Dana Stangel-Plowe, an educator and attorney, is the chief program officer at the North American Values Institute.
When the Nation’s Report Card comes out every two years, parents are reminded that K-12 public education in the United States is in rough shape. The average 12th-grade reading score in 2024 was the worst since the assessment began in 1992, and math the worst since 2005. The covid pandemic didn’t help, but there’s a deeper pedagogical problem at play. Princess Moss, the new president of the National Education Association, exemplifies it.
Consider one of her reading recommendations. Moss, a former music teacher, praised an “amazing book” in May titled “The Critical Importance of Teacher Advocacy: Empowered Educators on the Front Lines.” The anthology, Moss explained in one of its blurbs, “brings together stories of educators who refuse to separate teaching from their fight for justice.” The latter is “essential,” not “extra.” Moss noted that she was “deeply honored” to contribute to something that “captures what it means to show up wholly for our students and communities.”
In saying so, the president of the nation’s largest teachers union advanced a specific vision for her profession: activism all the way down, no matter how much students struggle to keep up. Her union colleagues are citizens, too, free to have and act on their own political views. But Moss’s vision has no place in the classroom. A teacher’s job isn’t political organizing; it is to educate the nation’s youth. The book Moss endorsed ignores that distinction.
Rebecca Rothstein, a middle school math teacher in Maryland, elaborated on her role in her own contribution to the book. “Activism is my pedagogy,” she wrote, adding, “Being a teacher without being political is dangerous for students.” Rothstein explained the latter with a question: “If we don’t acknowledge the systemic oppression that stands in the way of our students’ success, then how can we expect them to care about the Pythagorean theorem?” Montclair State University professor Bree Picower evidently agrees. She added: “Teaching for justice must be paired with activism for liberation.”
It isn’t hard to find out what such teachers are advocating. Rothstein has written on social media that “you are WRONG if you don’t support palestinian liberation.” In other posts, she’s claimed that “you gotta be CHOOSING not to connect the dots between zi0nism & naz!sm,” and that “under international law, illegally occupied territories have a right to armed resistance.” Other contributors have written about “smashing capitalism” and American “imperialism.”
Teachers are entitled to think that. The problem is the belief that they ought to impose those views on their students, who are considered ideal recruits. Worse is that parents might not even know that their children are being so inculcated.
Defenders of teacher activism will suggest that education is never completely neutral. Every curriculum reflects choices about which books to assign and which questions to ask. That’s true, and yet it heightens the responsibility that teachers have to conduct themselves with fairness and integrity. Educators ought to ensure their classrooms are places of belonging for everyone, which means exercising restraint when discussing political topics over which there are good-faith disagreements. Impressionable young minds need instructors who introduce competing arguments and foster an environment of intellectual curiosity.
Many teachers understand this. They entered the profession to help children read, write and reason, not to turn people into instruments of political change. They — and millions of American students — deserve institutions that defend their work. Instead, the nation’s top teachers union representative is trying to redefine this work, making academic excellence subordinate to the “fight for justice.” Moss reiterated that ambition two months ago when asked about her priorities for the first 100 days on the job. Her answer: “organize, organize, organize.”
The result will no doubt be kids who are morally certain about politics but unable to do basic math. Perhaps dissatisfied parents ought to do some organizing of their own.
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