(CN) — Caught on the front lines of culture wars waged around issues of race and sexuality, most teachers in America say they don’t have enough say over their curriculum, according to research published by Pew on Thursday.
“All these discussions about how the cultural war is playing out in K through 12 schools have been really intriguing, but we are not hearing a lot from teachers on this,” said Luona Lin, a Pew research associate who contributed to the study. “They are the ones who are actually on the front line.”
To fill this knowledge gap, researchers at the nonpartisan thinktank connected with 2,531 public school teachers this past October. Their survey covered socially contentious issues of race and sexuality, including whether Black Americans are still impacted by slavery, and whether one can identify with a gender different from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Pew additionally surveyed 5,029 Americans in November and reached 1,453 teenagers in September. Pew last spoke with parents ahead of the 2022 midterms gauging how they thought certain issues should be taught in school.
While teachers’ perspectives varied on many of the issues, 71% were united in their lack of agency in shaping what happens in school.
“The majority of teachers say that they themselves do not have enough influence over what's taught in public schools in their area,” said Lin. “At the same time, a majority of them say that their state government has too much influence.”
Fifty-eight percent of teachers polled think their state government has too much control over teaching while 45% found the federal government too influential, and 38% said the same of their school board.
Teachers nevertheless reported nuanced views on how topics of race and sexuality should be taught in schools — and whether parents should be able to opt their children out of curriculum that clashes with their own viewpoint.
“You often hear the topics of race and LGBTQ issues being lumped together in this national debate on the cultural war and what schools should be teaching, but what we actually see in survey data is that teachers feel very differently about these two topics,” Lin observed.
More teens are comfortable with talking about race in class, 38%, compared to those who are comfortable talking about sexual orientation, 29%. This trend matched with teachers who are generally more comfortable teaching about the lingering effects of slavery than about gender fluidity.
Two-thirds of teachers say it’s important to teach students that Black Americans are still impacted by slavery. The rest of teachers are divided between those who think students should be taught that Black Americans no longer feel the legacy of slavery (23%) and those who think the topic shouldn’t come up in school at all (8%).
A little more than one-third of parents want schools to teach that gender is determined at birth, while slightly less than a third of parents want students taught that one’s gender can be different from what they were assigned at birth. Likewise, similar shares of teens back teaching gender determinism and teaching gender fluidity. Nearly half of teens are willing to avoid the conversation all together in school.
Most teachers, 60%, oppose letting parents opt students out of learning about racism in school, while 48% say parents should be able to pull their kids out of lessons that run counter to their views on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Topics of racial inequality are more likely to come up in the classroom, according to 56% of teachers. Only 29% of teachers say LGBTQ issues regularly come up in class.
Political affiliation proves to be a common factor underlying differences in opinion on what to teach and when to let parents opt out.
Republican-leaning teachers are more likely to support letting parents pull their kids out of controversial topics than Democrat-leaning teachers. Although the general population is pretty evenly divided when it comes to party affiliation, a larger number of teachers identify as Democrats (58%) than Republican (35%).
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