Recently, there have been some high-profile cases of teachers in schools and universities being asked to stop teaching certain concepts. Race and gender are immediate examples. Outside of identity politics, examples of changes include not teaching the concept of evolution, using effort grades instead of focusing on achievement, and moving from “third world” to “developing countries” to “the Global South.” In some cases, proposed changes might strike a teacher as justified, or at least not unjustified—in my case, I would be quite happy to experiment with the concept of effort instead of achievement. In other cases, the external pressure might come across as nonideal. It might feel like bowing to pressure would undermine a student’s education in one way or another.
Here is one example that was widely reported in philosophy circles: Earlier this year, Professor Martin Peterson, based at Texas A&M University “was asked by university leadership to … either remove ‘modules on race and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,’ or be reassigned to teach a different philosophy course.” Under this sort of pressure, teachers have three broad options: (1) they can stop teaching the concept as instructed; (2) they can teach the concept and face disciplinary procedures; or (3) they can alter the concept to evade the pressure but maintain its educational value. Peterson changed the course content as instructed and, in protest, replaced it with content about academic freedom.
In this post, I am interested in the third option and the associated question of how far we can change the concepts we teach to evade external pressure. Changing a concept might seem like an odd response to pressure not to teach it, but it is not unheard of. Professor Winston Thompson proposes reworking the concept of race to allow it to continue to be taught in U.S. schools. In the U.K., pressure to stop teaching children about gender could be met by cobbling together a way of talking about biological sex and societal roles that captures the ideas associated with gender without mentioning the concept itself. The benefits are that this may allow teachers to continue to introduce students to ideas that matter whilst avoiding the scrutiny placed on contested concepts. While this approach is well-motivated, it raises questions about why we teach concepts in the first place and the integrity of the concepts we teach.
A concept is more than just the word that represents it; a concept is also the ideas, actions, and interactions attached to the language we use. When people say that German speakers have the concept of Schadenfreude and English speakers do not, they are not just saying that Germans have an additional word but rather that German speakers have a way of thinking about the world that English speakers lack. Likewise, you and I might have different concepts of gender, even if we use the same word—it is not uncommon to discover during a disagreement that two people just mean different things, even though they are using the same words. The concepts we have determine how we think about, inquire into, and discuss the world.
It is unsurprising then, that concepts are central to school curricula and course syllabi. These are often written as a list of concepts, where words like evolution, photosynthesis, alliteration, empathy, the past or causation are central to teaching students about the world around them. Educators care about the concepts students hold because concepts are tools for inquiry, thought, and dialogue. Our conceptual toolkits also shape what we pay attention to. A concept of parenthood defined by biological relations directs attention towards being someone’s offspring. A concept of parenthood defined by caregiving directs attention towards family structure and legal status. What a concept directs attention toward or away from can really matter. In the case of parenthood, the second concept allows for adoptive parents, egg and sperm donation, and merged families. In the case of gender or race, different concepts can alter dynamics of oppression, either relieving or compounding it. Teaching good concepts is important, and our best concepts are the ones that best (1) facilitate thought and dialogue; and (2) appropriately direct attention to help us to live our lives individually, and together, as well as possible.
Given this, external pressure to move away from the concepts endorsed by teachers, in their capacity as professionals, is problematic. Additionally, there are constraints on how far teachers can alter the concepts they teach to students to avoid external pressure. We need to rigorously assess any proposed change in concept to see whether it hinders thought and dialogue, or misdirects attention from what really matters.
Winston Thompson’s work on race provides a good model for this sort of rigorous testing. He starts by asking “what conceptualization would best serve our educational purposes within current constraints?” In response, he “defines race as a dynamic process that distributes morally significant vulnerabilities across populations in fluid, context-dependent ways.” Attention is directed away from the question, “What does it mean to be Black?,” and toward the question, “How do institutional processes position and operate relative to people categorized as Black?” This allows students to engage with thinking and dialogue about race, oppression, and injustice in their society without “feeling personally indicted or limited.” It also encourages and develops students’ abilities to inquire further into race, “as agents capable of understanding and influencing how these social processes operate.” Thompson’s conceptual reworking is careful to continue to teach students in a way that facilitates thought and dialogue, and it continues to appropriately direct attention.
In contrast, trying to teach gender by cobbling together concepts of biological sex and social roles introduces confusing mental arithmetic that has already been resolved through the use of the concept of gender as introduced by systematic inquiry within feminist thought. A concept of gender allows students to see themselves as gendered by others rather than purely by their biology. This in turn allows them to question gender norms and to identify oppressive attitudes and practices. On the other hand, teaching students that social views about biological sex lead to oppression results in a greater number of required argumentative steps for students to reach similar conclusions. It also risks adding more potential wrong turns to students’ thinking; for example, it can prompt the idea that women have been historically oppressed because of their biology, which in turn prompts the idea that women are biologically weaker. Poorly conceived conceptual reworking undermines students’ abilities to think and discuss and pay attention to what matters.
I started with the case of teachers being asked not to teach certain concepts. In response, I have offered an analysis that, first, illuminates why this in itself is problematic, and, second, provides a very basic guide to responding. It is problematic because concepts are tools of thought and dialogue, and they direct our attention towards the parts of the world that matter. To interfere with our concepts is to interfere with people’s tools of thought and dialogue. Seen in this way, poorly thought-through or bad-faith external interference is transparently wrong. Second, in response to restrictions on teaching concepts, it is sometimes permissible to rework a concept; however, this needs to be done carefully given the central role that concepts play in our thinking. In some cases, staying silent might be the best response, especially if reworking a concept risks distorting thinking.
In conclusion, the concepts we teach really matter, and being prevented from teaching the ones that best facilitate thought and dialogue about the parts of the world that matter is a problem with no simple solutions.
Jane Gatley
Jane Gatley is a lecturer in education at Swansea University. Her research focuses on philosophy of education, in particular surrounding the school curriculum, educational concepts, curricular concepts, and conceptual engineering. Recent work includes Why Teach Philosophy in Schools (2023), Conceptual Engineering in Education, coedited with Christian Norefalk (2024), and “Education without Intelligence” (2025).
