The Skillful Teacher

Dealing with the Politics of Teaching
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Let’s talk first about the belief that teachers are somehow above
politics. It’s true that many teachers never mention political ide-
ologies, or discuss contemporary political issues, in their classes.
There is a good chance that such teachers have never used the word
political when describing what they do to friends and colleagues.
However, just because teachers don’t see their work as political does
not mean that this element is absent in their practice. I contend
that any teacher of any subject is engaged in politics since he or she
is exerting influence and coercion in the organization of classroom
activities. In our pursuit of educational curricula or the inculcation
of skill sets we deem to be intrinsically worthwhile, all of us treat
students in certain ways that can be considered political. Sometimes
we view students as passive recipients waiting for knowledge to be
poured into them, sometimes as active co-creators of knowledge. In
the organized pursuit of educational objectives we inevitably exer-
cise persuasion, manipulation, even coercion, and politics, at its
root, is all about the exercise of such power.
A political process is one in which someone attempts to per-
suade, direct, or coerce someone else into devoting scarce resources
to a particular activity. Teachers are people who constantly try to
influence learners into devoting their resources—their money (in
the form of tuition), their energy, their time—into studying a par-
ticular subject or developing a particular skill. As they pursue these
objectives, they exercise power to organize the classroom a certain
way. Sometimes the classroom resembles an autocracy where the
teacher speaks most of the time and makes all substantive decisions.
At other times the classroom looks more like an oligarchy where
the teacher, plus a few committed, articulate, or favored students,
take up 90 percent of the time available for discussion. In the best
of all possible worlds (from my point of view), the classroom is
closer to a democracy as participation is equalized and teachers and
learners take joint responsibility for deciding what and how to study,
and how to evaluate learning. And, of course, all teachers evaluate
their students’ learning, a process (as Chapter Ten makes clear) in
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which the exercise of teacher power is seen at its most naked. If
teachers who don’t think there are any political dimensions to their
work could hear how their students talk about being evaluated, they
would know just how powerless those students sometimes feel.
The essence of teaching and learning is change, and change always
has political dimensions. For teachers and learners, nothing is exactly
the same after a learning event as it was before. Making a dent in the
world is the inevitable consequence of teaching, irrespective of the
subject area concerned. You cannot teach without in some way chang-
ing yourself, your students, and the world around you. Trying to avoid
changing people while you teach is like trying to walk on a bright
sunny day without casting a shadow. As a teacher, the question is not
whether or not you cast a shadow (for you can’t avoid doing this) but
what form this shadow takes and on whom it falls. Sometimes teach-
ers seek to escape their shadows by espousing as their aim the promo-
tion of students’ growth or development, as if these processes were
somehow neutral, lacking moral, social, or political dimensions. But
endemic to growth and development is the sense that these must
always be in some direction, towards some end. Growth cannot occur
in a vacuum. Nothing develops in a directionless way.
Most teachers who subscribe to ideas of growth and develop-
ment have strong implicit ideas of what these processes look like
and what they should lead to. For example, they would probably
resist the idea that students should grow into a greater lack of crit-
icality or that they should develop a perspective that is more closed
and narrow-minded than was previously the case. Indeed, many of
them would say that growth and development implies students
being increasingly open to new ideas, ready to acquire new skills,
and interested in considering broader viewpoints than they had pre-
viously been exposed to. They would probably disagree with the aim
of developing bigotry or that strengthening their students’ belief
that they are innately superior to all other races, classes, and cul-
tures was a valid educational objective. In rejecting some directions
for growth and development while supporting others, teachers are
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acknowledging that teaching intended to encourage students’
growth and development is inevitably infused with moral, social,
and political dimensions.
All teaching activities spring from an idea of what a properly
run classroom, or a properly educated person, looks like. Having a
prescriptive vision of what comprises a fulfilled, mature, or healthy
person, or what a properly run, academically rigorous, participatory
classroom looks like, is normal and inevitable. Many teachers, if
pressed, would say they believe in values such as honesty, compas-
sion, respect, fairness, and inclusion in the classroom. Show those
same teachers a classroom in which some students are consistently
excluded from participation, publicly humiliated, or punished for
disagreeing with conventional, received wisdom, and those teach-
ers will generally condemn these practices. So, whether they
acknowledge it or not, those teachers are operating under the influ-
ence of political values—openness, respect, compassion, inclusion,
fairness, equity—that are central to the democratic tradition.
