Politically "Neutral" Pedagogy and Right-Wing (Re)Production in U.S. Government Classes in Ohio

• In Event: The Political Polarization of Educational Politics and Its Implications for Democratic Education

Abstract

Purpose
In the wake of the Trump election in 2016, schools served as a backdrop to increasing hostility against immigrants, girls, non-White students, and LGBTQ youth with teachers perplexed as to how to navigate these tensions (Rogers et al, 2017). Other studies show how educators weigh their perceptions of parents’ political affiliations, administrators’ varied stances on politics, and colleague support (or lack thereof), against their own political beliefs and values to then determine their pedagogical decisions in the classroom (Dunn et al, 2019). This scholarship offers important insights into the various contextual factors that teachers across the country navigate, however taken together, questions arise as to how neutrality, or the attempt at remaining politically neutral, is carried out in everyday classroom life and the implications for the reproduction of right-wing ideologies.

Theoretical Framework
Operating under the understanding that education is always already political and that public schools are inevitably imbricated in the reproduction of social and political structures and norms (Giroux et al, 1989; Freire, 2000; Apple, 2018), this paper builds on critical educational theory—including that which critiques liberal democracy as a white and settler construct (Mills, 1997; Grande, 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Sabzalian & Shear, 2018)—and utilizes the concept of hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) to explore the relationship between schooling and political reproduction.

Methods & Data Analysis
Data collected for this paper derives from a larger political ethnographic project and consists of observations (n=500 hours), 1.5-2 hour semi-structured interviews (students, n=42; teachers, n=3) and site documents (n=350) across two predominantly White schools in politically conservative communities. Observations in classrooms provided insight into everyday school life and allowed documentation of how students and teachers made sense of curriculum and political events as they occurred in real-time. Interviews with students focused on experiences living and learning in their communities and perspectives on social and political issues. Data analysis included multiple rounds of coding (Emerson, 2011; Lutrell, 2010; Saldaña, 2018) to identify preliminary and subsequent themes.

Results & Significance
Key findings show that while political neutrality was the pedagogical goal for teachers and articulated by students as ideal, pedagogical choices on the part of teachers predominantly reified right-leaning political views. This politically “neutral” pedagogy then served to demarcate a field of right-wing hegemony in the classroom that silenced opposition and served to reify right-wing and settler politics. Teachers’ pedagogical and curricular choices either passively endorsed right wing politics or actively put forth conservative views. In one-one-one interviews, right-leaning students detailed even more staunch, conservative views while left-leaning students privately shared that they did not feel safe to share their ideas in class, demonstrating the impact of the teacher-student relationship and the power of teachers to dictate the field of political possibility. Given the assault on social justice education and the increased violence animated by right-wing ideologies across the US, these findings prove the need for more research exploring the political development of White youth and those that teach, counsel, and hold the power to shape their day-to-day school lives.

Author

• dinorah sanchez loza, The Ohio State University