Courts' seeming concern with educational che guevaras in relation to teacher speech

I was reading the recent decision involving teacher speech from the Sixth Circuit, Evans-Marshall v. Bd. of Education.  Scott Bauries posted about the decision if you’re not familiar with the case.  The Evans-Marshall decision cites Mayer v. Monroe County Cmty. Sch. Corp., 474 F.3d 477 (7th Cir. 2007), and a facet of Mayer, one found in other opinions involving teacher speech and the Garcetti standards, continues to annoy me (okay, multiple things about Garcetti irk me, but I’ll just focus on one in this posting).  In a case like Mayer, the court only really conceptualized teacher speech in relation to major curricular and pedagogical issues and decisions in justifying application of the Garcetti standards.  But Mayer involved the school claiming that the First Amendment didn’t apply to a teacher’s speech in relation to responding to a student’s specific question rather than involving some big curricular choice or defiance of some official board policy.  The court didn’t focus on the type of speech at issue in the case or the context in which it actually took place.  Instead, the opinion contextualized teacher speech more in relation to “big picture” curricular and pedagogical decision-making issues. 

So, setting aside speech related to major curricular and pedagogical choice issues (and I know that Evans-Marshall dealt with just such issues), it bugs me that many courts won’t acknowledge that teachers engage in all kinds of extemporaneous speech on a daily basis.  If courts want to reinforce managerial control over teachers, then be intellectually honest in opinions--and a decision like Mayer isn’t really--that we’re also often talking about more extemporaneous-type teacher speech rather than just, say, pre-meditated plots to subvert the approved curriculum or pedagogy.  Just be honest that unsuspecting teachers acting in good faith and striving to satisfy district policies and standards are also fodder for the Garcetti standards along with those educational Che Guevaras seemingly lurking in the school halls (at least that seems to be the case based on the rhetoric found in some of these opinions).

And school districts need to be honest that in failing to adopt voluntary free speech standards for teachers, they are sending a message that they are not really seeking educators in the classroom but are really more interested in what I’ll call content technicians.   

Comments

[Scott Bauries]

I like the distinction that you are drawing here between extemporaneous speech and curricular speech. I hope the Court picks up on it in a future case, as I think it makes a good deal of sense.