The Utah State Board of Education’s “2022 Education Exit Survey” — its most recent — reported that 1,064 public school teachers, upon resigning from their positions during the 2021-2022 school year, completed the state authorized exit survey. After reviewing them, the board concluded: “Emotional exhaustion, burnout and job-specific stressors are the most influential factors in educators’ decisions to leave their positions.”
Rachel Wright in her recent op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune addresses a key “job specific stressor.” She cites “the passing of legislation inhibiting educators’ ability to make teaching choices as professionals.” Such legislation results in moral injury: the disconnect between legislative mandates and what educators, as trained professionals, know best promotes the overall intellectual growth and emotional maturation of students.
Public schools are a major battleground in our nation’s culture wars. Some politically active groups of conservative parents claim: (1) “Parents exclusively hold the right to morally and socially educate their children.” (2) “Public school teachers, as representatives of the state, shouldn’t attempt to influence their students’ beliefs.” These parents find ready support from conservative politicians.
One example: Some conservative parents support Rep. Jeff Stenquist’s bill promoting “viewpoint neutrality” within Utah’s public school classrooms. Stenquist’s bill proposes that public school officials and employees “may not endorse, promote or disparage” religious, social or political beliefs, or views on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Given the extent to which the culture wars are being fought in public schools, will an unqualified assertion of parental authority, when coupled with Stenquist’s proposal, diminish the quality of public education?
Parents of course have the primary duty “to morally and socially educate their children,” especially when children are young. This duty, however, does not establish an exclusive right.
Grade school education no doubt should focus on reading, writing and arithmetic. Shielding more mature students from moral and social controversies, however, is both impossible and undesirable. Media sources often focus on controversial topics and are readily accessible. Such sources provide both information and misinformation. It is imperative that students be taught critical thinking skills so they can better separate the wheat from the chaff communicated via all media, but especially via the internet.
A caution regarding Stenquist’s bill: “Promote” and “disparage” are vague terms. A position may be promoted by appeal to evidence and logic, or by emotive manipulation. Someone whose position has been subjected to intellectually responsible criticism may erroneously believe their stance has been disparaged.
If teachers do not address controversial topics, high school graduates will be ill-prepared for responsible participation in civil society. High school students should be exposed to the major arguments made by proponents with differing viewpoints on controversial subjects.
Teachers should, of course, alert students when advocates advance false claims in support of their views. Teachers should also alert students to the rhetorical and logical fallacies often employed by those who address controversial topics. Otherwise they will fail to promote intellectually responsible reflection on the moral and political ordering of our society.
The major authors of our nation’s foundational documents were sons of the enlightenment. In the Federalist Papers, they engaged in intellectually responsible debates, modeled the power of critical thinking and extolled education as a safeguard against the rise of an autocrat and the fall of the republic. They proposed responsible debate as a major means for countering any faction that might rally in support of an autocrat’s cause.
If students are not taught how critical thinking functions with reference to moral and social issues, they will likely conclude that reason is operative solely in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If the STEM disciplines are viewed as the sole domains of reason, then morality and politics will increasingly be viewed as the realms of unreason — as the realms of subjective or in-group preferences.
Moral and political leaders can then increasingly employ emotive manipulation and appeals to authority, rather than intellectually responsible debates, as the means for promoting their ideologies and sustaining the loyalty of their followers.
If we the people discount critical thinking skills and fail to ensure they are imparted to our children, influential political leaders and a minority of parents will be able to thwart the democratizing objectives of public education. They will be able to impose their own ideological preferences and personal beliefs upon the broader community.
Conscientious educators will suffer further moral injury.
Andrew Bjelland
Andrew Bjelland, PhD, professor emeritus of philosophy at Seattle University, taught political philosophy, jurisprudence, medical ethics and logic. He held the Pigott-McCone Chair in Humanities. He resides in Salt Lake City.
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