors determine the medicines to be prescribed—in accordance with the standards of their profession and unique needs of their patients, professional teachers likewise determine what they teach based on their profession and students. When a doctor sells snake oil, it is the professional board that pulls their license. That should also be the role of professional teaching boards.
Despite the occasional need for courts to intervene in occasional conflicts, the determination of what is professional practice remains defined by the profession. When it is ordered by the government, teaching becomes propaganda.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.