Stangel-Plowe: Trying to keep politics out of classrooms

In my home state of New Hampshire, parents and educators are once again debating a proposed “divisive concepts” law aimed at preventing teachers from advancing “personal identity” ideologies that frame contested political interpretations as settled truths. A previous version was struck down as unconstitutionally vague, and lawmakers are trying again.

The arguments are familiar. Supporters say the law is needed to keep politics out of classrooms. Opponents warn it will chill speech and unfairly target teachers.

Versions of this debate have played out nationwide, as lawmakers have considered or passed similar legislation

As policy battles continue and partisans take their usual sides, we miss a more basic and uncomfortable truth: most classroom politicization does not begin with individual teachers making rogue decisions. It begins long before teachers ever step into a classroom.

I spent years as a high school English teacher, and most of my colleagues genuinely cared about their students’ learning and development. That instinct is a strength, but it is also increasingly exploited. The problem is that teachers’ empathy and impulse to make the world a better place are deliberately used by people who promote political agendas through teacher training, curricula and professional norms.

The systems that shape education have grown more politicized as social justice frameworks have become dominant, redefining the teacher’s role. This set of ideas, which views the world through a victim-oppressor lens, places a moral and political interpretation at the center of learning and treats its conclusions about complex issues as settled truths.

Students are often guided toward predetermined judgments about America and its history before they have had a chance to study its complexity, founding ideals or the ways the country has changed over time.

For teachers who are not particularly political but work in a politicized system, social justice frameworks feel familiar and uncontroversial. They are presented as common sense and standard professional practice. But social justice frameworks offer only one perspective on solving social problems. Students need exposure to multiple perspectives to develop their own analysis and decide what they value and believe.

When students are exposed to only one perspective, open inquiry and civil disagreement begin to disappear from the classroom. A healthy classroom does not steer students toward a single approved answer. It equips them to reason their way to their own.

This is why divisive concepts laws miss the mark. They attempt to regulate classroom content without addressing the institutional structures that shape teachers long before they work with students.

The problem begins upstream in teacher preparation.

Teacher preparation programs play an outsized role in shaping educators’ understanding of their responsibilities. Increasingly, these programs emphasize social justice frameworks over academic foundations. Future teachers are trained to see themselves not only as educators but also as agents of social change. That framing does not prepare them to teach in a diverse, pluralistic democracy.

If lawmakers want to depoliticize classrooms, they should start with teacher training. They should require teacher preparation programs to remove ideological frameworks embedded in training and licensure, ensuring that classrooms remain a key part of our civic infrastructure.

Classrooms should not be conservative or progressive spaces. They should not ignore injustice or pretend history is simple. They should cultivate viewpoint diversity, critical thinking, intellectual humility and constructive disagreement, habits that make democratic life possible.

Ensuring that teacher preparation includes a foundational course — something like “Cultivating the Habits of Democracy” — would help future teachers counter the politicization of classrooms. For the sake of their development and a healthy society, students need to learn how to reason, debate and coexist with people who think differently.

In my classroom, a few simple practices made a difference: inviting curiosity and intellectual experimentation, playing devil’s advocate to ensure students heard multiple perspectives, separating ideas from personal identity, and making it clear that disagreement was expected. Students became more curious, thoughtful and willing to engage with one another rather than retreat into opposing camps.

If we want to restore trust in K-12 education, we need to move past the false choice between policing teachers and pretending nothing is wrong.

The real work lies in reforming the systems that shape classrooms in the first place. That means supporting teachers by training them to invite perspectives they may personally disagree with, to model intellectual openness, and to treat students not as future activists but as developing thinkers. Teachers need institutions that support them, not laws that treat them as suspects, and not training programs that quietly politicize their profession.

Dana Stangel-Plowe is the chief program officer at North American Values Institute/InsideSources