My mother is a retired Maryland public school teacher. When she was a young teacher back in the ‘70s, she was the newspaper adviser in the high school where she taught foreign language. In 1975, two years after the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, her students wanted to write a piece in the school newspaper about sex education, birth control, and abortion. Believing strongly in the First Amendment, my mother allowed them to write and publish the piece despite such topics being taboo and politically charged at the time. The parental outrage that followed led to the principal removing her as newspaper adviser. But as fate would have it, later that same year, the Baltimore Sun named my mother the Maryland Scholastic Journalism Teacher and Newspaper Adviser of the Year, the first time in history they’d given the award to a teacher outside the Baltimore-Washington area. While her principal chose to punish her for allowing the free expression of political ideas in school, the Baltimore Sun chose to celebrate her.
I was thinking of my mother and this story when I came into possession of a truly disturbing screenshot of District 4 Board of Education candidate Sezin Palmer. In a small private Facebook group, she posted that teachers who include political ideology or personal opinions in their teaching should be fired immediately.
Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that Ms. Palmer clearly has no clue about such things as organized labor or tenure. Her viewpoint is dangerous in that she wants to put teachers under a gag order in which they could be fired at the whim of a parent who objects to their child being exposed to an idea, topic, or statement that they deem subversive or seditious. This has long been the strategy employed by those who wish to impede social progress and civil rights, and my mother experienced this up close. Thankfully, while there is still a political divide in topics such as sex education and abortion, the discussion of these topics, and the discussion of birth control with teens, is much more commonplace and accepted today. Clearly, my mother was on the right side of history.
Had Ms. Palmer been in charge at the time, my mother would have lost her job for allowing her students to write about politically charged topics that went against contemporary social norms. Although, had Ms. Palmer been in charge, perhaps my mother would not have allowed the piece at all; she would have been forced to silence her students, impede critical thinking, and stymie their growth out of fear for her job. To me, this is the opposite of teaching.
Our Board of Education needs people who will respect the democratic exchange of ideas inherent in the profession of teaching – not people who can only take comfort in iron-fisted regressivism.
Our teachers deserve better.