Announced as part of the response to the Bondi beach terror attack, the Minns Government recently amended codes of conduct to explicitly prohibit hate speech across the state’s government, independent and Catholic schools. This extends to comments made on social media and other off-site conduct.
In a controversial move, NESA – the state’s education standards authority – has been given powers under the new laws to prosecute teachers directly without involving the police.
“If it’s clear to NESA that there’s been a breach … then sanctions will apply,” Premier Chris Minns said.
But senior lecturer Dr Claire Golledge from The University of Sydney says there is a glaring gap between what the hate speech laws are intended for and how they may well play out in practice for history teachers.
Climate of fear
We could see a harmful culture of surveillance and self-censorship emerge, she tells EducationHQ.
“I’m in a lot of history teacher groups on social media, and there was a lot of confusion and concern expressed there [around many of] the things that history teachers have to teach directly, but also dealing with questions and curiosity from students, and just whether there would now be this extra level of almost self-censorship that teachers would put on themselves, because of this additional fear of what other processes they could be subjected to.”
Some teachers were considering changing topics with their senior classes to avoid their lessons being misinterpreted under the new laws, Golledge adds.
“There was one teacher that talked about wanting to make sure she was keeping records (about what she was teaching) in case a student filed some sort of complaint about something that she may have said…
“And I just thought, ‘wow, this is really new territory for history educators’.”
And while “absolutely no one is arguing that a teacher who really does engage in genuine hate speech shouldn’t be called to account for it”, the experts adds, part of a history teachers’ job is to expose students to sensitive material in order to build their understanding about various historical contexts and events.
“In Stage 5 History, students learn about the Holocaust, and a key part of learning about that when you’re a history student is being able to mentally time travel to understand how German society elected the Nazi party into the Reichstag, into a position of power where they could then pass a whole raft of deeply discriminatory and horrific laws that made life for Jewish people in Germany completely unbearable, and obviously led eventually to the Holocaust.
“The delicate task of teaching students about how those events played out involves actively engaging with Nazi propaganda showing it to students, talking to them about it,” Golledge shares.
While the news laws don’t explicitly prevent this from happening, they stand to have an impact, she flags.
“What I’m hearing from teachers is there’s now going to be a real reluctance to do that in any kind of robust way because of the fear of how it could be interpreted.”
Our history teachers are already operating in an extremely complicated political climate where fear and caution can reign, Golledge suggests.
Finding a safe middle ground
Less experienced teachers in particular may struggle to find a safe ‘middle ground’ with the new laws, Golledge says.
“It takes a lot of skill to … walk 30 students at a time through really nuanced, challenging material and ideas, and I really worry for our new teachers and their ability to do that.
“I suspect newer teachers who don’t feel as confident in managing those challenging conversations, knowing that they might be opening themselves up to professional action that threatens their teacher registration, they’re going to just avoid it altogether – they’re going to say to the students, ‘we don’t talk about that in this class’, because that’s the safest territory for them professionally.”
This will be a huge loss to education, according to Golledge.
When these kinds of teaching moments are silenced it could set a dangerous precedent for the future, she suggests.
“It’s only by having these conversations and really supporting students through developing understanding about how and why these events have happened in the past, what are the conditions that led to them, obviously with the view saying, ‘we don’t want these events to ever be repeated again’.
“Even though we see in global conflicts around the world horrendous things happening, my concern is that we’re now going to have just these conversations completely shut down because teachers are too nervous to have them.”
Our history teachers are already operating in an extremely complicated political climate where fear and caution can reign, Golledge indicates.
“Just today I got a message from a history teacher colleague … she’d received a concerned email from a parent because she’d asked her students to write a reflective piece about Hitler’s effectiveness as a leader in Germany – a critical piece that could be a question on an HSC paper – and the parent has written to the teacher concerned about the setting of that task.
“And that’s before you even talk to teachers here in New South Wales, who in Year 12 have the option of teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict as a HSC topic, but are leaving that behind as an option because it’s completely incompatible with the current political environment to teach that in a way that doesn’t expose the teacher.”
Countering misinformation
Without a solid grounding in accurate historical learning, students are more likely to be sucked into misinformation and other dark rabbit holes online, Golledge warns.
“If that’s not happening we can’t expect them to grow up and have like a critical understanding of things that they no doubt will encounter…”
And do teachers really need another limitation put on their practice? Golledge suggests not.
“It’s discouraging enough being a teacher – it’s hard enough being a teacher without additional constraints being put on the job.”
NSW has also proposed jail time and larger fines for those who publicly display symbols from terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic State, while pushing to ban slogans like “globalise the intifada”.
