Opinion: Teachers have the power to open students’ eyes — if we let them

By Randy Fair

Just recently, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed to hear a case that would allow parents to block schools from teaching their kids certain books if they go against the family’s “religious beliefs” regarding gender and sexuality.

Some people may think it’s self-evident that parents have this right. However, it isn’t quite that simple.

I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s in Weaver, Alabama — a very conservative small town. The hardline segregationist George Wallace was the governor of the state for almost my entire youth, and for much of the country Alabama was the very stereotype of white Southern racism.

But teachers have the power to open students’ eyes.

I remember in the fourth grade, a classmate was giving a current events presentation on Wallace’s opposition to desegregating buses. The teacher stopped the class and said: “You know, I worry that when people around the country hear things like that, they think that everyone in Alabama has these narrow views.”

It wasn’t a popular thing for her to say in my small town, but it opened my eyes. Even at that young age, I started reading about Wallace and realizing that the things I grew up hearing about race just simply were not true. As I got older, I began questioning other stereotypes and preconceived notions held by my community.

This questioning became even more personally valuable to me when I began to realize that I was gay. Two teachers unknowingly helped me accept myself by speaking in support of LGBTQ people in a time period when that was unthinkable.

In my mind, this is the true beauty of education. It enlarges the student’s world.

In her seminal work, Literature as Exploration, Louise Rosenblatt says, “We must develop the capacity to feel intensely the needs and sufferings and aspirations of people whose personal interests are distinct from our own, people with whom we may have no bond other than our common humanity.”

So there’s a certain danger in allowing parents to be the sole purveyor of what is taught. By allowing parents to opt out on topics of gender and sexuality, the floodgates will be opened for parents to restrict education in other areas as well.

Schools will be caught up in a never ending battle over what can be taught. This is just what happened at a Florida school, when a principal was fired because he tried to placate parents’ desire to opt out of Holocaust education because those parents “didn’t believe it happened.”

It’s very easy to applaud the firing of this principal in this situation, but a ruling in the current case before the court would open up a cascade of similar cases.

Early in my teaching career, when I was teaching at a high school in rural Georgia town of Palmetto, I raised the ire of a host of parents when during a class discussion I revealed that I’m not a Christian. The principal made me call each parent to resolve the issue.

During the calls, I said what I still believe: “Your child is going to leave Palmetto some day to go to college or go to work and is going to encounter many people who aren’t Christians. It would be better for them to learn to get along with someone who doesn’t share their faith now instead of causing them harm later when it really will matter.”

This is the philosophy we should apply to in the current case as well. Shielding children from the outside world is impossible in today’s culture of mass media and social media use. Good teaching requires preparing children to face the outside world that may have very different ideas and beliefs than those held by their family members.

Randy Fair is the author of “Southern. Gay. Teacher.” His forthcoming book is “Gay Arab American and Middle Eastern Men.”