Do not silence teachers
By Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.
I have been a public school teacher since 2009, and I’ve seen plenty of silencing. I’m not proud to say that I’ve even partaken in some, when I thought I had to keep quiet myself — just to keep my job. But the censorship persists: I have been chastised directly by male colleagues for being too feminine, I’ve been pulled aside by a principal who said that if I chose to be open about being gay I would be crucified and undefended, and, most recently, I’ve been bluntly told that people felt that my LGBTQ student advocacy — lending a listening ear, or sponsoring student-led clubs — was “being shoved down their throats.”
Still, none of this comes close to the silencing we are now experiencing in the classroom. It is so bad that the future of free speech and our students’ empathy and self-image hang in the balance.
Whereas most of my silencing has been behind closed doors, whispered only to me, this new censorship is boldly proclaimed as moral or even “best practice.” And it goes far beyond squelching LGBTQ experiences: It silences huge swaths of people and entire eras of history by banning discussion of anything related to race.
This new censorship is boldly proclaimed as moral or even “best practice.”
All of this is framed in the controversy over critical race theory, a term hyper-conservative politicians have hijacked to try and censor the painful truths of our nation’s history. Although CRT is a concept limited to university-level study, that has not stopped the introduction of legislation that is preventing K-12 educators from teaching honest history or discussing its connection to systemic racism and discrimination today.
Censoring tactics like the Krause list — a list of 850 books Texas state Rep. Matt Krause wants schools to track because of content related to sexuality, race, or anything that may cause discomfort or psychological distress — hope to outright ban certain topics and books from schools. In the schools themselves, local decrees are just as damaging if not more so, due to their vague nature. My school’s English department has been instructed by multiple administrators in the last year not to teach anything “racial,” and our superintendent has requested anything “sexual” or “racial” be discussed with administrators before being presented to students.
The people behind this censorship are firmly rooted in the current zeitgeist, and their views are shared by administrators across the country: They believe the presence of race, gender, and LGBTQ identities to be potentially problematic or disruptive. That silences teachers who want to be team players or just keep their jobs.
Censoring tactics like the Krause list hope to outright ban certain topics and books from schools.
Given these circumstances, how willing is a teacher to read excerpts from The Bluest Eye? Not very. Why? Because Black author Toni Morrison describes racism through the eyes of a little Black girl. Might the same teacher read The Great Gatsby? Yes. Why? Because white author F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses on privileged white people. Herein lies the issue.
The censors say they are offended that race should matter at all. But if we eliminate all discussion of race — which censors equate with all discussion of anything Black — we whitewash the entire curriculum and erase the students in our classrooms, our own communities, and history itself. We deny our students the tools they need to see the world clearly.
I worry most about the students. In a system that disincentivizes even references to race, gender, or sexuality, in which two-thirds of the books on Krause’s list are LGBTQ-centered and one-tenth discuss racism, how can students learn about themselves as part of a system? And how are white, straight, cisgender students to learn about the experiences of people who are different from them — experiences that are, essentially, illegalized in schools?
I worry most about the students. In a system that disincentivizes even references to race, gender, or sexuality, how can students learn about themselves as part of a system?
The First Amendment ensures that freedom of speech may not be abridged, and our understanding of speech has evolved tremendously since its writing. Legally, speech has been expanded to mean actions, work, and even the free use of money by corporations. Academically, we also understand that speech involves the opportunity to listen: Hearing and reading are essential and fundamental aspects of free speech. Censorship denies students this very right: to hear someone talk about themselves, to know more about the human experience, to better understand their place in relation to each other, to partake in the sharing of the marketplace of ideas.
I urge teachers, administrators and stakeholders to become aware of the extent to which curricula include people of color and LGBTQ people, and I urge them to speak up when voices would silence that inclusion. I fully support legislation and am thankful for advocacy by groups like the American Federation of Teachers that guarantee and fight for students’ rights to access voices in their classroom regardless of their gender, sexuality, race, or political beliefs and that protect those teachers who share them. I believe strongly that when any of us is not allowed to be heard, all our voices are threatened.
Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., teaches English and French at Montgomery High School in Mount Sterling, Ky. He is the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. Carver is a member of the AFT affiliate KY120 United.
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