I did a commentary back in January of 2021 about how challenging it was for social studies teachers to help our students process the January 6th insurrection and President Trump’s role in that event, specifically, and his unconventional presidential behavior more generally.
Now that he’s been back in office for nearly a year, his first term seems quaint in comparison.
Whenever I can, I refer to the Trump Administration in class to keep from personalizing our studies in my AP Government course, but as political scientists will tell you, the American presidency is a highly personal office.
And President Trump has definitely put his stamp on the office, to say the least.
I found his comments after the tragedy of Rob Reiner’s family disgusting, and yet I never said a word to my students about it because it’s not directly related to the curriculum.
Still, there is a part of me that feels like his social media posts like that are, in fact, related to our larger mission to promote civic virtues like respectful discourse.
Trump gives the middle finger, but a teacher would be fired for that.
Trump calls a woman “piggy” but a student would be suspended for that.
Trump threatens our allies, possibly with war, and tells them it’s because he didn’t win a prize; a principal would be fired if she threatened anyone in even the slightest manner, let alone with violence, because she wasn’t named administrator of the year.
Is it fair game to consider that?
The fact is, most teachers don’t because we fear accusations of impartiality.
We avoid the obvious and instead focus on what we always do: curriculum benchmarks, district and state assessments, and practical concerns like grading papers and preparing lessons.
The historian in me also knows much of what we have seen from the Trump administration isn’t altogether new: nativism, racism, gunboat diplomacy and robber barons, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that contributed to the start of World War I, even unpresidential behavior as, for example, when LBJ pulled up his shirt to show the scars from his surgery.
And though the founding fathers would likely faint if they saw the expansion of the office of the presidency over the last two centuries, you can’t pin all of it on the current occupant of the White House.
Of course, he’s taking it to levels scarcely imagined even ten years ago, but Donald Trump is not the only cause of what’s happening in our country.
No, he’s a symptom of larger underlying trends and developments too complex to go into here, but ones we social studies teachers sometimes have occasion to explore with our students.
And, no, we teachers don’t share our personal opinions and tell students what to think.
Like all good teachers through the ages, we don’t give answers.
Instead, we ask questions.
For example, in my AP World History course, I recently taught a series of lessons on the origins of race and how the Europeans built racial hierarchies in the Early Modern era, just as I always have.
So I asked my students, how does the recent Supreme Court ruling that race was a reasonable cause for detaining someone our government suspects might be an illegal immigrant fit into that?
Renee Goode’s killing happened just as I was doing a lesson on the Fourth Amendment and due process.
Was the federal government’s refusal to even investigate her death in keeping with the founders' conception of the Bill of Rights?
What would James Madison have had to say about this event as it relates to their concerns about the folly of British royal courts and procedures?
I can see the wheels turning in their heads.
I’d guess many of the students in my classes have parents that support or voted for Trump.
But we are in different territory than I have ever been in my teaching career.
We’re not merely considering deregulation, tax policy, or social programs anymore.
This is fundamental values stuff now.
And despite our constant efforts to be impartial, teachers can’t pretend what is happening is normal or in keeping with American political traditions and values of recent decades.
This is the line we must walk - every day.
Social studies teachers, like journalists, often fall back on the “two sides” approach to considering any issue. For both professions, it can sometimes be a cop out, at worst, or lazy, at best.
Does any legitimate history teacher really look at both sides of the Holocaust?
But if there are troops in the streets next fall during elections, and those elections are suspended or denied by the current administration as they did in 2020, that line will be obliterated, and not just for social studies teachers, but for our country.
Then, we won’t be the only ones in new territory, that’s for sure.
Editor’s note: Keith Kindred is a social studies teacher at South Lyon East High School. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Public, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.
