Education under siege

American Psychological Association. (2023, September 12). Education under siege. Monitor on Psychology, 54(8). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/11/florida-education-ban-schools

In August, the high school Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology course became the latest target of Florida's sweeping educational censorship efforts, when the Florida Department of Education informed schools that course material on sexual orientation and gender identity violated Florida state law. Confusion ensued, with districts across the state scrambling to remove AP Psychology -- which, if taught with modifications, could not earn students college credit -- from their course schedules.

A swift response from APA, the College Board, which administers AP exams, and several leading education and civil rights organizations helped trigger a reversal: Within a week, the state said the course could be taught in its entirety. The back-and-forth left many school administrators uncertain how to proceed, with some canceling AP Psychology out of fear and others ignoring the state's guidance altogether.

"This was yet another attempt to censor education based on biased thinking and irrational fear," said APA CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD. "We must put students and science before politics. Our youth need access to age-appropriate, evidence-based information so that they may grow up to be healthy, informed, and well-adjusted citizens."

But the AP Psychology course is hardly all that is in the balance. The attempted ban is part of a broader push -- one that is gaining momentum in states such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Iowa -- to stoke fear and confusion around teaching, or even discussing, everything from the country's history of racial oppression to sexual wellness.

"The curriculum wars are going to stay red-hot for the foreseeable future," said Ted Mitchell, PhD, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), the major coordinating body for U.S. colleges and universities. "Those of us who are more concerned about censorship than about the exposure to diverse ideas need to recognize that this battle is going to be fought at every school board, in every state board of education, and in the back rooms of every textbook publishing house."

With the freedom to learn under siege across the nation, what is at stake for students and teachers? And how can leaders across society organize to fight politically motivated attempts to censor education?

Laws that aim to restrict what is taught in schools do much of their work through a type of intimidation. Language used in bills and guidance from public officials is often vague or conflicting -- for example, on August 3, 2023, Florida's Department of Education informed schools that AP Psychology course content on sexuality and gender violated state law; by August 9, 2023, the department said it did not violate state law. That prompts many schools to self-censor, removing books and course materials in broad strokes to avoid potential penalties.

"These laws operate more by shadow than by clarity," said David Coleman, chief executive officer of the College Board. "This is about all the things you choose not to do when you're afraid -- the conversations you avoid when you're worried they can take your job away or hurt the young people in your care."

Already, librarians, teachers, and superintendents have been dismissed or penalized, in Florida and elsewhere, for violating educational censorship laws. (In 2022, the Washington Post reported that more than 160 teachers were fired or quit over political debates.) The result is that educators in many states are "teaching on eggshells," said Randi Weingarten, JD, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

"It's been chilling on teachers, and kids pick up on that," she said. "After all the disruption and disconnection of Covid, kids need to feel like they have a safe and welcoming environment in school. When teachers are fearful, that's the opposite of safe and welcoming."

In addition to fostering a learning environment based on fear, censorship efforts deprive students of information essential to function in a democracy. Without frank discussions about race and racism, it is impossible to understand our nation's history, both good and bad, Weingarten said. Meanwhile, restrictions on teaching about sexuality and gender send the incorrect message that diversity is not normal, said Christine Reyna, PhD, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago and a member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting academic freedom in higher education.

Young people in some states even lack access to information about their own health and well-being, including social-emotional learning that teaches communication and emotion regulation skills and basic education on sexual and reproductive health.

"A lot of what students experience is an absence. Things that they see in the world around them -- race, gender, sexual identity, even psychology -- will suddenly not be talked about in schools," said Jeremy C. Young, PhD, the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America, a nonprofit dedicated to human rights and free expression. "These students become voters and leaders, but they don't really understand the world they live in, because talking about that world has been banned in their classrooms."

For better or for worse, K-12 curricula are largely the purview of state governments, meaning they have long been a target of political interests. The earliest censorship efforts began just after the American Revolution, when references to the monarchy were purged from textbooks.

