To what extent are students in international schools indoctrinated by their teachers' political ideologies?
How do we measure something as vague as 'political indoctrination' or 'political bias'?
How do we measure a person's position/stance within the current political spectrum?
How do we define each extreme within the current political spectrum? What does it mean to be a "conservative" or "liberal?"
Is being a conservative or liberal necessarily the same as being a rightest or leftist, respectively? Are the terms synonymous?
Originating in the positions of nobles/aristocrats and commoners with respect to the King's throne in the aftermath of the French Revolution, adapted to progressing standards to reflect positions within contemporary issues of given time periods (Almond, 1956).
Thereby more so a partisan affiliation than a political affiliation in the contemporary world — one that labels persons along specific political parties and enforces them to vote for particular agendas.
Political conservatism and liberalism aim toward different ideological ends, and this divergence is where the differences in political agendas emerge between the two extremes. Political conservatism aims to protect society from harm while political liberalism aims to provide society with needs (Janoff-Bulman, 2009).
To what extent are teachers themselves gullible to exposing or promoting agendas of particular political affiliations?
Teachers' personal political orientations tend to have a strong association with their expectations from students. For instance, teachers with right-leaning orientations are more likely to expect more from students of secure socioeconomic backgrounds than their liberal counterparts (Souchon, Kermarec, Trouiloud, & Bardin, 2020).
Politics and contemporary issues of the political world can be utilized as a means to explore students' developing worldview and to foster argumentation skills, but it shouldn't be exploited as an opportunity for teachers to push their personal agendas (Drummond, 2015).
Distinctions must be drawn between "settled" and "open" issues; settled issues are ones that have already been proven of existence/effect in the scientific world, whereas open issues are those that are yet open to varying degrees of interpretation.
But to what extent does this actually matter to students? What are the (if there are any) tangible effects of political indoctrination of teachers on students?
Despite concerns amongst the education population in the United States with respect to the disproportionate number of liberal professors to conservative professors, research reveals that there exists no tangible drawbacks in such a disproportion save students' perceived sense of discomfort (Linvill, & Havice, 2011).
It is also typically more conservative/right-leaning students that react more strongly to political bias/indoctrination in classroom environments.
How do we define "indoctrination?"
Indoctrination is sensible when a student is exposed to only a single perspective within an issue, provided with no evidence, and communicated that the opposite is evil; it serves the function of conveying a belief or conviction (Hocutt, 2005).
Are political indoctrination and political bias always 'bad?'
Precautions must be taken in employing artificial means (e.g., introduction of systematic regulations) to resolve political biases. Underscoring political neutrality may, in certain circumstances, more devastating than exposing students to skewed worldviews, for complete neutrality fails to bring about students’ own arguments but conveys a sense of tolerability in not doing so (Belgrave et. al., 2012).
Why is the professoriate/teachers in the United States overwhelmingly liberal in proportion?
Several variables account for why educators in the United States tend to be more liberal than conservative in proportion. Potential explanatory variables include their sociopolitical backgrounds, duration of educational career, and religious affiliations. Yet, these variables fail to explain the entirety of the outcome, failing to surpass 50% in number (Gross, & Fosse, 2012).
Long-term exposure of teachers to the liberal ideologies of their predecessors since childhood results in the continuation of a high liberal proportion among professors in the United States (Izumi, 2019).
Then how did it even start in the first place? Why has the education landscape in the United States become so liberal over the past century or so?
Typically by surveying samples/populations of interest.
What questions? (Methodology)
Knusten (1995) utilized a questionnaire surveying each experimental unit's opinion on contemporary issues of social, political, and economic significance to draw conclusion about given populations. Each response was associated with an index ranging between 1 and 10, after which the numbers were analyzed to draw a conclusion about the political orientation of a given population.
e.g., indicating the degree of agreeability with the statement "Public ownership of private industry should be expanded"
But are these questions necessarily relevant to MY populations of interest (i.e., students and teachers)?
Perhaps not, but need more research.
Or I can even ask experimental units to identify their own political orientation for the purpose of comparison with their responses.
Employed by Mariani and Hewitt (2009) when they surveyed their experimental units to identify their political orientations and compared the results afterward.