So many people are sharing so much inaccurate information that superintendents have no choice but to make sure it isn’t showing up in classrooms.
If you’ve never lived in the Washington, D.C., region, it may be hard to imagine just how obsessed the locals are with politics. That hit home for me just after we moved here and joined a local swimming pool. The first time we drove to the pool and pulled into the parking lot, I saw that someone, likely a teen, had used shaving cream to graffiti someone’s car with the words “The driver of this car voted for Romney.” Where I come from, the graffiti would have said something nasty about somebody’s mother, but in Bethesda, just across the border from D.C., the teenagers tag cars with political commentary.
So, imagine how taken aback I was, during a family dinner in February, when my 7th-grade son told me students at his school were “not allowed” to discuss the Senate impeachment trial in class. My kids attend school in the system where I was superintendent, and I happen to know firsthand that the district’s students, parents, teachers, and staff love to argue about politics, so I probed for a little more information. “Actually, we can talk about the impeachment a little,” explained my other son, a 12th grader who counts politics as a hobby and likes to flip between MSNBC and Fox to keep track of their differing political coverage. “It’s just that we’re not allowed to take sides. And teachers aren’t allowed to express their opinions, either. Everybody has to stick to the facts.”
“What the heck,” I replied, becoming agitated. “Shouldn’t the schools teach you how to engage in debate rather than avoid it?” When I quoted David Hume for the umpteenth time — “Truth springs from arguments among friends” — the boys rolled their eyes and went back to their dinner. But I couldn’t stop fuming about the school system’s refusal to let teachers and students air their views about the historic events unfolding right in front of them.
Coincidentally, I had just read Kappan’s February issue, which includes pieces on debating controversial topics in the classroom, arguing over what belongs in the history and science curriculum, confronting the lies told in our textbooks, and teaching students about propaganda. The issue even includes a piece calling for more civil debate among education researchers. But what it doesn’t include — and what I offer here — is a discussion of the topic that got me so worked up at the dinner table: When conflicts over the truth erupt in and around our public schools, how should district leaders respond?
Don’t be afraid to take a stand
When I was school superintendent in Montgomery County, Maryland, I became aware of a group called PFOX (parents and friends of ex-gays). At the time, the district had a policy that allowed outside groups to place flyers in schools for students to take home. Legally, if we allowed organizations to do this, then we had to permit a broad range of them to do so, as long as their materials didn’t incite violence or use bad language. Clearly, the PFOX flyers were allowable under our rules. Yet, their message was offensive and potentially dangerous, in that they described homosexuality as a “choice” and claimed that with counseling from PFOX, gay people can become straight. (Of course, it is not a choice, “conversion therapy” does not work, and such efforts to demonize homosexuality may contribute to high rates of suicide among LGBTQ+ youth; American Psychiatric Association, 2018; Sullivan, 2019; Trevor Project, 2020.) So, my team and I began to discuss whether we could change the district policy and keep such materials out of the schools.
Around that time, during one of my regular student town hall meetings at one of the district’s high schools, a student asked me what I thought about PFOX, and I replied truthfully, saying that I found the organization to be “reprehensible and deplorable.” A Washington Post reporter was in attendance and wrote a story about the event, quoting my statement about PFOX. In turn, members of the organization wrote an angry letter denouncing me to the school board, and they also showed up at a board meeting to testify that I was discriminating against ex-gays who had gone through conversion therapy.
Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, so as to avoid the brouhaha that ensued. But when I responded to the student at the town hall, I wasn’t thinking about the Post reporter in attendance. I was thinking about my father, who was gay and lived most of his life in the closet. And I was thinking that if any young people in that room were struggling with their sexuality, they should know that the school superintendent had their back. Plus, I’ve always believed that I owe it to students to be as open as I can (given my position) about what I believe. All too often, when students ask loaded questions, educators choose to dance around and give non-answers, even when kids are perfectly capable of handling the truth.