Higher education curricula, on the other hand, are generally developed using disciplinary knowledge and frameworks, Mitchell said. By targeting an AP course -- which can count for both high school and college credit -- Florida officials stepped into new territory.

"What happened in Florida was a crossover," he said. "It was political decision-making invading, and really compromising, academic decision-making. That violates the principles of academic freedom."

Reaching into higher education creates a dangerous precedent, said Taymy Josefa Caso, PhD, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of Alberta and chair of APA's Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. For example, if a state bans sexuality and gender content from AP courses, might it also seek to ban content from higher education institutions that receive government funding?

Caso said it is also important to consider how removing course content on sexual and gender minorities, even at the high school level, could harm a group that already faces minority stress and mental health disparities due to discrimination and bias. Scaling back access to education and training about gender and sexual orientation -- and by extension culturally responsive care -- is a human rights violation, they said.

"Aside from the cruelty of exiling an entire class of people from discussion, a course without this content doesn't prepare students for college, for research, or for practice in psychology," Coleman added.

A psychology course without material on sexuality and gender would leave students with an incomplete understanding of their own biases on those topics, as well as less training on how to prevent and address related microaggressions, Caso said. Students would also lack a complete understanding of psychological stressors related to dating, intimacy, coming out, intimate partner violence, and other significant areas of functioning.

"Psychology serves the public across domains of their lives," said Caso, who is also the advocacy chair for the Section for Advocacy of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity for APA's Division 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology). "Not teaching or training about sexuality and gender would effectively remove those aspects from trainees' and students' understanding of the communities they serve."

Those are the sorts of domino effects society can expect to see if future efforts to ban such content are successful. PEN America points to new proposed bills in Arkansas and Oklahoma, as well as an Iowa law that restricts education on sexuality and gender and bans books that contain certain sexual content starting in 2024. School districts, wary of potential penalties, are interpreting the law broadly -- removing everything from Friday Night Lights to Beloved -- and even using ChatGPT to determine what books would leave them in violation.

"We're seeing ripple effects in so many directions," said Kasey Meehan, the Freedom to Read program director at PEN America. "It continues to be alarming how this type of legislation is building momentum and being interpreted in broader and broader ways."

Because attacks on education are igniting around the country, experts say local mobilization is key. Student, parent, and community groups have already been instrumental in challenging school boards and administrators to resist book and subject-matter bans, Meehan said. Folks can also urge their legislators to get ahead of censorship attempts with preemptive legislation -- in June, for example, Illinois passed a ban on book bans.

Building coalitions of leaders that work together in new and different ways will also be critical for long-term success, Coleman said. The attempt to restrict AP Psychology content failed in part because of the fast and effective collaboration between APA, the College Board, ACE, AFT, and other groups. APA used its subject-matter expertise to assert what knowledge is critical and useful in psychology; the College Board affirmed that credit would not be given if the course was only taught in part; AFT, ACE, and others weighed in with insights about teachers, classrooms, and the learning environment.

"These alliances are critical, because not everyone has the same expertise," said Weingarten. "The only way you really get to justice is through lots of people working together. When we all stand together as a coalition, it creates courage."

Adding unlikely allies to those coalitions could provide a boost in the so-called curriculum wars going forward, Mitchell said. Businesses that operate on an international scale, for example, tend to hire diverse and broadly educated people, so educational censorship inherently runs counter to those interests.

"Each of these efforts, in its own way, with its own target, seeks to narrow what people know and are able to do," Mitchell said. "That can't be good for companies that want to compete in the 21st century."

Ultimately, anyone who is alarmed by the attempts to ban education about diversity, psychology, or other topics should oppose the bans with the same vigor as those behind the censorship bring to their campaigns, Young said. He suggests talking to friends and family, speaking or writing publicly, and contacting legislators regularly.

"One of the things that we see here is an asymmetry of concern," said Young. "For the people who want to regulate this stuff out of existence, it's their top issue. To effectively oppose that, we need everybody to be talking about this all the time."