Pennsylvania teachers warn of right-wing attacks on education | The Pennsylvania Independent
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Desks fill a classroom in a high school in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Educators across the nation have increasingly been the targets of Republican attacks on public education in recent years.

State and local-level politicians have attacked teachers for doing their jobs. They have passed laws and rules restricting what can be taught, contributing to a climate of distrust and driving teachers out of the profession.

The worst of these restrictions have been passed outside of Pennsylvania, with Florida and Alabama passing “Don’t Say Gay” laws barring instruction that mentions sexual orientation or gender identity, a ban that extends even to the high school level in Florida.

Pennsylvania Republicans attempted to pass a similar law in 2022, though it was ultimately vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

Most of the restrictions and attempted restrictions in Pennsylvania have happened at the local level. The Central York School District near Harrisburg, for example, banned certain books and other teaching materials, with teachers reporting that they received a four-page letter at the start of the 2021-2022 school year including a list of banned “articles, videos and books from some of today’s most acclaimed creators of color,” the York Dispatch reported at the time. The school board in that district ultimately reversed its decision to ban those materials after an outcry.

In another case, the conservative former school board in the Pennridge School District spent two years secretly banning books. The district also instituted curriculum changes that aligned with conservative priorities nationwide, including instituting a social studies curriculum that contained what one news story described as a “sanitized” version of slavery. Even since the conservative majority was voted off the board, there have been complaints that scrutiny of library books continues.

The scrutiny and stress affect teachers in districts of all shapes and sizes, and teachers in districts outside of conservative areas are also feeling the heat.

Margaret Myers-Atac, a teacher in the Philadelphia school system, said that while the city’s schools have avoided the worst of the so-called culture war over education the last few years, her classroom is not insulated from right-wing attacks.

“It does make you wary about what books have been donated to me that I have in my classroom library that could possibly get me in trouble, that I didn’t even think about because, you know, a friend gave me a box full of books and I stuck them in my classroom so the kids would have books,” Myers-Atac said.

She said potential right-wing opposition to what she does is something that is in the back of her mind at times.

“We’ve got people from the community that have all different kinds of beliefs,” she said. “And so it’s a little bit scary when you’re putting your lessons together or you’re teaching something and thinking about, if a student were to record a TikTok of this, or if a student were to go home and explain this a different way from the way that I’m actually explaining it because they’re not 100% paying attention, how does this reflect back on me? Can I get in trouble for it?”

Kate Sundeen, who also teaches in Philadelphia, shared a situation that arose when she asked students to create name tags for themselves at the beginning of the school year.

“One of my instructions is, if you are comfortable, put your pronouns on there,” Sundeen said. “And there was a parent who really jumped on that immediately. I explained to the parent my personal reasoning and how I approach it, and they accepted my reasoning. But I do know that I have friends and colleagues who have had a lot harder pushback on things like that because of the way that it’s sold in the larger political sphere.”

Myers-Atac pointed out that across the country, including in Pennsylvania, educators have been disciplined after attracting negative attention from conservatives.

In the Hempfield School District in Pennsylvania in 2022, teachers were investigated and faced discipline over a drag show hosted by a high school LGBTQ+ club.The club had received approval before hosting the event, but the district reversed course, claiming the event “lacked appropriate oversight and supervision” following attacks by right-wing social media account Libs of TikTok and a right-wing blog.

In the Central Bucks School District the same year, a middle school teacher said he was suspended and transferred for advocating for LGBTQ+ students who said they were being bullied. The teacher sued and later settled with the district.

Sundeen, who coaches the debate team at her school, said she sees adults targeting students who make arguments they disagree with at debate competitions. She said that until recently, she hadn’t seen this type of behavior in her 24 years of teaching.

“That immediate jump to assume that what we’re doing is in some way nefarious, that happens a lot more often than it ever — I have been doing this for a very long time now, but I’ve only ever  just in the past year or two had anybody show any kind of pushback on it,” she said.

Myers-Atac said she worries the environment will only push more teachers out of the profession and prevent others from joining in the first place. And this comes at a time when teacher shortages are already a major problem.

“I think that this is really going to impact the future of our country as an innovator, and the kind of jobs that we have in our country, the kind of leadership that we have in our country, because when students don’t have stability, and when teachers are constantly shuffling, or when you’ve got new teachers starting every year, it’s a lot of pressure on the teacher,” Myers-Atac said. “So if you’re constantly going through teachers, and it’s always a first-year teacher who’s just trying to figure out what’s going on in the classroom, then students aren’t getting the education that they deserve.”

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