By their very title, public schools are designed to cater to the public. Therefore, their teachings should remain as objective as possible, as they have the widest range of student perspectives to appease. Implicitly, it’s the responsibility of these schools to abide by this objectivity.
Jefferson County School District, the second largest school district in Colorado, has recently taken action toward abandoning this responsibility. Its new, conservatively based school board decided after a review of the AP U.S. history curriculum that it requires substantial modification. The board’s concerns are that the curriculum standards have become “revisionist and represent a negative view of the country.”
Unfortunately, the solutions the board is proposing appear to be more a censorship effort than anything else. This poses a problem, as censorship of curriculum content ultimately jeopardizes the integrity of the entire U.S. educational infrastructure and the liberty of its students and teachers.
The reasoning behind JeffCo’s proposed curriculum changes was that not only should students be more immersed in patriotic, traditional American values, but they shouldn’t be “taught to disobey the law.”
The suggested modifications would start with excluding historical figures made famous by their civil disobedience, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau. As the official proposal states: “Materials should not condone civil disorder, social strifeand disregard of the law. Instructional materials should present positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.”
In response, JeffCo students and staff have conducted classroom walk-outs to protest these proposed changes. While the school board has referenced these protests as manifestations of the problems in the current curriculum, these people’s right to assemble peacefully is protected under the First Amendment of our Constitution.
The First Amendment also grants the right of free speech, which would be taken away should the JeffCo school board unnecessarily limit what students can and cannot learn and what teachers can and cannot teach. In a public school setting, where it’s impractical for each and every individual’s opinion to be equally represented, a truly just school board should instead be an advocate for as unbiased and truthful curriculum as possible.
With only one bias represented, the remaining perspectives would be completely alienated from the classroom. This would oppress individuals, which, by the principles of J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism, would contribute to a worsened collective academic community. The harm principle states that we should be free to do as we please so long as that brings no harm to others. Oppressing other viewpoints would most certainly bring harm to students.
Along with the inexcusable violation of individual rights would be the blatant ignorance of historical fact. Taking anti-civil-disobedience views into account in an entire district would, in essence, deny the existence of practically every rights movement in history. Considering historical progression from the women’s suffrage movement to the civil-rights movement to the marriage-equality movement, each of them involved civil disobedience at some point.
Censoring cases of civil disobedience in the name of protecting America from law-breaking students would equate to “protecting” the students from the valuable historical insight to be gained from studying these momentous events. Students today are our leaders of tomorrow, and we would render them unequipped to handle social adversity if we disregard past instances of overcoming oppression. All 85,983 students potentially affected by this curriculum review will grow up to inherit the world, and we should want to ensure they do so with competence and compassion for others.
In addition, lest we forget that an entire world exists outside the United States, we must consider that students shortchanged by curriculum censorship will not only become citizens of the United States but of the world as well.
Eliminating the numerous atrocities America has committed both domestically and abroad in the name of preaching patriotism in our schools would leave students helplessly ignorant to international relations. This would set them at a tremendous disadvantage come their time to join the global workforce. After all, when it comes time to send these students off into the world, don’t we want them to part with a more complete understanding of our history? Students should learn from different historical vantage points and gain tolerance and understanding of other cultures rather than mindlessly perpetuate the false sense of our country’s perfection.
Without being able to establish themselves in a global context, students would only become part of the problem. If students are denied multiple perspectives, how will they create their own belief systems? As Margaret J. Wheatley articulates, it’s through listening for what surprises us that we develop our own beliefs and opinions. If some voices are silenced in the classroom, students will never have the chance to define themselves on their own terms, rather than on a school board’s. They need to form their own perspectives now so they will be prepared to do so in the future so they can best contribute to a progressing society (Wheatley).
The result of the proposed changes would be students emerging from their school environments as blindly patriotic, unquestioning robots. Sure, they’d be perfectly compliant with the law and would preach the ideal American history, but would we really prefer a nation of conformists over one of critical thinkers? For this, we must think long-term: We risk halting our innovation and progression altogether if we don’t educate our students to be more open-minded, worldly individuals.
As the extensive student and teacher protests in Jefferson County have already illustrated, this censorship effort offers nothing of value and everything of detriment to Jefferson County School District; it also sets a dangerous precedent for other districts to follow. In order to truly secure our future, we must preserve the unbiased, inclusive curricula already in place. We must not allow educational censorship to forever change the perspectives of a new generation of American learners.
Oli Sakadinsky is a junior at Animas High School in Ashley Carruth’s humanities class.
