Clashing Viewpoints: Teacher Partisanship and Classroom Checks and Balances

Extract

Those who teach political science are likely to hold strong, even passionate political opinions. They must confront the question of the role these views ought to play in the classroom. Two common but opposite approaches might be characterized as “partisan” and “neutral.” The former involves a clear presentation of the teacher's views (“I'm a Marxist, and I'll tell you that right off”). The latter aspires to be fair to all beliefs; its practitioners may be proud that students are unaware of the teacher's own views. Most teachers probably fall somewhere in the middle, hoping to inject life into political instruction by drawing on their own opinions while trying to be fair to all sides. After a thorough analysis of both partisan and neutral approaches, Glenn (1979) concluded that only such “fair-mindedness” can be justified as a pedagogical style.

We agree that: (1) controversy is a central attraction of political education and (2) unrestrained teacher partisanship raises serious questions of ethics and educational technique. This article describes an experimental course that suggests another way of approaching the goal of utilizing controversy without unfair teacher input.

The vehicle was a course we designed and conducted, entitled Clashing Viewpoints, which featured teacher debate on highly controversial issues. We believed that by instituting checks and balances, we could have it both ways—teacher partisanship and fair-mindedness.