Crackdowns on Student Advocacy
What do people claiming public schools are "indoctrination" camps really want?
Education writer Jennifer Berkshire recently tweeted that it was “[i]mpossible to overstate how much of Florida education politics right now— mandatory K-12 anti-communism curriculum, the push for conservative *classical* charters— is an attempt to reverse engineer kids so they won't be so keen on collective action”.
I think that observation is right on the money, though I wonder how sincere the proponents of this movement are about anything involving schools. In other words, do they truly want to change education in America, or do they simply want to use populist messaging to gain political power? Either way, this neo-McCarthyite educational policy has spread far beyond Florida.
In an echo of 1960s Southern Strategy scaremongering, far right groups and individuals like Chris Rufo are targetting “the institutions,” including universities. In practice, this means rooting out “DEI” programs (often left just as poorly-defined as “wokeness” or “CRT”), calling for the ouster of school leaders and professors who are too “woke,” and pressuring university officials to crack down on student protest and advocacy through arrests and expulsions. (Leaving aside ongoing debates about specific protests on campuses, there seems to be an obvious zeal among some far-right politicians for demanding that “liberal” college administrators step down, no matter what they do or say.)
Again, this is nothing new. In the ‘60s, rightwing politicians practiced these same strategies in reaction to the Civil Rights movement.
And the crackdown on perceived bogeymen hasn’t been restricted to higher education.
The movement to censor instruction in K-12 schools
Individuals and organizations with an interest in undermining public schools often characterize them as centers of “indoctrination,” a word that has filtered down from model legislation by national political groups to state- and school district-level discussions of educational content.
While the “indoctrination” narrative seems intentionally designed to evoke images of reeducation camps and government brainwashing, proponents of censorship and educational gag orders, when pressed, often retreat to a definition of “indoctrination” that matches what many of us would describe as “teaching”— that is, not brainwashing or force-feeding information, but the more prosaic business of introducing students to information and skills, and of helping them to develop as learners. Although the public at large does not support school censorship, the use of words like “indoctrination” preys on emotions that garner political support from politically partisan groups.
In addition to the much-publicized crusade to censor specific texts, there is also a push for more general censorship of instruction, and in particular instruction related to social or political advocacy. Would-be censors argue that unscrupulous educators are using student advocacy to implant their own worldviews and political preferences into the minds of students.
The proposed solution to this manufactured problem is, paradoxically, state censorship of ideas, texts, and “standards” that don’t support the specific agendas and worldviews of these groups. Many of the same people and interests who five years ago would have mocked “trigger warnings” are now calling for wholesale removal— from schools, public libraries, and higher education institutions— of ideas which make them uncomfortable. (Perhaps their objection was not so much that someone was trying to censor language, as it was that they were not the ones in control of the process.)
Officials in many states have proposed or passed legislation to implement educational gag orders, and these often include specific prohibitions against giving credit to students for engaging in public advocacy, even when students, themselves, are allowed to choose the topics and positions they are addressing.
For example, a bill filed last year in the South Carolina Senate would prohibit public schools from “encourag[ing] students into… participating in social or political activism such as protesting, marching, lobbying, or writing campaigns” or offering “course credit, incentives, or favorable consideration for participating in social or political activism”. This language comes directly from a model bill from the politically partisan National Association of Scholars (NAS), a group whose central goals include outlawing DEI and affirmative action.
While other elements of this bill— and many others like it— prohibit pressuring students into accepting or adopting specific beliefs (which is hopefully not a controversial requirement)— other parts of the legislation don’t allow students to receive instruction on how to advocate, at all.
Ultimately, the SC House and Senate passed versions of a similar bill, H. 3728, that is still in conference committee. The current Senate and House versions, which can still be amended, don’t explicitly prohibit instruction in advocacy, but still contain direct (unattributed) quotes from the NAS bill.
Teacher self-censorship
Any legislation that contains educational gag order language will likely have a chilling effect on instruction related to advocacy, because of the broad range of vaguely defined concepts the NAS language prohibits.
As a recent RAND report shows, most American teachers are already censoring themselves around instruction related to social issues and politics, and this remains true in states where specific censorship legislation has not yet passed. It is likely that the overall attack on educational content is scaring teachers away from addressing anything “political,” even in courses like history and current events where politics is a core element.
That this effect is heightened, according to RAND, in areas of the country that were more likely to vote for President Trump in the last election, suggests that partisanship, as much as any specific rule or prohibition, is a driver of teachers’ self-censorship. (Ironically, one of the model bills is called the “Partisanship Out of Civics Act”.)
“Outside agitators”
The underlying premise of attacks on instruction is that students are too weak-minded to form their own views, that they are easy prey for indoctrination. (Existing studies in the university context do not support this view.)
