Political opinions are like faces, everyone has one and some are worse than the others, subjectively, that is. All our professors are people too, and therefore, have their own unique face and political opinions that sometimes slip out. Now if I’m required to stare at their mug for 50 minutes a day, I would honestly love to know how and why it looks the way it does.
Why does their nose thinks healthcare should be subsidized, why do their hands want more funding for the military and why that mole hasn’t been removed yet? Putting the tired metaphor aside, this is an important topic. Teachers of all political ideologies should be able to share with their students. America was created with the intent of free speech (see the First Amendment of the Constitution).
As such, teachers should feel safe to express their political opinions without the fear of students becoming enraged or possibly putting their jobs at risk. At least some point in our scholarly lifetime, a teacher has taught about U.S government and for those that line up just right, during a presidential election, there has most likely been questions about who that teacher will vote for.
In my experience, most decline to specify who they favor in the race. Officially, the ruling is that teachers are supposed to be allowed to speak their minds as long as it doesn’t interfere with the educational environment. Therefore, a few questions here and there about a certain view towards a certain topic, especially in the turbulent times that we live in today, could shed light from a different perspective.
This could even spark some discussion among a class or a handful of students willing to act civilized and talk about their opinions, rather than shouting them through caps lock on the nearest social media platform. Of course, no teacher should try to get any of their students to vote for their candidates, nor should they halt a lecture just to talk trash about the current president without room for intellectual conversation.
If, hypothetically, Mr. SpaghettiO’s decides to wear his KKK hood into class and try to convert his students to fellow ghosts, I have no problem with kicking him to the curb. The same goes for Mrs. Ravioli trying to renounce our capitalistic heritage and start burning Benjamins.
However, any type of political stirring within a classroom needs to be nourished into a healthy debate rather than squashed in order to keep a person’s ideas and believes untested. Without an open and challenging space to bounce opinions off one another, we end up with a society that cries at the first sign of confrontation, limiting any meaningful growth and cooperation to a minimum.
This can already be seen in real life today within our congress, as it seems nothing can get passed without one party being in control, leaving log-rolling a thing of the past and causing a significant rise in support for third party candidates.
College is a place for young, learning minds to leave their preconceived notions behind in the bubble that they grew up in. Without communication and exposure to new exciting and challenging ideas, we all might as well stay in our parents’ basement. Opening a dialogue about our culture and how it interacts with others is how we grow and create a more tolerant society.
Now I’m not saying you have to go out and take everything at face value and make it part of your mantra. I’m simply asking to listen to someone, actually listen, and form an educated view of our world. So professor, tell me why you think military spending should be cut?
