Teaching to Fidelity Undermines Democracy

Written by Cara Furman

John Dewey’s (1916) theory of democracy famously demands public spaces in which people gather to debate and deliberate. Communication he writes is essential to growth and must therefore be the bedrock of schooling:

Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a recipient of communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. (p. 5)

We grow when we encounter others. Conversely, growth is hindered when people speak only with those most like them, when their speech is sanctioned, or when they self censor in fear of retaliation (Ben-Porath, 2023). Democracy and equity demand we go beyond the “single story” to hear many voices.

Much attention has gone into promoting discourse around controversial topics in spaces of learning (https://www.justiceinschools.org). This work is important and needed. Attention too has gone into challenging book bans (https://www.aclu.org/artistic-expression-banned-books). This is needed too. Yet, an anti-democratic undercurrent, teaching to fidelity, has perniciously slipped under the radar.

I have written previously about how fidelity has harmed the teaching profession and children in classrooms (Furman, 2024; Furman, 2025). Without rehearsing that writing, let me stress that I have no problem with the word fidelity. In fact, education benefits from teachers who are faithful to ethics, care, and their students (Noddings. 1986). Fidelity in teaching though has come to mean something very particular: following a scripted curriculum without deviation (Furman, 2025; https://strikehot.morecaucusnyc.org/the_myth_of_higher_state_test_scores_and_the_cost_of_curriculum_mandates). Teachers are regulated down to minute gestures and punished when they do not follow scripts.

Here I emphasize the harms of fidelity to democracy. Dewey (1922) describes habits as actions that go unreflected upon. Conduct consists of these habits. The more one acts in a particular way, the deeper they are conducted into that pattern of action. Classrooms dictated by fidelity will not have much discussion. A teacher can’t stay on a script and follow where a conversation leads. Fidelity daily builds the habit of soliloquy and silence. Fidelity to a curriculum mandates that everyone read particular books set by the guide. In this way, fidelity quietly does the work of book banning. Fidelity normalizes one curricular story. Pressure to comply with curriculum, leads to more rigid expectations on children. Some children are silenced and others act out. In the seemingly innocuous guise of fidelity as “best practice” teachers are daily practicing the silencing of voice, personal accountability, and diversity of perspective.

Challenging a habit demands having the movement interrupted by an obstacle or, as the opening quote suggests, another person (Dewey, 1916). When someone reflects upon the obstruction and considers it, they have an experience and this, in turn, can lead to growth and change. Without interruption, habits persist and deepen. In fact, the more one trods in a particular groove, the less one might imagine other paths (Ahmed, 2017).

Conducting a deep dive on the term fidelity, I find the word appeared on the educational scene out of nowhere (Furman, 2025). A literature review yields surprisingly few discussions of why teach to fidelity nor empirical evidence that fidelity supports learning. Yet, fidelity is often presented as an uncontested good: acting with fidelity will yield particular outcomes. In other words, fidelity seemed to smoothly slip into educational discourse and ways of practicing without much evidence, attention, reflection, and challenge.

Fidelity has unquestionably changed the tune of schools. Conducting interviews with practicing teachers, the confines of fidelity were addressed in nearly every conversation (Furman, 2024; Furman, 2025). I also found teachers undermining fidelity at every turn so they could look out for their students. In movies, a protagonist shows superhuman strength to lift a car long enough so that others can slide through. Listening to experienced teachers talk about their practice, I hear such strength as they push back the tides of fidelity that crushes speech, innovation, and responsiveness. They do this amazingly well but shielding their students takes up time and energy that could be spent on more meaningful components of their instruction. This Herculean effort takes a tremendous toll on the teachers.

Hannah Arendt (2006) calls for outright resistance – citing when large groups of people directly challenged the Nazis, the Nazis sometimes stopped and changed. To shift away from the paradigm of fidelity demands first noticing and naming the pernicious and chilling effect of fidelity on curriculum, learning, and democratic habits. As a new chancellor steps into place in New York City where I teach, the clamor around curricular mandates has already started up. To this clamor I offer firmly that curriculum is a useful tool and any curriculum ought to be interrogated along many fronts. That said, no curriculum is ever enough. In a democracy we need multiple voices. Classrooms can and should be a place in which we practice this many voiced song (https://www.beacon.org/In-Schools-We-Trust-P294.aspx). To sing democratically, demands the input of children, their teacher, other teachers, families, and external supports like curriculum.

School is where a nation builds the habits of the people. Let’s make sure it’s democracy that we practice each and every day.