As campaigning toward Election Day reaches a fever pitch, and most of the world is talking
about it, in nearly half of Wisconsin schools, teachers are being restricted from discussing
U.S. elections.
The Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies is pushing back.
It's President and Shorewood Middle School Social Studies teacher, and 2023 teacher of
the year, Sarah Coplin is here.
And thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So your council conducted a survey of teachers on this.
What did that survey find?
So we have a monthly newsletter that we send to our membership, and full disclosure, we
don't have every teacher in the state of Wisconsin who does teach social study as members
of our organization currently.
We are working to change that though, but 42% of the respondents in our membership who
filled out the survey so that they've experienced scenarios where their district administration,
so either their principal or perhaps even their school board has placed limitations
upon them for teaching of current events or the election in this upcoming school year.
Also I was recently at the Teaching About Elections Conference at UW-Madison, and a reporter
asked the crowd of educators if they had experienced such things in their districts,
and every hand in the crowd went up, there was well over 100 educators there.
So this is something that we see as an organization.
We also asked a similar question at our conference last March and received that type of overwhelming
response.
So what is behind the restrictions and complaints on the part of parents say?
So the things that we hear from educators around our state in terms of parent complaints,
our teachers are conducting units of study where students are learning about how elections
work, how votes are cast and counted, how the electoral college process works, and parents
are hearing from their students that when they come home that this type of topic is
being discussed and then immediately complain to principals or school board members that
their children are being indoctrinated with political ideology.
So that's something we've heard a lot of, and this is not a scenario where an educator
is talking about their partisan politics, it's just simply giving students opportunities
in classrooms to learn about how our democratic system works.
We also have heard from educators that have had administrators that will just say to them,
we don't want you having any discussions in your classrooms about the election at all
or any classroom discussions about current events.
It's too controversial, we don't want parent complaints, which makes it very difficult
for social studies educators when this is related to our state standards and also partially
related to some of the statutory requirements that we have in Wisconsin to teach social
studies.
So are teachers pushing a political agenda in any case in classrooms?
So I have yet to come across an educator that tells their students what their political
agenda is.
You know as an educator you are bound by policies in your school district where most districts
have similar policies that they purchase from a policy writing consortium and it basically
says that as an educator you should not give any partisan political viewpoints in your
classroom, but simply talking about politics, how politics work or what issues are taking
place in our political sphere is enough in the current political atmosphere to make parents
and administrators feel like something wrong or nefarious is going on in the classroom.
The term of indoctrination is thrown around quite frequently.
I have yet to find an educator though that is telling any of their students their political
ideology.
Are these restrictions happening in your own district?
They're not happening in my district.
I feel pretty fortunate to teach in a district where not only the community but our school
board and our district administrators at the building levels have been very supportive
of social studies education.
They have been supportive of us meeting our state standards which require students to
engage in their own inquiry and also to engage in developing civil discourse skills.
So learning about current events and having current events discussions, learning about
the election is something that is valued in the school district that I work in.
And in your mind why is it important for students to learn about government and elections?
Well our state legislature believes that it is.
There's a statute that actually talks about how important that is and it requires that
to happen.
The school board should provide an educational plan for that to take place in school districts.
It's also part of our state standards but more importantly I think it's really important
for the future of our democracy that our students understand how our government works.
What are the parts of our government?
What are their powers and limitations?
What are the rights and responsibilities that citizens have in this country?
And with that being said how as a person who is part of your community or if you are
a citizen as well how do you engage to ensure that you are making a positive impact on your
neighbors and how can you have a voice to be somebody who is civically engaged.
One of our state standards says that Wisconsin students will learn how to be civically engaged
and that's really important because we want our future generations to be able to be strong
leaders, strong problem solvers and people that will strengthen and improve the democracy
and the country that we have here.
We leave it there Sarah Coplin.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
I can certainly see why you are the teacher of the year.
Thank you.
You're great.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
You are welcome.
Oh, thank you.
I did miss.
Marissa just told me what you said right before we went on.
They had cut your mic to my ear.
So thanks.
I'm glad you watched.
No, I really appreciate it.
You'll laugh because you know I was curate news sources for students and you know 12
and 13 year olds I teach seventh grade they can have an interesting attention span because
they're still developing.
I did have a seven grade boys that really liked your show last year.
That's hilarious.
And usually it's like 77 year old, you know, people who watch the show so good.
Your show was Sigma.
So if you're down, that's a compliment.
Thank you.
Well, you were great.
Thanks so much again for taking time out of your day to talk with us about this.
More importantly, I thank you guys for bringing this to light.
Yeah, absolutely.
I didn't know about it.
So thank you.
Yeah.
All right.
Enjoy the rest of the day.
Bye.
You too.