Kerby Anderson

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a recent column, he asks, “Are Schools Really Politicized?” Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. But many progressive writers don’t agree.

One of those writers is James Traub who has a book coming out next year on civil education. In an article in New Republic that he wrote previewing his book, he declared: “I Visited Dozens of Civics Classrooms. The Right’s Attacks Are Wrong.”

Who is right? Stanley Kurtz believes left-wing partisanship is a serious problem and has put out model legislation to take partisanship out of civics education. James Traub visited many classrooms and found them to be viewpoint neutral.

Both individuals concede that much of the civic curriculum today is written from a liberal viewpoint. Traub, for example, “acknowledges that the academic literature on teaching, statements from educational administrators, and social-studies standards in blue states are all pervasively leftist.” But then we are to suppose that none of that makes its way into the classroom.

Stanley Kurtz doubts whether “putting a famed reporter in a classroom is the best way to expose politicization. Teachers facing a reporter are bound to be on their best behavior. And highly politicized teachers are unlikely to host such an observer at all.”

By contrast, Stanley Kurtz provides numerous examples of what he describes as K-12 politicization. It may be difficult to detect because many teachers work to hide it from parents and administrators.

There surely are teachers who try to be politically neutral in civics classes. But you aren’t going to find those who are politically biased by sending in a notable author.