I'm so tired of listening to teachers say "I'm not political, I'm just teaching..."

I can't count how many times I've heard this line in the last few years. <br>It always seems like it's coming from a place of fear. Like, a teacher is abdicating any responsibility for saying anything.<br>To me, it sounds like a teacher is saying "I'm not really in control of what's happening in my classroom. It's in the curriculum, from the textbook, it's what I've always taught."<br><br>And that's wrong. We should be listening to what we are teaching and decide whether it's appropriate or not. We are the professionals in our classroom. It's our job to teach and to decide what/how we are going to teach.<br><br>If we're afraid of backlash from parents, administrators, or the community, we should reflect on whether what we're teaching is the right thing to do. <br>If we still think it's the right thing to do, we should own the decision. If we decide it's the wrong thing to do, and continue to do it anyway, we should own that too.<br><br>This is a very specific criticism. I'm not saying that I think all teachers are wrong in everything they do. I think that teachers are afraid of criticism, and they're abdicating their responsibility as professionals by blaming the curriculum, or administration, or "society". <br><br>Edit: I am a teacher. My students are 11-14. I've been teaching since 2000.