Writers’ Advocacy Group Claims American Teachers Work Under a ‘Gag Order’
“restrictions on K–12 teacher speech are not intrinsically intolerable, even to those on the political left”
The idea that teachers are under a gag order is not accurate or true. The left is just angry that people don’t want teachers to spend their time being classroom advocates for LGBT issues and other hot political topics.
The Fordham Institute reports:
Gag order? Or gag reflex?: State laws on teacher speech
A new report from PEN America claims that 1.3 million teachers, roughly a third of full-time classroom staff in the United States, are now forced to work under “educational gag orders.” PEN tallies forty pieces of legislation restricting teacher speech across twenty-two states as of November 1, 2023. The report warns darkly that political conservatives “have learned from past mistakes and have new and more insidious strategies for silencing America’s educators,” particular shifting their emphasis from bills banning the teaching of critical race theory to “bills that restrict speech about LGBTQ+ topics and identities, including numerous copycats of last year’s HB 1557 in Florida, known to critics as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.”
First and foremost, it’s important to recognize PEN America for what it is—an advocacy group concerned with protecting writers’ free expression, not an education organization. While its commitment to free speech is commendable in most contexts, PEN’s advocacy doesn’t translate seamlessly to the complex dynamics of K–12 public education, where states and school districts commonly and uncontroversially impose restrictions on teacher speech and conduct in the service of protecting minors, running safe and orderly schools, and advancing academic standards, while being mindful of often complex community sensibilities.
Tendentiously describing restrictions on teacher speech as “educational gag orders” is on par with equally hyperbolic claims about “book bans,” which, needless to say, do not and cannot co-exist with robust First Amendment protections. When bookstores proudly display tables of “banned books” for sale with (thank goodness) no fear of prosecution, it’s self-evident (and vaguely comical) that no such “bans” exist.
More pertinently, restrictions on K–12 teacher speech are not intrinsically intolerable, even to those on the political left. At least one major poll found that when presented with the actual language of the Florida’s much maligned “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through the third grade, even Democrats supported it by a better than two-to-one margin.
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Comments
I kind of agree with the statement, if not the reasons.
My mom retired from teaching in 2019. She had no speech in the classroom. She had to teach the EXACT same lesson on the EXACT same day as EVERY OTHER first grade teacher in her district (30 elementary schools in her district). It did not matter if her kids understood or not. It did not matter if her kids were fascinated by a topic. She had to teach that lesson that day and move on the next day.
This is another reason I do not support the schools. There is no room for TEACHING the children. Just vomiting information at them and asking them to regurgitate it at the end of the year.
Will the idiot coward who downvoted this comment please identify yourself.
It really is crazy how many people seem to think that going to college will set them up financially for life
Like some men think that buying a particular wristwatch will set them up to meet and marry Ms. Right.
Crazy . And sad.
Next time you see a display of “banned books” by a library or bookseller, go up to them and ask if you can pick up a copy of “Unintended Consequences,” or “The Turner Diaries” from them. Then ask them why not.
correct headline:
when censoring communist/nazis whine about censorship
lefty handles criticism as well as one would expect of a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths
How can we educate people that there is no such thing as free speech in the workplace? You give up some rights when you accept a job, that is if you want to keep the job. We actually need to get more and better control over what is taught in the classroom in public schools and how it is taught
.
OTOH, this article is about a political agenda. The counter to this faux free speech argument is that if you don’t want to be gagged in this way, don’t take a job as a public school teacher.
Please look at https://pen.org/spineless-shelves/ for some of the books which have been “banned”. They are pornographic, deviant trash.
PEN is a leftist organization which hates us.
These are profoundly wicked people.
https://pen.org/staff/
Most academic programs have some sort of standardization in their curriculum, particularly at lower levels (up to higher education) dictated by whatever state and/or federal authority funds it, or in the case of professions whichever agency accredits the program (e.g. ABA, LCME, etc.). That’s done for continuity purposes. The problem with so many teachers/professors is they would throw those standards away and teach their CRT/Hate Whitey/Grab the Reparations diatribe continuously in the most arcane of subjects like how to read math (Free the dependent variables!!!!) to diagramming sentences (if anyone still even does that!!). Our kids are already at least three years behind (at least), and those of us who have elected homeschooling are being told that our kids are being “indoctrinated with White Christian Nationalism”. Funny, seven of the 15 students in our homeschooling collective are black children of Air Force officers whose parents are appalled by how bad the military schools have become. So organizations like PEN can go to hell. It’s one thing to be creative and NON-political in the way you teach the prescribed curriculum and add material that really catches the students’ attention and interest without being a foaming-mouth lunatic. It’s another thing to make Instagram videos of yourself wearing outlandish outfits and boasting about how you’ve violated policies and kept critical information from parents because of your self-righteous and narcissistic need to feel “special” because of your craving for attention.