It is not truth that we should be teaching, rather the question and the ability to question.

I just want to express my thoughts on the concept of teaching as a subversive act. But before I begin, I think it is important to define the word subversive:

a radical supporter of political or social revolution
intended to overthrow or undermine an established government

Yes and yes. I am guilty on both counts. As an artist, a father, and a member of the human race I am a radical supporter of political or social revolution, because the world I see in front of me is not the place I want my daughter to live. I am well read enough in history to see patterns leading to the state it is in, and I feel it is important to change those patterns. I advocate the overthrowing not only of most current governments, but the very fundamental principles on which they are based. I advocate a new world vision, not of radical violent Marxist revolution, but a more synergetic, organic vision. I feel the revolution of which I speak is still be concocted by the very youth we are discussing. I feel it is my job to show my students that another world is possible, that they have the power to shape it.

So where does the subversion come into play? I agree with you that preaching, sermonizing and converting students to any ideology has no place in a classroom. Students should be allowed to weigh ideas for themselves and make informed decisions. The problem, however, is that we are not playing on a level playing field. Much of what young people ingest these days, from their text books, media saturation, advertising, and even moral values and life priorities are dictated by an uber-aggressive money making machine known as the new privatizing global economy.

The winners make the rules, and so they begin to market our children from the day they are born and create a race of apathetic consumers. Is it subversive to teach children to love and share and create outside the box created by a global economic system that teaches them to compete and one that measures success and happiness through wealth?

As teachers we are told to ignore this elephant in all of our classrooms. I am not advocating teaching students that the current system is all bad and that I have all the answers. I am simply saying that the system is not perfect, far from it, as it is sold to us and that we must consider alternatives. The system itself does not like being criticized. See the tear gas and riot gear in all the anti-globalization demonstrations since Seattle 1999, but don’t students have a right to see alternatives to the history the system prescribes? Where is our history? Why are subversives forced to teaching under the dark of night? Why can’t we parade our heroes in our classrooms along with the Lincolns and Washingtons? Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey, Allen Gingsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson have every right to be heard in an objective classroom. Why aren’t Chomsky or Zinn on any major curriculums?

I entered teaching because as a teenager I realized that I couldn’t change the world alone. I needed help. As an adult, I am learning that this help is not coming from adults. So I look to the students in my classroom to look at the world objectively and make choices to help make it better. I am not subversive. I simply show them what I have learned. I share with them my life experience working in the third-world and inner city schools. I am a connector of worlds. I am a painter of pictures. I understand that the term make the world better is ambiguous and can be construed as neo-hippy blather, so let me put it in more simple terms. I believe in people who work to ease suffering. On all levels. In all places. At all times. That is why I teach. It is past politics, ideology, or subversion. It is my nature and I cannot teach any other way.

it’s good to be reminded of this from time to time.

The “problem” with empowerment, as any parent knows, is that the newly empowered individual often makes choices that you didn’t expect and may not care for.

I see that as what [Chinese characters] alludes to: it’s not only possible, but likely, that some empowered young person will chose an approach or a political viewpoint far different from that of the teacher/guide/parent.

“If you want teachers to espouse right wing philosophies, pay them more. Otherwise, the vast majority of teachers will choose their profession based on some concept of the social good…”

Having taught junior high, senior high, and GED courses in three states, my experience is that most teachers I worked with chose their profession because teaching appealed to them personally. “The social good” is a pretty highfalutin concept, and the notion that paying people less will bring more “social good” is as amusing as it is condescending — kind of like endorsing Richard Nixon to stir up the proles.

My admittedly limited experience says it’s hard to generalize about the typical teacher. I would guess (and it’s only a guess) that in the U.S., organizations of teachers tend to be socially and politically liberal, but that on average teachers are less so.

敦禮 writes: If this means that some teachers-or even a majority - espouse a right wing ideology, so be it. For people of the left to promote the freedom of the thought by squelching what they believe to be right wing or conservative ideology is the height of hypocrisy.

Invalid.

In short, I find the Downes quote to be just the rationalization that many teachers are using in the American/Canadian educational systems. Taking the lead from the media, the educational system is following suit. (Or was it the educational system first?) What does it leave us with? Delusions? I think our guts tell us it is definitely not the truth.

these kind of comments make me wanna become a mathematician, or a theoretical physicist, I don’t know.

we should pay teachers more so right wing capitalists would come to the class room displace left wing abnegates?

that doesn’t help in Brazil. Here university teachers are paid much more then the average worker. Even throughout all levels of teaching thei’re paid 55% more than others. Despite that most teachers are leftists. Most common people who are paid much less are conservatives. And worst of all, teaching in Brazil is terrible. Students graduate not knowing how to write, read, count, or locate their own country in a map. Such figures are high from the junior high to the graduate.
We have the lowest scores in the PISA test. That’s what happens when you pay teachers well without accountability, and let them preach their left wing ideology.

The pursuit of truth is a subversive activity. It is probably the most subversive activity.

Authority - especially in our own society - depends typically on fiction. These fictions typically describe some way in which our rulers are ‘naturally’ rulers.

The divine right of kings has been replaced, in secular society, by the right of the ballot, but the process of democratic election is itself a fiction.

> The teacher’s role is to help learners find truth, not to instill a particular political view of the world.

Quite so - but it is precisely this practice that is discouraged, and even punished, in our education system.

Our mechanism of testing, for example, masures not how much students are *able* to learn, but rather, how much they *have learned* of a specified curriculum.

Our methods of teaching focus on the memorization of facts, rather than the cultivation of disciplines - such as, say, logic and critical thinking - that allow them to think for themselves.

Students’ assertions of their own right to express themselves are routinely squelched at all levels of administration, including the courts.

> The teacher’s role is to help learners find truth, not to instill a particular political view of the world…

Teachers express ‘truth’ every day; it is the major part of the curriculum. This ‘truth’ constitutes the academic subjects, as well as the system of values and expectations created by a certain ‘polite’ society.

Teachers deviating from this approved curriculum are accused of ‘preaching’ and of ‘ideological teaching’ - as though the pronouncements from the permissable perspective are ideologically neutral.

Crucially: if a teacher is to be expected to teach the pursuit of truth, and to value students’ own pursuit of the truth, then they must *model* and demonstrate their *own* pursuit of truth, and their own exercise of the freedom to express their own truth.

How could you ever trust the assertions of a teacher who says “you are free” when all teachers, without exception, follow some sort of party line?

To teach the freedom to pursue one’s own truth is to *be* free to pursue one’s own truth. You do not encourage the seeking of truth in the classroom by telling teachers to suppress what they believe to be true.

If this means that some teachers - or even a majority - espouse a left wing ideology, so be it. For people of the right to promote the freedom of thought by squelching what they believe to be left wing or liberal ideology is the height of hypocrisy.

If you want teachers to espouse right wing philosophies, pay them more. Otherwise, the vast majority of teachers will choose their profession based on some concept of the social good, a position that will put them at odds with the set of fictions created and promoted in order to preserve the ideology of the government (accurately described above as “the kleptocracy of the powerful”).