Teachers’ words, not clothes, matter most

The best way to rate teachers, we’ve always figured, is to watch them teach.

What teachers wear while they’re going about their work is not so much a secondary matter as it is irrelevant.

To mention another profession, we don’t much care whether bridge engineers don white hardhats or yellow ones.

We just want them to build bridges that don’t crumble into the river.

Curiously, Oregon has been concerned enough about public school teachers’ attire that the matter has been enshrined in state law for almost 90 years.

In 1923 the Legislature passed a law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious clothing.

Which is a long tenure for a law promoted by the Ku Klux Klan.

(Oregon is also, by the way, one of just three states with such a law on the books. The others are Nebraska and Pennsylvania.)

Although legislators’ intent then was to prevent nuns from teaching in public schools — the Klan is notoriously anti-Catholic — the law has since prevented Muslim women, to name one category, from pursuing teaching jobs because their faith compels them to wear head scarves.

Last week the House of Representatives voted 51-8 to repeal the 1923 law.

We hope the Senate soon follows suit, and that Gov. Ted Kulongoski signs House Bill 3686 into law.

Although the bill’s critics, among them the ACLU, contend that repealing the 1923 law could expose students to religious indoctrination, that concern seems to us exaggerated.

We’re certainly not frightened by the idea of middle school and high school students discovering that their math teacher goes to a different church than their science teacher.

So long as both teachers focus on their job, we doubt their students will treat them differently based on their clothing.

In a similar vein — and one which is not the subject of any state law — we’re not worried that students will assume teachers who wear T-shirts and jeans are slackers who deserve less respect than teachers who prefer three-piece suits or dresses.

Individual school districts already devise dress codes that ensure students’ and teachers’ clothing is appropriate and respectful, and does not interfere with learning.

To repeat our initial point: What matters is how teachers teach, not what they wear.

After all, a teacher who intends to proselytize in the classroom would not likely be deterred by a law that bans certain types of garments.

In any case, other laws, both state and federal, prohibit public school teachers from promoting, through their teaching, any religion.

Those laws make sense. They deal with teachers’ actual statements, which are far more likely to influence young minds than are fashion statements.