Teaching is political

I was already involved in politics before I understood that I was.

I was reminded of that recently when I came across a social media post with a simple line: “Teaching is political.” I paused at it for a while. Not because the idea was new to me, but because it brought me back to something I had been learning long before I became a teacher.

Back then, politics was practical. It was student elections, long meetings, limited budgets, and arguments that sometimes followed us to the canteen. We thought we were just trying to improve school. In truth, we were learning who gets heard and who gets to decide. I never forgot that.

After enough years inside schools, you begin noticing that politics rarely waits outside the gate. It comes in with the student who has not eaten breakfast. It is there when another student has a good phone and reliable internet while a classmate borrows data just to submit an assignment. You see it in old laboratory equipment and in teachers dipping into their own pockets because somehow the class has to go on.

That is why I understand the uneasiness when I say teaching is political.

It makes me uneasy, too, if by political we mean turning the classroom into campaign headquarters. I have no interest in telling students whom to vote for in my calculus class. A teacher already has enough power in the room. We give grades. We control much of the conversation. A student who disagrees with the teacher still has to return to class the next day. That difference in power should make us careful about bringing our politics into the room.

But being careful is not the same as being silent.

Paulo Freire argued that education cannot simply stand apart from the world (Freire, 1970/2000). I understood that first as theory. Years in the classroom gave it a different meaning. Teachers make choices every day about what gets discussed, which questions get heard, and when to say, “Tell me more.”

Educator Sonia Nieto (2006) also calls teaching political work because questions of power and privilege already enter the classroom through curriculum, testing, resources, and everyday practice. What I like about her argument is that it does not require teachers to become noisy crusaders. The teachers she describes as making a difference, particularly for marginalized students, do fairly recognizable things. They care about their students. They listen. They adjust. They question assumptions. They sometimes refuse to accept that an unfair practice is fine simply because everybody has grown used to it.

In the Philippines, though, this gets messy very quickly. Bring up corruption and somebody wants to know which politician you are attacking. Discuss martial law and people start sorting everyone into camps. Talk about human rights, inequality, historical distortion, or public accountability and, before long, somebody may tell the teacher to “just teach.”

I have always found those two words interesting.

Just teach.

But what does “just teach” mean? Should mathematics avoid budgets, wages, debt, election surveys, or misleading statistics? Should evidence matter only in the science laboratory? Should history stop at dates and names without asking why people were silenced or killed? And can we teach honesty without talking about what happens when public money goes missing?

The answer cannot be to give students our politics.

Neither can it be to give them nothing.

Helping students examine a difficult issue is different from steering them toward the teacher’s preferred answer. Students can tell. We say, “There are no wrong answers,” but sometimes our faces give us away. They learn to nod, write what sounds safe, and move on. That may keep the classroom comfortable, but it is hardly critical thinking.

I would rather have the disagreement.

This took me years to appreciate. A student who questions a teacher is not necessarily being disrespectful. Sometimes the student has misunderstood. Sometimes the teacher has. Sometimes both are working with incomplete information. The interesting part begins when neither side treats authority as evidence.

This may be the distinction that matters most to me now. Teaching is political because it deals with real people, their rights, histories, opportunities, and disagreements. It becomes partisan when the teacher uses that authority to steer students toward a preferred political conclusion.

I am also less convinced that silence is neutral. What we avoid can teach as much as what we discuss. Students notice when difficult history disappears, when honesty becomes safer in textbooks than in real life, and when “think critically” lasts only until somebody asks an uncomfortable question.

I began seeing all this as a student leader. I understand it differently now from the teacher’s side of the room. Chalk has mostly disappeared. PowerPoint came and stayed. These days, a student can quietly search something I have said while I am still saying it.

Good.

After years of asking students to check evidence, I can hardly complain when they check mine.

Maybe that is the kind of political classroom I can live with. Not thirty young people learning to agree with the person in front of them, but thirty minds learning to question, weigh evidence, and think for themselves, including when the person they are questioning is their own teacher.

And if one of them raises a hand someday and says, “Sir, I checked that. I think you may be wrong,” I hope my first instinct is not to defend my authority.

I hope I say, “Okay. Show me.”

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.