Yet when students do their own research, and attempt to advocate for themselves, they are often accused by proponents of censorship, without evidence, of already having been indoctrinated (assuming they don’t adopt the positions which authority figures would like for them to adopt).
For example, during the State Board meeting that ended in passage of her regulation restricting books in school and classroom libraries, SC Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver explicitly blamed resistance to book censorship on “national groups” imposing “their pre-written narrative of what this regulation does and doesn’t do onto the hard work of this board and the community feedback that we have received and incorporated here.” Weaver continued, “And so I’d like to say to our students who are here today that it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that there are adults and narratives who have actively misled you about what this regulation does and doesn’t do. But I want to be entirely clear with you that this regulation in no way silences your viewpoint or your voice.”
There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, which uses the old rhetorical trick of first blaming any opposing views on unnamed “outside” groups, before then suggesting that no one’s voice is being silenced by a regulation which is explicitly designed to create further state authority over which authors and texts will be removed— potentially from every school in the state.
Weaver praises the Board for listening to “community feedback” but then suggests that the community feedback students have come to deliver is illegitimate.
She also argues that choosing which books to read is not a form of speech, and that prohibiting students from what is often their only opportunity to access texts is not, itself, a kind of viewpoint discrimination.
Her statement is also, rhetorically, almost identical to the argument Dr. King was rebutting in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail”. That argument (“A Call to Unity”) labeled King and other advocates for civil rights as “outsiders,” and blamed these advocates, and by extension much of the Black community of Alabama, for the violence which had been perpetrated by white supremacists against that community in response to their peaceful advocacy. The white clergymen who signed “A Call to Unity” implied strongly that King’s movement was not “peaceful” because of the violence perpetrated by white supremacists against the movement.
National groups are the ones promoting censorship legislation.
The origins and impetus for Weaver’s regulation and related legislation are, themselves, national groups, but they’re probably not the ones she meant to reference in her remarks.
Most of SC’s censorship legislation comes directly— as in word for word— from national partisan think tanks like Heritage Foundation and NAS, and bills with similar language to that of Weaver’s regulation have been proposed and passed across the country, usually based on templates provided from the same groups or their peers. Weaver, herself, has openly courted the support of Moms for Liberty— even appearing at their national conference on a panel with Oklahoma superintendent and anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Ryan Waters— and related groups, promising to attack “woke nonsense” in exactly the way this regulation attempts to do. (More recently, Weaver has signed onto another cause championed by the same groups, picking a fight with the Biden administration by proclaiming SC’s right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ students in defiance of federal Title IX guidance.)
These efforts are not in response to some groundswell of support from South Carolinians— as evidenced by the fact that the same roughly ten folks from the Moms-for-Liberty-esque organization PACE for Lex2 (along with Anderson House Rep and Mom for Liberty April Cromer) have tended to make up the majority of speakers in favor of the regulations.
Instead, it’s likely censorship bills and regulations are coming at the behest of the same kinds of national organizations and figures who funded Weaver’s campaign. The majority of South Carolinians, for example, do not support state censorship of concepts like “CRT,” which was the major focus of censorship efforts before a shift in strategy that amounts to labeling books featuring LGBTQ+ and other minority perspectives as “pornography”. (Some versions of the model bills copied and pasted in SC have even been explicitly labeled “Critical Race Theory prohibition,” despite generally having nothing explicitly to do with CRT itself.)
Student advocacy in action
Students who attended the Board meeting, for their part, did not buy Weaver’s explanation.
High school and college students had traveled to Columbia from around the state that day to voice concerns about the regulation, which they had been following for months. Many were from DAYLO, a student-formed advocacy group which has been involved in local board decisions about book censorship.
One student began his testimony by calmly saying, “I’d like to preface my statement by informing you that I was not misled; I’ve done the research, I’ve read the regulation, I’m here by my own choice.”
Another student, clearly upset by Weaver’s unsupported characterization, began her testimony by saying, “I’m one of those ‘misinformed students’ that you’re talking about.”
A high school student and vice president of Beaufort’s DAYLO chapter stated that, “The First Amendment is central to any discussion of book bans. Students have a Constitutional right to receive information. While, yes, government censorship is unconstitutional, school boards are permitted to pull books from school libraries that are not beneficial or appropriate for their students, in keeping with local community standards. Families can do the same for their students with opt out forms… In Federalist Ten, James Madison worried for our country’s future with factions; small groups that seek to make decisions for the whole, often don’t take into consideration the inclusive aims of our democracy”.
If the connection this student made between foundational American documents and current events isn’t the purpose of studying American history, then what is? And although she probably did not receive credit at school for attending that day, I would argue that she should have, having demonstrated a deeper understanding of history content than any standardized test could ever show.
The following day, at a Senate committee meeting to discuss the anti-gender-affirming care bill H. 4624, students again spoke passionately, and from an informed place, about what the legislation meant to themselves or to their peers.
