Five years ago, a high school teacher who taught his class about Communism often had to fear assorted legal and social penalties; under Georgia law, for example, he might have been accused of breaking his oath to refrain from "teaching any theory of government or economics or of social relations which is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of patriotism and high ideals of Americanism." Last week the same teacher might have been at a summer seminar learning how best to present Communist history and theory to his twelfth-graders next fall. Growing up to the cold realities of the cold war, Americans have undergone a complete reversal of opinion on the formerly taboo subject of teaching about Communism in the schools.
Florida and Louisiana require classes on Communism in every high school. An amendment to state law by the New York legislature authorizes courses on Communism. Virginia has authorized a course since April 1961. California has set up a committee to suggest a course of study. The American Legion, which once vigorously opposed any mention of Communism around schoolchildren, passed a resolution in 1957 calling for a course on the "fallacies of Communism," has now joined the National Education Association in producing a manual on the subject. Most local school boards, sometimes nudged along by resolutions from the state legislature and suggestions from the state board of education, now weave facts about Communism into regular courses such as history, social studies and geography. Teaching about Communism in the schools has become widespread and widely discussed, and the only controversy left is how to teach it.
The Scholarly Approach. There is general agreement that Communism should be studied within the context of other subjects rather than in a separate course. Most schools try to maintain a scholarly approach, agreeing with an American Bar Association report that "the subject of Communism (like any other subject) should be taught factually, thoroughly and objectively." In Atlanta, where students are now introduced to the massive fact of Russia in sixth grade, a board of education directive says: "The teacher should keep in mind that the classroom is a forum and not a committee for producing resolutions or dogmatic pronouncements. The class should feel no responsibility for reaching an agreement." Says San Francisco Superintendent Harold Spears: "I think the story of Russia speaks for itself. All you've got to do is teach the facts. You don't have to indoctrinate." Teachers often depend on a parallel study of American institutions: Chicago students are exposed to contrasting quotes on the same subject, such as Stalin and Thomas Jefferson on the rights of the minority. A sixth-grade class in
Oconomowoc, Wis., transformed itself into a mock Soviet classroom for a week last year. St. Paul high school students are taught about early experiments in Communism, "so when we come to Russia and its Communism, it's not a shock." Denver maintains a committee of teachers to decide how to handle touchy subjects.