TEACHING, CURRICULUM AND PROPAGANDA

American public schools and the teachers who work in them have a particularly delicate responsibility. They are expected to reflect community values objectively but positively; convey the national history and culture; and, at the same time, expose students to varieties of information and points of view. Hopefully, their successes will produce students who have the intellectual skills and the values to make informed and sound judgments in a society that respects the democratic process.

For teachers, carrying out this responsibility is a complicated matter. They have their own personal views, their own private values, their own interpretation of facts, just like anyone. But their job is to arm students with the ability to make choices about things for themselves, without imposing prejudged formulas or prepackaged biases. While it is appropriate for students to know that their teachers have opinions, teachers cannot be crude advocates of propagandists in the classroom.

Teachers are citizens too. They have the right and the duty to make their views known on the important public issues of the day. It is appropriate, if they choose, for them to do this through their union.

When the public school teacher's obligation to teach and his or her private citizen's choice to engage in political activity become confused and overlapping, the public school system is endangered. When any national organi­zation of teachers fails to distinguish these roles, the problem is compounded. Certainly, a confusion of roles that is projected by many teachers, at all levels of our education system, is more threatening than that of one individual in a given classroom. We face such confusion, influence and danger today from the National Education Association.

The NEA has begun cooperating with various advocacy groups in promoting curriculum guides, namely, the Union of Concerned Scientists in the publication of Choices: A Unit on Conflict and Nuclear War and the Council on Interracial Books for Children (CIBC) in distributing Violence, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Struggle for Equality. These publications, and some other educational materials the NEA has promoted, have met with a strong criticism that they are seriously biased. They are accused of presenting too negative a view of racial problems in American society. They have been attacked for weighing one view of how to maintain peace over others that are equally defensible.

All materials teachers use in classrooms are biased in some way or another. It would be foolhardy to attempt to create totally bias-free classrooms with neutral teaching aids. Besides, part of what teaching and learning is all about is the development of a sophistication about bias and point of view. But the activities of the NEA present us with a new and different problem. In an educational system which is basically local and highly decentralized, a national and very centralized teachers' organization is moving into the business of promoting questionable materials for use in classrooms around the country. A political organization of teachers is confusing the promotion of its own political positions with teaching a particular view of these same positions in our classrooms. Some of these materials, in fact, go so far as to encourage children to enter the political arena themselves by writing to their elected representatives and collecting signatures to place referenda on electoral ballots.

The American Federation of Teachers views the NEA's mindless confusion of its political rights with its members' classroom responsibilities as a grave threat to public education. We fear that the mistakes now being made by the NEA will create distrust among parents and hostility among public decision-makers. This can only enlarge the circle of school critics and promote deeper criticism of the effects of teacher organizations and teacher un­ionism. We believe that for any national organization with power in the education policy arena to move in this direction could become a threat to the free and democratic foundation of public education.

The American Federation of Teachers chooses to disassociate itself from the sorts of activities now being carried out by the NEA. We caution the NEA that in continuing down this path, it may encourage both the critics of public education and of trade unionism. In so doing, we set forth the following principles which will guide our own organizational behavior on this and similar questions. The American Federation of Teachers will:

Oppose any efforts by teacher organizations to promote particular organizational positions through classroom materials or activities. We may want to advocate that materials on subjects now largely ignored such as labor history and organization, international human rights or international affairs be added to the curricular repertoire available to students. We may want to assist in the preparation of such materials, but we would strongly oppose any attempt to use these or any materials to propagandize the organizational positions of the AFT in the classrooms of the nation.

Continue to protest any attempt by any private organization to bias the availability of educational materials in our schools. We recognize the need for reasoned adult judgment in selecting appropriate books, films, and other educational aids for children, but we also believe that part of the educational process requires that students be exposed to variety, so that with teachers as responsible guides, they can learn to think for themselves. Just as we fight the book-banners' methods for thwarting the educational process, we will oppose those like the NEA who, using a different style and different tools, threaten to do the same thing.

Make special efforts to publicly differentiate our own organizational positions on education policy, political endorsements, labor affiliation, economic policy and international affairs from our view of the role of classroom teachers and dispassionate and objective guides to the learning process.

Oppose the use of children as political pawns in the promotion of particular views, whether through classroom or other school-related activities.