Now let’s examine the second widely held belief, that teachers
live in some sort of placid, tranquil, apolitical ivory tower. This is so
far from the truth as to be a dangerous caricature. The reality is that
teachers do not practice their craft in a cocoon insulated from polit-
ical pressures. Instead, they constantly have to deal with a number
of political factors affecting whether and how they teach. Getting,
and then keeping, a job is partly a political matter often involving
whom one knows. If you have the resources to attend conferences
and cultivate a network of influential contacts, then you are much
better placed to find job openings and to know how to present your-
self in interviews. Once you get to the college, you realize just how
ubiquitous are the politics of the classroom and staffroom. From C. P.
Snow’s novel The Masters (1951) to David Mamet’s play Oleanna
(1993), novelists and dramatists have long recognized that higher
education is fertile ground for the analysis of political battles exac-
erbated by racism, sexism, and personality conflicts.
Of all the issues illustrating the political nature of teaching, 
academic freedom is probably the one that grabs most attention 
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outside the academy (closely followed by matters having to do with
promotion and tenure). Anytime a new course is proposed, partic-
ularly if it challenges conventional notions of what constitutes
appropriate curricula or teaching methodology, a political fight is
likely to ensue. Women’s Studies, African American Studies, Peace
Studies, Alternative Healing, Popular Culture—all have had to
fight to establish themselves as legitimate areas of academic inquiry
within higher education. When it comes to matters of employment,
things really start to heat up. Securing tenure is as much a political
as an academic process, involving teachers in researching the cul-
ture of their institutions. They must know which of the holy trin-
ity of tenure criteria (scholarship, teaching, and service) really
matter, whose opinion on the tenure committee really counts,
whether co-authorship is frowned on as less credible than solo
authorship, and which journals need to be targeted for publication
since they are most highly regarded in the department. Journals are
like baseball cards—you can trade three articles in a less prestigious
journal for one article in a leader in the field. Battles over tenure,
hiring, and firing are sometimes long and bloody, marked by a deep
sense of grievance, and with divisive effects felt for many years.
The daily decisions of a teacher’s life—such as whether or not
a new program should be approved, an assessment procedure be
changed, or a new teaching approach be introduced—can easily
and quickly turn into political conflicts fought against the back-
drop of participants’ memories of past hurts and humiliations.
When a foundation or corporation awards a large grant to a depart-
ment, program, or college, the scramble to obtain juicy pieces of
this makes Machiavelli seem fainthearted and overly scrupulous.
If several departments are competing for their positions to be
funded, the lobbying and infighting is as vicious and sustained as
anything seen on Capitol Hill. When a budget cut means that a
percentage of employees must be fired, then the gloves are off as
past friendships are sacrificed and strange new alliances emerge.
In a broader context, political changes in the wider world 
have their effects in the classroom. Changes in government often 
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have immediate policy effects, forcing teachers to become bureau-
crats, raising the importance of test-taking, focusing attention on
one or another underrepresented group, or switching institutional
priorities as a pot of money becomes available for a pet initiative.
The ascendancy of a new national leader or a change in the balance
of power in the state house may seem like events pretty far removed
from a college class in biochemistry, English literature, or theology.
In reality, the impact of such events trickle down to individual
teachers as contracts are not renewed, pressure is applied to become
expert in an area where state or federal grant monies are suddenly
available, or the need to create new programs and deliver programs
in new ways becomes urgent. In C. Wright Mills’ (1959) terms, the
private troubles of a teacher trying to deal with ever larger and more
diverse classes whilst being forced to take on a heavier committee
and advisement load is directly connected to the public issue of an
administration’s desire to divert resources from education to mili-
tary spending or to fund a new program of tax cuts.
Of course, what one is allowed to teach, and how one is allowed
to teach it, are matters over which college teachers are often the
last to exert control. When governments decide that certain sub-
jects or skills are important to economic growth or ideological
socialization, then these areas inevitably receive preferential fund-
ing. What comprises a core, national curriculum, which skills are
overemphasized or need development, how cultural literacy is
defined—all these issues are subject to guidelines and legislation
developed by people far removed from the college classroom. So
educational institutions are prime battlegrounds for the culture wars
fought in the wider society, with teachers caught in the midst of
numerous battles.