Trump at a rally. Who will be endangered, who will be punished, if he is elected President?
A major goal of teachers, especially secondary school social studies teachers, is to help students learn to evaluate multiple perspectives on issues by weighing supporting evidence, separating fact from fiction, examining underlying assumptions, and then developing their own informed opinions. As a teacher, I generally withhold my opinion on a topic, however, I have no problem asserting that slavery, genocide, racism, dictatorship, and antisemitism are bad. There are no upsides. When we consider multiple perspectives, the question we should address is why they happen, not whether they happened in the past or should happen again.
On a variety of topics, I provide students with a package of documents to evaluate that includes things I agree with and things that I don’t. During class, my primary role is to ask questions that promote discussion about the document package and the issues and moderate respectful student-to-student conversation. I use this teaching approach whether we are discussing issues from the past such as the causes of the American Revolution, or the present, such as the role of human action in climate change, whether a particular military campaign constitutes war crimes, or if a groups behavior should be identified as terrorism.
Important topics for discussion when schools reopen in the fall will be evaluations of the Biden administration’s record on foreign policy, the economy, climate, and the migrant/refugee “crisis.” It will also be legitimate to discuss whether Biden’s age should be an issue in the election whatever your evaluation of his first administration.
The big problem in September will be what to do about Trump. How do you organize a balanced unbiased discussion and evaluation of a candidate who makes outrageous, hateful, blatantly false statements? He is a candidate facing over 90 criminal indictments, who has been found guilty of defamation and fraud, who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election, who continues to claim the 2020 election was stolen, who dismisses any accusation against him as politically motivated, and who demands total immunity against prosecution as a former President.
The November election is going to be a major focus in middle school and high school social studies classes. I am not neutral about slavery, genocide, racism, dictatorship, and antisemitism and I am not neutral about the threat Donald Trump poses to the future of democracy in the United States and the constitutional foundations of American government and society. I will not use unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, propaganda websites, and Trump sycophantic reports in document packages and pretend students are evaluating legitimate sources.
Even a fact-check exercise of Trump statements leaves a teacher open to charges that they are injecting their opinions into class and trying to influence the ideas of their students. But of course, the job of the teacher is to influence the ideas of their students. Our responsibility to promote civic discourse supported by evidence and advocate for democracy means we have to influence students to critically think about the campaign and candidates and if that means presenting an accurate picture of the threat posed by Donald Trump, we will have to live with the consequences.
Every teacher will almost definitely have students in their classes who support Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which is their right. They should be welcomed into discussion and encouraged to find evidence to support their positions, but they cannot be permitted to shout down or intimidate other students, things that I witnessed in 2016 and 2020.
Donald Trump has recently said the following scary things, some of which he has backtracked on, and some of which he has not. Any one of them should disqualify him to be President of the United States. He told American Jews, already subject to a rising tide of antisemitism, that “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves.” He described some immigrants as “not people,” “animals,” and “snakes,” accused them of “poisoning the blood of our country,” a statement that echoed the ideas of Adolf Hitler, and is promising mass deportations in violation of constitutional guarantees of due process, guarantees that in the 14th amendment are not limited to citizens. He asserted without evidence that other countries are emptying their prisons and sending criminals across the border. Trump wants “strong ideological screening of immigrants” because if “you don’t like our religion . . . we don’t want you in our country.” He is apparently unaware or does not care that the United States does not have an official religion.
Trump continually berates the American legal system and undermines public confidence in the law, the courts, and the government. He describes people tried and convicted of crimes during the January 6, 2021 violent invasion of the United States Capitol as “unbelievable patriots” being held as hostages and promises to offer these convicted criminals mass pardons if he is elected. Trump dismisses legal charges against his former aides Peter Navarro and Paul Manafort who were convicted, Navarro of contempt of Congress and Manafort of bank and tax fraud, and claims they were “treated very badly.”
Trump lowers the character of political speech as he raises the level of hostility. He denounces Joseph Biden as “Crooked Joe” and as a stupid President and uses vulgar and offensive language to describe other opponents, especially Black women. At campaign stops, Trump warns that if he is not elected, “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country,” something he later tried to explain away, and that if he does “not win this year’s presidential election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.” He says he wants to be a dictator, but only on day one.
If elected, Trump says he would support a nationwide ban on terminating a pregnancy after 15 weeks, severely limiting the reproductive rights of women. A rightwing Supreme Court with three members, I hesitate to call them justices, appointed by Trump the last time he was President may well approve such a ban.
If Trump is elected President, he threatens to withdraw the United States from the NATO alliance that has helped prevent broader European wars since tens of millions of people died in World War I and World War II or at a minimum sharply reduce U.S. financial support and to once again withdraw the United States from global efforts to minimize climate change because he does not believe in science. At a time when rightwing anti-democratic political movements are gaining followers and threatening to take power in many European countries, Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. He praised the Lebanese-based armed group Hezbollah even though they are listed as a terrorist group by the United States State Department. Trump claims, without evidence, that the war in Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel would somehow not have happened if he were President.
In his speeches, Trump continuously lies or exaggerates about his own prowess and record as President. Trump didn’t create the greatest economy or pass the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. He didn’t do more for African Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln. He didn’t defeat ISIS or increase government revenue and he wasn’t reelected in 2020.
Teachers should not tell students who to vote for or tell them how you are voting, but you are remiss if you do not help them understand who Donald Trump is and what he represents. If you are unsure how to do this, you can have students read and debate the points raised in this essay. Students can evaluate whether it raises legitimate concerns, or it is just anti-Trump propaganda.
