The Politics of Reaching the Public

As Americans head to the polls next month to vote in local and national elections, those working in education inevitably wonder what impact the political landscape will have on their work moving forward. Politics have always impacted education, but not many educators are taught how they can educate not only their students, but also the broader public about how they work and why.

At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Senior Lecturer Joe Blatt’s fall 2024 class, Advancing the Public Understanding of Education: Election Edition, aims to do exactly that. A revival of a course he first taught more than a decade ago, the “election edition” of the class aims to give students at the Ed School a better understanding of how media impacts public opinion, and how important creating educational opportunities in different kinds of media can be in promoting meaningful change.

“My colleagues here at Appian Way and other education researchers have a whole lot of terrific, fresh ideas that would really make the learning experience more successful for young people and contribute more to the country’s development, growth, and peace. By and large I think these insights have a very hard time getting adopted in local communities,” says Blatt. “So my argument is that it’s the responsibility of educators, including our students, to recognize that not only do you do good research and develop new approaches, but you also have to market them. And so this course is largely about the skills of promoting those innovations to the public.”

The course moves forward in three different phases, Blatt explains. In the first, students examine the question of where authority rests in education, how it’s portrayed in media such as television and movies, and how education stories are told by reporters. A second phase examines how other fields like science and public health have attempted to impact public perception through the media, to varying degrees of success and failure. The third phase has students making their own media, first through a faculty interview they make into a form of their choosing and, finally, the creation of a political party’s platform plank on educational policy

“You can’t take away the politics from education,” says Ari Rosenthal, Ed.M.‘24, a teaching fellow for the class, S-150. “You are working with people’s children on how they learn, and how they learn influences how they grow up. And so even if you were just going into a classroom, knowing how this is influencing the policy that allows you to teach, or you know what’s going on in your students’ home, is super important.”

For Blatt, the class is a way to show educators they have agency in how their work and education insights reach the greater public. Understanding the media and attention landscape outside of the academic world, he says, is essential to bringing good policy and practice into reality.

“When I first came here, I was so thrilled by all the fascinating teaching and discussion happening at HGSE. I used to focus on what happens on Appian Way and how it’s a great place for students to spend a year,” says Blatt. “I’ve gradually come to realize that’s all true, but ultimately what matters most is impact. And in order to have impact, we have to give students the practice of turning their ideas into something that actually reaches beyond Appian Way.”

A recent class began with a Zoom interview of Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post education reporter Hannah Natanson, who detailed her reporting process and offered tips to students on interviewing sources and how stories are developed. Students then watched two different debates about diversity initiatives in schools that aired on two different TV networks, and worked in groups to identify the differences in positioning before turning to crafting their own headlines.

“It’s nice to talk with someone from the Washington Post and to see what someone who is a working journalist does and how they think about the profession,” says Terrence Gilchrist, a master's student in the Learning, Design, Innovation, and Technology Program. “It can be really hard as a form of art.”

Students taking the class all come from a variety of educational backgrounds, HGSE degree programs, and career trajectories. For some, it’s their first real lessons in media literacy and thinking about how to shape public opinion about their work. Others, like Evetty Satterfield, a second-year doctoral student in the Ed.L.D. Program, quickly recognized the value of knowing your audience.

“The biggest takeaway is the power that you have to shape the narrative, especially when you’re in a leadership position or when people look to you as a person with authority,” says Satterfield, who previously served on a school board in Knoxville, Tennessee. “I know I will continue to go into higher education leadership positions, so what narrative will I present so that I can shape the landscape of education?”

Blatt says a goal of the course is to help students take these projects and apply them to their own careers outside of the classroom. Learning how to better communicate is valuable regardless of profession, but it’s not always a focus for educators.

“This course has expanded my vision of the role of educators and education,” says Debora Menieu Nunez, a master's student in the Education Policy and Analysis Program. “It’s about the holistic person that’s inside the classroom and outside the classroom and all the different factors and people that are involved in the educational space. So it goes both with the educator as somebody who is teaching, but also the educator as a person and what some of the perceptions are about the human side of the educator.”

Given the ever-changing conditions of the political landscape, Blatt directed students to focus on the digital version of the class syllabus, where they can see new additions as the semester continues and the political landscape shifts in an election year. Regardless of election results, Blatt says, educators must be ready to put their best foot forward no matter who is in office.

“The best we can do is learn how to put our recommendations, our vision, out there in clear, accurate, authentic, and persuasive ways,” says Blatt. “That’s really what I’m trying to help students learn how to do.”