Update, April 16, 8:30 a.m.: This story has been updated to include new comments from history teacher Christy Gerst, the chair of the Free Expression Steering Committee. The earlier version of this story included a comment from Ms. Gerst, who was initially interviewed about the draft proposal, but her new comment reflects a shift in her understanding after the final version of the policy was published.
After months of debate and discussion, Lab’s interim director of schools published the final version of a new policy on how teachers should approach teaching and discussing contentious issues — and while the structure of the policy’s presentation has shifted, the substance of what the policy means for teachers remains the same.
The policy on viewpoint neutrality aims to eliminate bias in how teachers present difficult topics, encouraging students to come to their own conclusions.
Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, interim director of schools, based the policy on a document published last school year by Lab’s Freedom of Expression Steering Committee that encourages teachers to teach students “how to think, not what to think.” After publicizing a draft of the policy in January, a final draft was published on April 2.
The main difference in the final document was the removal of a set of case studies, which have been replaced with answers to frequently asked questions. Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said he aimed to make the policy more accessible and clear up concerns on gray areas in the draft, surrounding what counts as a contentious issue, without backing down on the original content and goal that the viewpoint-neutral policy provided.
“I think viewpoint neutrality is a fundamental value of the University of Chicago, and we are a part of the University of Chicago,” Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said. “I understand that some people disagree with that, so that’s one kind of feedback that was not integrated in the sense that we weren’t gonna back away from viewpoint-neutral.”
In the months since the original draft became public, the policy itself has become a contentious issue at Lab. Dr. Bueno de Mesquita received feedback from teachers and tried to incorporate the expertise that came from teachers into the final policy.
“I think the revised document is an attempt by me to reflect the things that I heard back in conversation from expert educators who work with a developmental group of students that I have not spent my professional career working on,” Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said.
The document now addresses specific questions and concerns that were brought up by members of the faculty and staff.
“The case studies were kind of too narrow and specific and hinged on very particularities of the way I described the case,” Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said. “I just think that they were a writing failure, and that was a lesson learned from hearing feedback, so I dropped them, and I think that the FAQ is a much better format.”
Dr. Bueno de Mesquita believes that the shift from case studies to FAQs will give teachers a better understanding of how classroom scenarios could play out and will help address specific concerns among the faculty.
“Doing an FAQ allows for a kind of writing that I think is less people seeing themselves in it, and more kind of nuanced. It’s more like, ‘Yeah, these are hard questions, let’s talk about this,’” Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said.
During the months since the draft policy was published, some teachers worried that the policy was being crafted by people who do not fully understand what it is like to teach students of all ages.
Matt Martino, science department chair, said, “We have actual people who have decades of experience educating this age range, and maybe we need to have conversations by division about how to talk about it. That seems much more sensible than trying to build a policy that is coming from the University of Chicago’s viewpoint that is then going to apply to everyone.”
Regardless of the intense debate that has surrounded the viewpoint-neutral policy, the final policy along with the FAQs have been sent to all parents and faculty.
Dr. Bueno de Mesquita said, “I’m very much glad that we spent three months having an internal conversation about it. I think that the final result is much stronger and better than it would have been absent that. I hope that others at the school feel the same.”
While concerns surrounding the policy still remain, the clarification that the revised policy provides has given teachers a better understanding of how the policy will play out.
“The policy clarifies many of the concerns in the community, that questions of settled scientific knowledge, and widely settled historical judgments, like Holocaust denialism, were not up for debate,” Christy Gerst, the chair of the Freedom of Expression Steering Committee, said. “That means that the policy is more aligned with the scholarly literature on the teaching of controversial issues in K through 12 education.”
