We Kansas teachers must replace the culture of ‘no’ in this year’s classrooms

The bronze statue of the University of Kansas' first law dean, James Woods Green, with a student, stands on Jayhawk Boulevard on the Lawrence campus. (Photo by Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)

The start of a new school year sends teachers like me back to the basics of our classes: the syllabus, the reading list and the yearlong learning goals. 

As a teacher for the past two-plus decades, I feel a tension each time that I create these big plans for the year. It’s a tug of war between yes and no — between empowering students with big positive goals and limiting them with restrictive rules. 

Our classroom will be a place to experiment with new thinking versus don’t run in the hallways.

We will challenge your abilities with complex reading versus all tardies will result in a 90-minute detention.

This year I feel the side of restriction pulling at me, because schools in Kansas and America during the past few years have often felt dominated by a culture of “no.” 

Consider the following. 

This year Kansas schools scrambled to enact campus-wide cellphone bans, prohibiting teens from accessing their prized apps and messages during the school day. Kansas schools also have been restricted from using social media to communicate with their students.

Through Kansas House Bill 2105, any remnant of affirmative action has vanished. Race can’t be a factor in hiring, financial aid or admission. As a former member of a scholarship committee at the University of Kansas, I can testify to the radical makeover this restriction caused.

Earlier this year, House Bill 2428 sought to further steer the state universities’ higher education curriculum away from diversity, equity and inclusion. The bill signaled to instructors and professors the kinds of subjects that were politically radioactive.

“Don’t teach these topics,” the bill whispered, “unless you want controversy.” 

Want to organize a walkout protest at your Kansas high school? You might find yourself reported by a fellow classmate and then punished. Students restricting students.

Then there’s artificial intelligence. Kansas classrooms — from kindergarten through graduate school — are building labyrinthic walls to separate students from chatbots. Particularly when giving tests and quizzes, teachers list, in near legal language, what students can and can’t do.

Consider the instructions I give on my study guide for my introduction to journalism course at KU: 

“Prohibited resources include: 

• Leaving the browser window during the exam to consult artificial intelligence.
• Leaving the browser window during the exam to use the internet.
• Leaving the browser window during the exam to message anyone.
• Accessing other files or software on your computer during the exam.

Our JMC 101 team will monitor to ensure students are complying with these rules. Failure to do so will be treated as cheating, resulting in zero credit.”

How incredibly inspiring for young learners!

The national atmosphere around education has been similarly about restriction, rather than empowerment.

The Trump administration has said “no” in wide-ranging ways. Gutting the federal Department of Education is the most consequential example. However, that move was followed by Washington handing over more authority to state boards of education, allowing them to create their own politicized restrictions. 

Many states have happily taken the reins. They have quashed efforts at teaching any lessons even approaching critical race theory. Florida enacted the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Texas A&M ruptured after a student flagged an instructor’s lesson about a purple gender unicorn. Librarians have reported surging efforts to ban books, particularly those about race, gender and sex, in public schools.

Another group being told “no”? Transgender students have been prevented from transitioning at school and competing in school sports.

Campus protests over the Israel-Palestine war shoved international politics onto Kansas campuses, tempting administrators and law enforcement to essentially censor student protest and expression. Similarly, in 2025, the federal government started immigration enforcement of international university students after they criticized Israel.

Maybe the inciting moment of this round of educational negativity was the pandemic lockdown. Kansas parents confronted school boards with “no masks” demands. Many teachers held the line: “No in-person classes.” Administrators generally flailed and failed to make much seem very positive in the hallways and Zoom classrooms — at least when you looked at schools from the outside.

Or maybe the contemporary start was President Donald Trump’s first election. In 2016, the election brought controversy into Kansas schools as teachers in Shawnee Mission wore safety pins to reassure students that school was a safe place. The district’s reaction? You guessed it: No thanks.

Even during the ancient history of George W. Bush’s administration, we had to include “no” in the sprawling “No Child Left Behind” initiative. 

Education recently in America has been a buffet of no, no, no and no. For dessert? “Don’t do this” topped with “don’t do that.” 

Regardless of how you feel about these Kansas and national efforts — some of them, like the cellphone restrictions, are certainly intuitive — the culture of American education lacks a positive vision. Sure, we need rules to keep schools safe and orderly, but what we’re getting is a never-ending, regressive onslaught of prohibitions.

Educators and students know what we aren’t allowed to do. But what are we striving for in 2026 for our K-12 students?

As someone who cares deeply about education, I don’t know. I haven’t heard our collective educational ambitions.

(The Kansas State Board of Education’s website doesn’t do much to pinpoint a specific vision either,  blandly saying: “Kansas leads the world in the success of each student.”)

Each summer, I meet virtually with young soon-to-be teachers who want a few nuggets of wisdom before becoming full-time Kansas teachers. It’s tempting to tell them all of my pitfalls over the years. The time that I mistakenly accused a student of plagiarism. The time that I created a bonding activity that wrapped up with students tearfully screaming at each other. 

It’s tempting to tell them, “Don’t do that.” 

What I say instead is more positive — a simple message that I hope will resonate through their school year. It’s a message that I have trouble delivering without crying myself. After dedicating my professional life to the classroom, I care so much that these new teachers see the uplifting possibilities. 

The actual message? It doesn’t matter for the point I am making here. 

What matters is that these new teachers know that it’s heartfelt. Aspirational. Inspirational. 

And positive. 

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.