Teaching Against Fascism
If you’ve been paying attention to American politics over the last forty years, you may have noticed the withering away of democratic institutions and safeguards. Neoliberalism’s promise to spread (or trickle down) capitalism’s wealth throughout society never materialized; instead, that wealth was funneled to oligarchic elites within the corporate class of society.
What we are now witnessing in America under Trump’s second term are the audacious acts of American oligarchy, coupled with the Christian right, taking further control over the levers of power, leading to increased inequality, conflict, and democratic decay. As Chris Hedges bluntly summarized in his book “America: The Farewell Tour”:
“It no longer matters what is true. It matters only what is ‘correct.’ Federal courts are being stacked with imbecilic and incompetent judges who serve the ‘correct’ ideology of corporatism and the rigid social mores of the Christian right. They hold reality, including science and the rule of law, in contempt. They seek to banish those who live in a reality-based world defined by intellectual and moral autonomy. Totalitarian rule always elevates the brutal and the stupid. These reigning idiots have no genuine political philosophy or goals. They use clichés and slogans, most of which are absurd and contradictory, to justify their greed and lust for power. This is as true for the Christian right as it is for the corporatists that preach the free market and globalization. The merger of the corporatists with the Christian right is the marrying of Godzilla to Frankenstein.”
In 2022, I moved back to my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, which sits across the river from Detroit, Michigan. Growing up in Windsor and now once again living here, you understand that the relationship between Windsor and Detroit is the foundation of our civic identity. Both cities represent the manufacturing and automotive bases of North America and are perennial underdogs who have faced dire economic challenges throughout the decades.
Many Windsorites travel to Detroit for entertainment, dining, and sporting events. Partnerships and marriages have been established along this international border, further tying the communities of both cities together.
However, as the flurry of news from the White House demonstrates a further authoritarian tightening of power and the threat of trade wars prompts action to protect Canadian workers, the relationship between Windsor and Detroit is being challenged in ways not seen since the 1800s.
Living in Windsor provides us not only a front-row seat to American politics but also an understanding of how those politics spill over into Canada. It would be naive to think that Canada does not have a similar oligarchic class that may be looking to America as a model for what they could accomplish with the right government in place. The American corporate class found a partner in the Christian Right to achieve their goals. In Canada, with the rising fear of immigrants, the trans community, and other marginalized groups, will political parties and corporate interests be able to dismantle democratic safeguards in the same way they have in America?
For those of us who are teachers, we must consider our role and purpose for the times that we teach. While schools can be democratic places of free-thinking, questioning, and learning, they are too often stuck within what Paulo Freire called the “Banking Model” of education, where the teacher acts as an authoritarian leader demanding compliance and obedience from students to “fill” their minds with knowledge only to be regurgitated on a test.
I have often reflected on how this process of socialization equips students to be citizens within a democratic society. If compliance and obedience are the skills that we value, how will we ensure we have a citizenry that can freely question authority and demand accountability for corrupt acts from the political class?
To teach against the rising tides of authoritarianism and fascism, teachers must understand the political nature of our work and be determined to teach for an alternative that can counter the forces of fascism that our students are exposed to over social media and within our communities. For me, that alternative is teaching for a more equitable, just, and democratic future, informed by critical pedagogy, social justice, and democratic teaching methods.
In these times, the works of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Howard Zinn, and others are invaluable in guiding me to ensure my classroom can embrace democratic practices. These practices provide students with voice and choice while challenging them to look within themselves and the world to develop more caring, compassionate, and empathetic understandings of their community and society.
This work is not straightforward and is often messy. It has taken me fifteen years of teaching to get to a place where I can build classroom culture, norms, and forms of assessment alongside students in a good way. But my work is far from complete. Teachers must be called to a practice of reflection and growth to not only improve upon the pedagogy within their classrooms but to also share their growth and challenges with colleagues to build out democratic practices within their schools and school boards.
This work will require acts of organizing alongside parents, colleagues, students, and the larger community. If we aim to strengthen our communities to stand up to the rising tides of authoritarianism, we must demonstrate to ourselves and our students that strengthening our communities through being actively engaged citizens who stand for equity, justice, and democracy is a cause worth fighting for.
There isn’t a recipe for how to accomplish this, but starting this work in our classrooms, alongside our students, is a priority to ensure that students not only understand the world they are inheriting but also equip themselves and us with the tools of free-thinking, questioning, and demanding that a better world is possible.