One of my former research students, Alyssa, who is now a freshman at the University of South Carolina Honors College, spent hours (on Valentine’s Day) waiting to testify at the meeting. Alyssa (whose testimony starts at about 2:27:00 in the video archive) filled her few minutes with data and logical arguments about the potential outcomes of the bill.
“I have found this bill incredibly alarming,” she said. Specifically critiquing a section at the end of the regulation which requires the forced outing of students, Alyssa cited HRC’s 2018 Youth Report, saying “Many LGBTQ youth describe being outed as extremely stressful. It’s an invasion of privacy that puts trans kids in vulnerable positions. The same report goes on to say that trans youth are two times more likely to be mocked by their family for their gender identity than their cisgender peers. If trans students fear they will be outed to their families, they will stray away from discussing their mental health issues with trusted adults.”
Alyssa went on to cite several other relevant sources to amplify and support her concerns.
Alyssa excelled in AP Seminar, a college-level research course where students are required to develop their own research topics, use credible resources, and develop their findings in an oral/ multimedia presentation, so it was not surprising to see her excel in a public hearing.
But, again, why bother teaching this type of content and skills, if not to empower students to use them the way Alyssa did that day, in a way that was profoundly relevant to her and to her community? (Ironically, the Chair of South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus, a group which has pushed censorship legislation about as hard as any other in the state, visited my AP Seminar class and personally demonstrated the academic value of allowing students-- for course credit-- bring their own questions and concerns to an elected official, something many educational gag orders prohibit. You can see Morgan’s response to that specific tension here.)
I was proud of Alyssa, not because of the position she took, but because of the rational, passionate, and well-supported argument she made, of her own volition. While I agree with many of Alyssa’s points, they are her points, and not mine.
As an educator who worked with high school students for a decade and a half, it disturbs me whenever I see their agency removed by people with a political axe to grind. Teachers in our program did not teach Alyssa or her classmates what to think, but we did try to help them to express what they thought more effectively.
Perhaps that’s what truly bothers partisan political organizations and their preferred candidates: the idea that young people might form their own conclusions without anyone having the final say over what those conclusions might be. Perhaps at its core the “anti-woke” movement arises more out of bitterness that many young people have decided, on their own, to move away from its values, than out of any concern for helping young people make their own decisions. This, too, reflects the era in which King was writing, an era in which disgruntled adults-- many of whom supported racially discriminatory policies-- targeted schools and higher learning institutions when they found themselves unable to control the politics and social justice concerns of many of their children.
Student advocacy instruction is important, for both pedagogical and civic purposes.
I know of no better way to teach the things I was trained to teach— rhetoric, writing for an audience, research, public speaking skills, and other communication skills— than to allow students to find something about which they’re passionate, and then help them to communicate it to an audience of real people.
When I assigned students to write letters to decision-makers, for example, I often saw some of the best writing of the year. These students were never told what to write about; instead, I helped them to generate their own topics through writing prompts that asked them about what concerned them, and to select their own audiences by researching who could best address those concerns. Some of these messages I agreed with; others I didn’t. In every case, the point was to help students learn to use written communication to further their own interests and goals.
And many of these students heard back, which was the entire point of writing to real people. Legislators, district officials, and others sometimes replied to my students. Sometimes they showed up at the school to have conversations in person. Memorably, a sheriff’s deputy lectured my whole class for about thirty minutes after the county Sheriff received a letter from one student about his perception that the police weren’t taking criminal activities in the school seriously enough.
As part of this unit, we generally read King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which is both a powerful essay in its own right, and an even more striking piece of rhetoric in its historical context: King was replying to real people with their own viewpoints and agendas, about an issue so pressing that he was writing the first draft from a jail cell.
I don’t think we need to tell young people what the Alabama clergy told King: essentially, that local advocates were too weak-minded to decide for themselves about the kind of world they wanted to live in. And I don’t think we need to try to control what students think— nor can we. If Ms. Weaver had ever spent time as a classroom teacher, I believe she would know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to “indoctrinate” or “coerce” a developing mind into unquestioningly accepting anything, even the most seemingly obvious precepts. (Just try to persuade an adolescent to do almost anything they don’t want to do.) And that’s as it should be: young people need to figure out life for themselves.
As James Baldwin put it in his 1963 “Talk to Teachers”:
The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.
I think many of us, rather than truly fearing “indoctrination” in the negative sense, fear its opposite: the power of many educators to help students to find the voice and tools to speak loudly for themselves and to ask questions which benefit society but which often make adults scared and uncomfortable.
As we consider how to respond to speech on K-12 and college campuses in a way that protects all students from violence and hate speech, I hope we will maintain a balance that supports freedom of expression, and which helps students to develop as advocates and thinkers.