The school board wasn’t pleased about the ruckus caused by my comments, but they agreed with my stance. We ended up changing the policy, deciding that we would stop allowing flyers to be distributed altogether. And while PFOX continued to go after me by testifying at board meetings, writing letters, and posting on social media, the controversy soon died down. In this case, everything worked out just fine. And in general, I would argue, it’s worth it to be candid, say what you believe, and make your values clear. As any superintendent can tell you, though, you serve at the pleasure of the board, and if you choose to take a stand, then you have to be willing to accept the consequences.
Encourage productive conflict
As the historian and former school system leader Larry Cuban has often said, “Conflict is the DNA of the superintendency.” And I’m not talking about the fighting and bullying that goes on among kids at school — the people you really have to watch out for are the elected officials, parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults around you. Nor can you assume that the adults are any better than the kids at handling conflict. Many of them will scream at you over minor disagreements, and others will smile to your face and nod politely as they think about ways to undermine your agenda.
Many superintendents will tell you that they’ve never felt confident in their ability to handle conflict. But they have no choice. It’s their job to hear out angry people, help them negotiate with each other, and, when they can’t reach a compromise, make difficult decisions that will inevitably leave some of them disappointed and angry. Further, the only way to reduce the level of conflict overall is to help the other adults in the school system get better at managing conflict themselves.
When I was a young administrator, I had the good fortune to study with Irma Tyler Wood from Ki Thoughtbridge, an Indiana-based leadership consulting firm. From her, I learned about how to give and receive feedback, how to engage in interest-based negotiations, and how to use protocols such as the Four Quadrant problem-solving tool to get people with different views and perspectives to come to agreement on difficult issues. No, such tools didn’t allow me to head off every conflict or resolve every controversy I encountered in my job. But we can’t expect the other adults we work with to engage in productive conversations about contentious issues if we don’t learn how to do so ourselves.
Keep an eye on the materials people share
In the 1990s, when foes of evolutionary theory began to argue that “intelligent design” deserved equal space in the K-12 science curriculum, I was just out of high school. But even as a young adult, I thought the argument was pretty silly. Evolution may be a theory, but it’s an awfully compelling one, supported by countless scientific studies over many generations. Intelligent design, on the other hand, isn’t a scientific theory at all; it’s a religiously motivated effort to cast doubt on science, and then to argue that a nonscientific theory deserves equal consideration in biology classes.
As Adam Laats explains in the February Kappan, the intelligent design movement marked the last gasp of a century-old effort to discredit the teaching of evolution. As Wayne Journell, also in the February issue, would put it, evolution’s place in the science curriculum has become a “settled issue.” In public education, it’s no longer considered to be a legitimate controversy; it’s simply not debatable.
But while the intelligent design movement fizzled out, it turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. Today, seemingly reasonable people — including many high-ranking elected officials — are choosing to circulate all kinds of “theories” and to demand that people take them seriously, even though they aren’t worthy of public deliberation.
Until a couple of years ago, I never imagined that I would have had to make this recommendation, but school system leaders today have an obligation to keep a close eye on the materials being shared by and among teachers and students. In past decades, efforts to scrutinize school materials tended to be launched mainly by parents who objected to what they saw as inappropriate books on class reading lists and library shelves. Today, though, so many people are sharing so much inaccurate information that superintendents have no choice but to make sure it isn’t showing up in classrooms.
The challenge is to identify and screen out materials that are patently false or misleading, but not to censor materials that offer legitimate, well-reasoned arguments from varying political perspectives — and that’s an intricate balancing act that deserves more attention than I can give it here. My point, for now, is that the time has come for every district leader to create a thorough vetting process, to ensure that the materials shared in our classrooms provide credible information, allowing students to engage in the sort of rational discussion and debate that our democracy requires.
References
American Psychiatric Association (APA). (2018, Nov. 15). APA reiterates strong opposition to conversion therapy. Author.
Sullivan, B. (2019, Sept. 3). Stop calling it a choice: Biological factors drive homosexuality. The Conversation.
The Trevor Project. (2020). 2020 national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health. Author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua P. Starr
Joshua P. Starr is the managing partner at the International Center for Leadership in Education, a division of HMH, based in Boston, MA. He is the author of Equity-based Leadership: Leveraging Complexity to Transform School Systems.
