False Axiom: Neutrality in the Classroom

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel)

Eeny, meeny, miny moe, catch a … by the toe. A playful, childish rhyme to select someone for your team or a hateful diatribe? As an ignorant child, my friends and I used the N-word without even a moment's conscience that it was offensive. If you never used this saying, you probably grew up at a time when parents and teachers expunged such language from our culture. In the racial turmoil of the ’60s, those of us steeped in ignorance began to understand the power and misdirection of our words. And it usually was at the hand of a teacher.

My sixth-grade teacher, in the early ’60s, accused me of making a racist statement. In my banal classroom voice, I shared my cousin’s perspective of his travel to Mexico: If you stopped at a red light, all four of your hubcaps would be stolen before the light turned green. I am grateful to that teacher for correcting me and embarrassing me in front of the class. When I became argumentative, he sent me to the back of the room and commanded me to look up the word “belligerent” in the dictionary and read the definition aloud. If a teacher attempted that kind of discipline today, parents would threaten lawsuits, administrators would put the staff member on paid leave, and the teacher would ultimately leave the profession knowing there is no place for a moral compass in today’s classrooms. Perhaps our educational system's demise is partly due to the “neutral teacher syndrome.”

As a child, I inherently adopted my parents’ point of view of race and creed. I was not raised in a household that espoused the sanctity of Jews nor the equal treatment of people of color. Whereas I never heard my parents use the N-word, my dad would often utter the word kike when referring to a Jewish neighbor he disliked.  I had no understanding as to the depth of hatred this word held, or for that matter, that the world still holds against Jews. My thought process was changed through classroom experiences and, more importantly, the teachers who were unafraid to correct my behavior. So what has transpired, especially in the past decade, that overt hatred for our Jewish citizens is considered “free speech” and that the Jewish state of Israel has no right to exist? Are we in a time warp of 1939?

I was left breathless by the gut-wrenching antisemitic behavior of American citizens against Jews in the October 7, 2024, protests across our country. I was educated that burning any country’s flag on Main Street America was completely unacceptable, maybe even criminal. The operative word is “educated.” On September 12, 2001, our country was educated about the presence of radical jihadists who wanted to destroy this country. Their attack changed the very precepts our country was built upon with body searches at airports and undercover surveillance of our citizens. Again, I was taught that hatred of any people based on their color or creed is immoral and has no place in speech or actions.

It was in middle school that I learned of the Holocaust.  Those pictures of the death camps sickened me. How could a civilized world treat my Jewish brothers and sisters with such unholy denigration? Little did I understand how those pictures would continue to affect me throughout my teaching career.

As a middle school choir director, I decided my singers should study the Holocaust through Hebrew music. It was in the early ’90s when my choirs were asked to perform for the annual Nebraska Holocaust Commemoration ceremony. As I reflect upon decades of directing choirs, those commemoration performances still resonate as the best experiences in my life as a choral director. Our choirs were invited back for three consecutive years. In the final year, Schindler’s List debuted in theatres, utilizing actual music from the Holocaust. After we performed a medley from the movie, the guest speaker, Eli Wiesel, walked up to my choir and complimented them on their Hebrew and Yiddish pronunciations. He invited the entire choir to Boston University to study Jewish history with him!

Whenever the events of that horrific time in world history are taught, no teacher feels compelled to “balance” the plight of the Jews against the “rights” of the Nazis. Yet today, because of the woke movement and cultural wars in this country, K-12 instruction on the Holocaust is being eliminated or, at the very least, watered down in our schools. Case in point: In New Hampshire, laws restricting K-12 instruction on “divisive concepts” are colliding with the teaching of the Holocaust. According to CNN, 31 states do not require schools to teach about the Holocaust. In a Pew study in 2020, more than half of Americans did not know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I do not need to read a paper or hear about statistics to understand that the show of support for Hamas (US State Department-designated terrorist organization) has exploded while support for Jews is now viewed as politically incorrect. Deja vu of 1939.

(Here are further resources supporting the demise of Holocaust education in America’s schools: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2024/05/03/holocaust-education-mixed-bag-us-schools; https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/never-again-starts-with-education; https://www.adl.org/resources/article/why-we-need-legislation-ensure-holocaust-taught-schools; https://www.adl.org/resources/article/why-we-need-legislation-ensure-holocaust-taught-schools)

This absurd rationalization to balance the so-called rights of a verified terrorist organization performing heinous atrocities on Jews is incredulous, hateful, and immoral. Often, the Black man’s fight to overcome slavery, genocide, and bigotry is compared to the Jews’ battle of the same. Yet Jewish history, dating back to 605 BCE, refers to Israelites held captive as slaves in Babylon. The Jewish struggle against slavery, genocide, and bigotry spans centuries. So why is it our country has been able to see the error of its ways in the depraved treatment of the Black man and not of the debased treatment of the Jew? Neutrality in the classroom? Yet our government allows, in the name of neutrality and free speech, the celebration of atrocities performed against Jewish women and children on October 7, 2023. October 7, 2024, could be one of those dates in infamy where history will not look kindly on the United States. Could it be the lack of education as a causal factor? Have the teachers, administrators, and school boards of America, over the past decade, faulted on the side of neutrality to avoid a conversation of right vs. wrong?

It is teachers who first demonstrate the power to include or exclude children of color or creed. This behavior manifests in what the teacher allows or disallows in the classroom. However, the subtle omission of providing a safe space for all children is taking hold in our classrooms and especially in our institutions of higher learning. I am fearful today’s universities are cultivating teachers in a void of right vs. wrong. And perhaps most worrisome is the fertile soil afforded to the liberal construct of radical beliefs. October 7 of this year is a primary example of how uneducated Americans have become in this vacuum of right vs. wrong.

So what’s my point? I keep seeing posters on social media stating teachers must remain neutral in this hotbed of political discourse. I believe the lack of education regarding the plight of Jews in both our public schools and universities has given birth to tens of thousands of antisemitic protestors feeling empowered to call for the annihilation of an entire race of people. Our politicians dance around the issue of these hateful protests, failing to see the depravity and always clinging to neutrality. If our country’s so-called leaders cannot find the stamina to call out October 7, 2023, for what it was, it is no surprise our teachers are pressured to seek neutrality at the sacrifice of historical truth.

I would be remiss if I also didn’t address the non-assimilation of thousands or perhaps millions of immigrants to this country. Our educational system is stymied, if not completely broken, due in part to the surge of immigrants. There seems to be no effort to learn our language, understand our culture, or attempt to become a viable part of our society. Yet, in true American fashion, these same people are allowed the freedom of speech to support a terrorist organization on the streets of the land of the free. Freedom is costly and often overwhelmed by words of hate. Teachers are the last bastion of upholding what is right before our children descend into a world of deceit and distrust.

And what about you? What about me? We carry the same responsibility as our educators. If we believe silence is the appropriate response in this upside-down world, we will truly reap those seeds of eventual demise. In the words of Desmond Tutu: “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”