When Gary West taught elementary school social studies two decades ago in a suburb of San Antonio, he wasn’t afraid to take his lessons beyond the bounds of the textbook.
West wasn’t told to steer clear of potentially controversial topics, so he shaped lessons that he thought would pique students’ interest. Teaching history, he led discussions about how the founding fathers’ backgrounds—white, wealthy, landowning—might have influenced the way they wrote laws. To teach about the government, he ran mock elections in his classroom during election years.
His students grappled with how political systems are shaped, why people make the choices they do, and what choices they might make in their communities. The lessons made civic education concrete for them, West said.
Now, though, as an elementary school assistant principal in the same district where he taught, West discourages his teachers from having the kinds of conversations he used to lead. “We are specific with teachers, especially new teachers, about the importance of staying within our curriculum guide,” he said.
“In the current environment, we don’t have teachers step out of those lines. At least not in our neck of the woods.”
West’s perspective is increasingly common among school leaders, according to an August survey from the EdWeek Research Center.
When asked about obstacles to civics education in their schools, 30 percent of principals said the idea that civics is too political or controversial was a “challenging” or “very challenging” barrier. In a separate 2018 survey, only 19 percent of school leaders (including principals, assistant principals, and deans) said the same.
Losing real-life civics lessons is ‘unfortunate’
The six-year period between those surveys spanned a particularly tumultuous period of American life, bringing a global pandemic, a norm-breaking presidential election, a violent attempt to thwart the certification of that election’s results, and widespread national protests against racism and police violence.
Some Republican lawmakers, in an attempt to prevent schools from teaching about these issues, passed policies in 18 states regulating discussions of “divisive concepts,” or topics that could be considered controversial. Classroom conversations about civic life became increasingly fraught.
“As a society, we have become less civil when it comes to politics. It’s become more partisan,” said Jennifer Connolly, the principal of Preston High School, a Catholic school in the Bronx borough of New York City.
Beginning in the 2017-18 school year, Connolly started to hear from parents, concerned that teachers who asked students to analyze the U.S. Constitution and other primary source documents in history and government classes were attempting to indoctrinate their children.
Now, with the 2024 presidential election quickly approaching, some school leaders feel that they’re in a bind. While they want to encourage their teachers to take advantage of this real-life civics lesson as they have in years past, they worry that meaty discussions about policy and current events could court too much controversy in the current landscape.
Avoiding these topics comes at a cost, said Mirriah Elliott, the principal of Carson Elementary School in Denver. Colorado doesn’t ban discussion of controversial issues in K-12 classrooms, but Elliott said her staff members still worry about community members perceiving their instruction as biased.
In every other subject, her teachers add in supplemental resources designed to engage students’ interest. They don’t do that in social studies, she said.
“That’s unfortunate,” said Elliott, “because there are so many opportunities to make it relate to their lives.”
How can teachers provide instruction on civics and avoid controversy?
In attempts to avoid classroom division or complaints from parents, some school leaders advise their teachers to focus on civic ideals, rather than foregrounding their application in real life.
At Carson Elementary, it’s not that teachers avoid civics entirely, said Elliott. But the lessons are more “generic,” she said.
Students learn about the importance of voting and supporting what they believe in, but they don’t discuss specific perspectives, said Elliott.
In New York, Connolly is preparing for the upcoming election by training her teachers in promoting civil dialogue.
In past years, Preston High School has hosted candidates for local office who have presented on policy issues to the student body. Parents on both sides of the political aisle complained, saying that having candidates come speak amounted to an endorsement of the politicians’ views. Connolly nixed these visits.
The civil dialogue training focuses in part on setting classroom norms for respectful conversation, she said. It’s important for students to learn not to “villainize” their peers for holding different political views, she added.
In the EdWeek Research Center survey, 27 percent of principals said that “teacher training” was a challenging or very challenging obstacle to teaching civics in 2024. That’s compared to 14 percent of school leaders in 2018.
Deepening political divides in the country make teacher training in civics education increasingly important—and increasingly difficult, said Connolly. Many educators want a “formula” for handling tough conversations, she said: “If X happens, then I do Y.”
But there isn’t a script for addressing every student question that might arise, said Connolly. “We can’t always give them that formula.”
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