As a group, what do teachers believe about religion, freedom of speech, family values, and economic inequality? Do they lean to the left or the right?
Robert Slater of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette dug into the treasure trove of statistics that is the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey to see what he could learn about teachers and their beliefs, and reports his findings in the new Education Next. Surprise: “liberal” teachers are more likely to attend church and want to ban pornography than non-teachers. They’re also more likely to oppose legal abortion. Teachers are less likely than other educated Americans to believe that homosexual relations are “not wrong at all.” The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher thinks the results show teachers are “wary of material that they believe can and does hurt children.”
Teachers are a fairly homogeneous bunch. There are more Americans teaching than doing any other kind of work—about 3.5 million people. Three out of four are women, and they earn nearly very close to the national average salary for workers with a college degree. Less than ten percent of U.S. teachers are African American, compared to about 13 percent of all Americans and 16 percent of their students. Their median age is 46.
“Though better educated Americans tend to be more liberal, teachers appear to be somewhat of an exception,” writes Slater. “On homosexuality and abortion, teachers tend to be more liberal than less educated Americans but more conservative than those with high levels of education.” But teachers are optimists, happily. About 69 percent believe the world is more good than evil, compared to about 53 percent of other Americans.
Update: Nice observation by Joanne Jacobs on this at Britannica Blog: “Most teachers aren’t trying to tear down the system,” she writes. “They are the system. “
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