I'm a bit of a masochist. I can't help it, but read the comments when the local news places something political on social media – especially if it is related to public education.
I spent most of my life building a career as a public educator who emphatically embraces and promotes diversity, fairness and inclusion, and I live in Florida, where public education is very much on the chopping block and our Pouty, Petulant cable of a Governor of his culture war has made.
In recent years, when I read the commentary part of these stories, there are dozens of Maga people who scream in choir about malignant liberal teachers who indoctrinate children with vegan transgender -socialism.
“Their [sic] Teach [sic] Children CRT [critical race theory]! “Says a commentator.” They want white children to feel guilty about their race! “Another cries.
And almost nothing of what they claim is true.
Although I am now in public higher education, I have been a public teacher in high school for more than ten years. I worked at three radically different schools in three radically different provinces. The majority of my social circle consists of teachers. If indoctrination on scale would take place, I would know.
It just doesn't happen.
Almost every teacher I have ever met (and that number is currently in high hundreds) is extremely careful not to discuss politics or religion at school with other adults, even in the relative privacy of the breakroom, even one to one in their own classrooms during lunch or planning. It is a simple issue of self-preservation-as a single student would hear you say: “God, I hate Gov. Ron Desantis,” They would tell their friends, those friends would pass it on, and by the end of the day you would be in the director's office that no, you actually don't have “fuck desantis” tattoo on your chest.
There are of course exceptions. In the 13 years that I taught in high school, a handful of teachers were openly political. I helped a fresh teacher set up a teacher, set up his classroom in 2014 when he asked me: 'You can believe they had these Muslim children wear their habibs [sic] In class? “This was within 15 minutes after he first met him.
“I think the dress code does not apply to them. I don't know why we bend the rules for them,” he went on. He had no idea if I was a Muslim. He also did not know if I was an immigrant – although I was visible Spanish – before he went on a rant about 'The Esol Kids', AKA students in an English for speakers of another language program, who were 'probably illegal'.
Another teacher with whom I worked had at least the patience to make his way to vocal intolerance. He started slowly and talked about the children with 'crazy hair colors' and later, 'The Alphabet Kids', his way of labeling students who identified themselves as LGBTQ+. Within a few weeks he started to complain about “how sick and stupid” pronouns are. “They can call themselves what they want,” he said, “I just don't expect me to pretend.”
Those two cases are essentially the size of educators who express their personal beliefs at the work that I have ever encountered. Most teachers simply do not want to risk termination by talking about potentially controversial subjects at work. To this day, apart from teachers with whom I have been friends and spoken outside of work, I don't know the political or religious beliefs of almost all my former colleagues. Teachers are so unlikely of possible career-ending conflicts.
Of course that is my experience with teachers who communicate with other teachers. But what about in class? I could not possibly know what happens in every other class while I'm giving my own lessons, right?
Wrong.
Students talk a lot of About what their teachers do and say – and they mainly like to concentrate on the bad things. Will a rumors, say say or even intentional lies? Certainly. But if you hear the same things about the same teachers week after week, year after year, different students – including reliable – will learn to separate your fact from fiction.
Students told me about exactly two cases of intentional indoctrination in the classroom. The biggest repeated perpetrator was a modest social studies teacher. Socially, she was reserved but friendly, irrevocably experienced and completely non -confronting. But in her classroom she focused intensely on the war of northern aggression and the idea that it was based on 'states', but specifically not slavery. Another perpetrator – one that I mentioned earlier – routinely ridiculed the idea of pronouns and gender identity in the classroom and refused to recognize the gender identities of students. He eventually lost his position because of this behavior.
Despite how this may all sound, I honestly do not claim that dozens of conservative teachers indoctrinate our students in the classroom. In the course of my 13 years of personal observation and dozens of discussions (outside of work) with teacher friends, these are the only two cases I have encountered personally. The fact that these two teachers had right -wing views seems to me purely by chance. The larger collection meal is that, just like personal voter fraud, political indoctrination in public schools is incredibly rare.
And there is a good reason why it is so disappearing rare … and it can frankly shock you. It is because almost every teacher there spends all the energy and patience trying to let their students read only one paragraph without looking at their phones. They are too busy to try to let students complete only one math problem without saying: “This is too difficult.” To write only one essay without using chatgpt. To hand in only one assignment on time. And that is when they do not revise their lesson plans to adapt to the new best evidence-based data-driven standards ever that will promote guaranteed control and this time a growth mindset will cultivate. (Note: these will be considered outdated and outdated within two to four years and will be replaced by Even-Better standards, which are functionally unprejected.) These revisions must of course be planned around their student data, individualized educational program meetings, professional learning communities, parent-teacher-conferences, all afternoon service, who are always out of the afternoon service).
Of course rational people know that there is no unbridled classroom indoctrination, but “liberal teacher indoctrinating your Children 'has been a favorite bogeyman of law for at least as long if I live a part of a decades of public education that so many people have sounded alarm bells and now I am worried that it is too damn too late.
Too many voters believed that schools chop the genitals of children during the break. Too many voters believed that schools have litter boxes for children who identify as cats. Too many voters believed that teachers promote feelings about facts.
The most gullible of us voted for Donald Trump (he is finally a good businessman!), And now the Ministry of Education is dead, graduated schools can no longer afford to bring in the next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, their student loan and a public schools are corporate corporate corporate corporate corporate corporate corporate corporate corporate “Schools.”
The generation of children and young adults whose education has already been strongly disturbed by the pandemic, is now lagging behind much less, much worse post-secundary options than which generation is for them in modern times. And that is apart from increasing unemployment, rising inflation and a housing market that is shamefully unaffordable.
But hey, eggs are now cheap.
Oh, wait …
Marco Vanerra is the pseudonym of a professional educator and lawyer at the public school. He specializes in relevant and making mathematics accessible to disadvantaged communities in Florida.
This article originally appeared at Huffpost in April 2025.
