Teachers’ freedom of expression in the classroom: Four guiding principles and their legal foundations
What are the reasonable limits of teaching about controversial issues? To answer this question, this article aims to establish a set of law-based principles that may serve as a guide for teaching practice. Drawing on an analysis of relevant Canadian and U.S. jurisprudence and secondary literature, we identified considerations that judges consistently return to when reflecting on the question of the reasonable and responsible exercise of teacher free speech in the classroom. Four principles followed from our analysis: curricular alignment, impartiality, avoidance of foreseeable inflammatory content and age appropriateness.