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Professional Responsibility, Opinion,

and High School Government Teachers

Practicing the First Amendment in Their

Community

By Denise Shockley and Ronald V. Morris

High school government teachers practiced and modeled their right of free speech in a series
of editorials. They wrote about governance, race, and other topics. The teachers tended to think
about the issues as those related to their classroom experiences and what their students would
be asking in the next term. At the same time the teachers were writing these editorials, state
legislatures were passing laws limiting educators’ abilities to talk about controversial issues in
the classroom. As citizens, teachers have the right to free speech—but that is in tension with
their positions as state and local employees. The authors explore this tension by considering the
editorials written by the participants.

fter the 2020 U.S. presidential election, social science education teachers were
Aleft with the tremendous responsibility of discussing issues connected to civic
education with an extremely polarized American public in the wake of the election
cycle. In this case study, a group of teachers from a regional collection of school
districts used the strategy of writing letters to the editor between June and October
of 2021 not only to help readers see their particular opinions on a controversial
issue but, perhaps more importantly, to explain how teaching controversial issues is
important and unfolds in their classrooms. Tension exists between personal freedom
of speech and the parameters of an educator. These teachers provided a sense of how
that tension can be mitigated or resolved.
In an Appalachian region with a high rate of rural poverty, ten high school
government teachers wrote letters to the editor of local newspapers about controversial
issues and explained to the community why they had opinions and how that was part
of the democratic process. Of course, citizens in the United States under Article
I of the United States Constitution have both freedom of speech and freedom of
the press, but in tension with that is a concern that, as public employees, teachers
should not say anything that is not endorsed by the school district. These teachers
demonstrated that they had well-considered opinions about civic issues and asked
people in the community to listen to their thoughts even if readers might disagree.
The teachers also illustrated that practicing their Constitutional rights provided an
important model for the students enrolled in their government classes. This article
explores the question: During the 2020 election, what did high school government
teachers believe about controversial issues and how did that impact their classroom
practice?
Recently, to curb violent dissent, some states have attempted to eliminate
controversial issues in the classroom by legislative action. Teaching about
controversial issues was deemed by these states to be divisive and inciting
dissatisfaction with the United States. Multiple states looked at ways to terminate
the discussion of controversial issues in public school classrooms (Adams, 2021;

Educators’ Choice 47