“We still have power in shaping what and how students learn”: Activist Teachers Respond to Book Bans

Abstract

In this study, we learn from seven teachers in a graduate level program in Urban Education about how and why they enact activist pedagogies in their classrooms. So often, teachers are positioned as passive puppets of the state—they are seen as the “tools” with which public thinking is controlled. By repressing, silencing, and fear-mongering teachers and determining through legislation which epistemologies and histories they can teach, subjugation through schooling is indeed a powerful mechanism of control. Yet, the participants in this study were a far cry from being passive puppets. They all engaged in epistemic disobedience, or what Quijano might call epistemic subversion, meaning that they intentionally, if covertly, remained firm in their commitment to teach non-dominant histories and worldviews rooted in acceptance, inclusion, and truth despite a growing array of gag order legislation across the US.