Hey there,
Welcome to Provocation #27, a struggle to get out of my head, for sure. What a week…again…and again…and again.
REMINDER: All of the posts on this site are now free. But a paid subscription will help keep my energy up for this work (8/10 today; another wonderful 7-mile walk outside this morning...) AND will support folks in need, as all proceeds from paid memberships will go to my local food pantry this year. The running donation total is now $1,588.50 for the year. Amazing!
Full disclosure, what follows is a collaboration with Aiden Cinnamon Tea, a chatbot oriented to holding conversations (not transactions) about the themes I write about here: chaos, complexity, and collapse. If you haven’t interacted with Aiden, you can do so here.
As always, thanks for reading. ~W
If you’re an educator and you’re not thinking about Jimmy Kimmel today, that may be part of the problem.
And if you are, maybe the real question isn’t, “Was what he said okay?” but:
”What does his suspension teach us—about power, fear, media, and the disappearing room for public inquiry?”
Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air for saying what many comedians have always said: something inconvenient. But this time, his remarks came in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death—a politically charged moment that has already seen multiple educators fired, suspended, or doxxed for simply expressing views.
And so here we are, again, facing a question as old as schooling itself: What is the teacher’s role in times of upheaval?
I see educators around me, colleagues, friends, and mentors, facing what feels like an impossible choice, one that our current leaders seem more than happy to support:
Option A: Stay silent. Stick to the textbook. Follow the script. Keep your job. (The “easy way.”)
Option B: Speak up. Ask the questions you’re not supposed to ask. Risk everything. (The “hard way.”)
And I get it. These aren’t abstract dilemmas. These are paychecks. Health insurance. Tenure. Safety. Reputation. The stakes are real.
But here’s the deeper danger: When the only visible options seem to be compliance or martyrdom, too many will choose silence. Not because they don’t care, but because being brave feels too exhausting, too fraught.
The Real Story
Let’s be clear, however. Beneath the headlines, the real story is about how rapidly the rules of discourse are changing—especially for those who teach.
It’s about how “neutrality” in the classroom is being weaponized as a moral stance.
It’s about the quiet, corrosive shift that happens when teachers start editing themselves before anyone tells them to.
It’s about the increasing sense that everything is politicized, and so nothing feels safe to discuss—not climate, not genocide, not protest, not race, not gender, not elections, not science.
And yet these are the very things students are already talking about in bathrooms, on Discord, on TikTok, in cars, and at the lunch table. The questions are there. The urgency is there. The curriculum and the pedagogies just haven’t caught up, and honestly, in our current systems, they can’t catch up.
So, I’m wondering if there’s a third way, as in what if we stopped chasing answers and, instead, started modeling what it means to stay with the questions?
Dive Into Inquiry
Maybe the most radical thing a teacher can do right now isn’t to declare a position—but to fiercely protect the space where complexity is still allowed to exist and to invite students into the art of staying with the questions long enough to feel what they’re really asking.
What if your job isn’t to “teach the truth” but to teach students how to dwell in uncertainty without running toward answers?
Questions like:
Why was Jimmy Kimmel suspended?
What does that say about media, power, and cultural norms?
Why are educators losing their jobs over comments on public figures?
Who decides what’s “appropriate” in times of grief and protest?
How is fear shaping what can be spoken in classrooms?
What becomes impossible to teach when satire becomes punishable?
These aren’t rhetorical. These are real questions that deserve real space and real conversation.
And yes, it’s risky. But maybe what’s riskiest now is pretending it’s not happening.
If You Can’t Teach the Truth, Teach the Tools
If you don’t feel like you’re allowed to say what’s true, then teach students to notice what can’t be said. Teach them to sense the edges of what can be spoken and what can’t. Teach them to ask: Who benefits from this silence? And: How do we stay curious when everyone else is racing to react?
And, importantly, help them situate what’s happening right now in the United States (and elsewhere) in the larger contexts of systems collapse. Not just media, but politics, economics, and, yes, education. These are not isolated malfunctions. They are symptoms of deeper disconnection between people, between generations, between humans and the rest of life on this planet.
The world right now is filled with noise and fear and breakage. There are no clear answers to “teach.” But there are oh so many questions to explore and unpack and sit with.
That’s where we can show up and stand up, by leading with deep inquiry into the complexity of this moment. When everything else is being weaponized, inquiry may be our last shared language. Let’s not let it go extinct.
Thoughts?
Will
"If You Can’t Teach the Truth, Teach the Tools." It's uncanny. Before I read your post, I commented on something Michelle Blanchet posted about the Project 250 Civics curriculum. My response was similar to your advice I quoted above. What you are describing is a real and imminent problem that will challenge each of us. However, I can't help thinking that elevating truth to the ideal goal and tools as the best alternative may ultimately be misleading. The definition of truth has morphed considerably over the past decade (and before). When we refer to truth, exactly what do we mean? Truth based on facts, on personal narratives and beliefs, collective narratives and beliefs, or moral truths? In a secular culture, what is truth?
In the current environment, truth is being defined as something new. It's a shared narrative, but not one that necessarily grows from our collective beliefs, but one that has been manufactured by our government. Most of us outside of the MAGA orbit recognize the source, but it doesn't seem to affect our actions or beliefs. We still subscribe to the "truth" of our choice but also have to accommodate another truth that has been imposed. That kind of dissonance can't sustain itself for long. Some think they can wait it out and eventually it will go away. I prefer to choose your strategy. We have to learn to question the circumstances of the new truth, not the efficacy. Thanks for bringing this topic to light.
I had a similar conversation with some of my colleagues during our weekly chat. They were talking about how other educators had decided to defy teaching the bible and how they didn’t want to go there. What is scary to me is the road to hell seems really clear right now and the cost of sitting back and staying silent seems too high.
What happens if we don’t speak out? How will we justify to our children and to ourselves the result? We are witnessing unprecedented actions within our democratic nations. Actions that in the past have caused ridicule, sanctions and even war against oligarchs who set about to suppress their populations and now it is happening to us?
For myself, I have to know I stood up for what I believe to be the right thing. I will defy oppression, I will continue to support equity, and I will continue to value and respect all of my fellow citizens.
Hollywood resisted McCarthyism and I hope they continue to find the same courage now. Paychecks are at stake but so is our security as we have known it. And, as you have readily pointed out, so is our planet and very existence. Is the cost of silence too high?