JOANNE JACOBS: Teaching the election: It’s not a crusade.

Social studies teachers are eager to discuss the election — students might actually care! — but also very nervous about out-of-control classroom debates and angry parents, writes Elizabeth Heubeck in Education Week.

Jennifer Morgan teaches social studies at a Wisconsin middle school in a “really, really bright red” district, she says. Her views are different. “I plan to stick to the facts,” she said.

However, “some of the teachers I’ve talked to have been told by their administrators not to teach it,” said Morgan, president of the National Council for the Social Studies. “And others are just really nervous about teaching it, because they’re fearful of what will come out of students’ mouths.”

I was taking AP U.S. history in 1968, the year Vice President Hubert Humphrey faced former Vice President Richard Nixon. I had no idea which candidate my teacher favored.

I was in high school a bit later, in the mid-’80s. We talked politics some in history and econ but it wasn’t seen as a big deal — probably every subject from geometry to gym hadn’t yet been politicized.