Teaching and "propaganda"

Exactly...

The "real world" also exists outside of Britain and beyond British politics.

You are over estimating the power of teachers. They don't do all the things we tell them to.
in one class taught by me one student went on to work in Liz Truss' team, one became a Lib Dem councillor and one works for the Labour Party. Taught them all the same stuff.

I think you are misusing the word ‘indoctrination’ which means teaching a set of beliefs without evidence.

Fine, stay in your little bubble then!

...or 'the real world', as some of us with a sense of perspective, proportion and nuance like to call it!

I think we’ve established that OP is sick and tired of young kids being indoctrinated with all that talk of civil rights and equality before the law. And she will not have it, I tell you! She will not have it!!

Deeper dive more like shallow end

Christ, woman, were you sentient during 2016-2020 (or indeed during Trump''s first election campaign)? Is his misogyny and his general sleaze level in any doubt? He is on the effing record for saying (proudly) he could get any woman by just grabbing her "by the pussy." See https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html

@deeperdiving That discrimination and prejudice on any level is not OK. And yes, that it is absolutely reasonable and right that single-sex marriage is now legal.
Children of this age have a fantastic sense of justice vs injustice which may surprise you. Some adults could learn a lot from it.

I taught a brilliant PSHE lesson to my Y6s today explaining what is meant by prejudice and discrimination.
They were so shocked to learn that when I was their age gay marriage wasn't allowed. They couldn't get their heads around it.
Some of the children spoke so eloquently about the topic; I was incredibly proud of them ❤️

Fine, stay in your little bubble then! There are many British politicians who have a lot of blood on their hands. If you think otherwise, you clearly don't want to listen

Only people who know nothing about those three mass-murderers.

It's ridiculous to lump her in (or any British politician) with these people. I cannot take anyone seriously who would think like that.

Thatcher was Hitler, stalin and pol pot to many people!

Ooh - another thing which shocked and affected me as a young teenager.

When I was about 14 our English teacher was talking about the importance of reading a 'good' newspaper.( I became an English teacher, so fair play to her, obvs.) She asked us to put up our hands and say which paper our parents got - and this was in the days when people really did have newspapers delivered.

My family read The Telegraph (horrors!) and she commented to the whole class, "Well, I suppose it's reasonably well-written, but I disagree with EVERY word that paper says!".

No problem with her feeling that way personally - but she should never have said that to me in class. At that age I had no inkling about political bias in newspapers, and frankly only read the arts pages anyway. I was baffled by her comment and very unsettled. The rest of the class's parents, I remember (this is etched on my memory) read a mixture of tabloids and perhaps one or two, The Guardian, but didn't get any adverse comments.

Teachers really do need to keep their personal political views to themselves. The ones who don't are devious and unscrupulous - they know how suggestible and prone to influence young people are and they are cynically exploiting this.

Exactly!

That kind of moronic (and spiteful) attitude.

We live in Northern Sweden, my daughter is 17 and in gymnasiet (high school). She told us that before the election her American English teacher spent 90 minutes 'going on and on and on about how bad Trump is and how he shouldn't win'. I was quite surprised, I thought it inappropriate.

So to be clear, you think that teachers should be hosting discussions about World War II, the American Civil Rights movement, etc. without making it clear what side they are on? Being neutral across the board always sounds great, until you consider the things you would actually have to be neutral about.

Depends on the lesson...children need to be taught about bias before understanding balance. They need to know the difference between fact and opinion. These are all separate lessons taught and maybe your child is missing the learning objective and not sure that they are learning what bias is or opinion etc and so that is the focus of the lesson - teaching them what it actually is by modelling it.

I think it would be fine for the teacher to give opinions, as long as they weren't age inappropriate or extreme, and as long as the teacher explained that it was opinion not fact

Completely agree with you, @deeperdiving, and even when dealing in actual facts I'd rather they leave their personal views about them out of it

Unfortunately, for the weak minded, the appeal of flapping their gums in front of impressionable youngsters is just too much, but what a shame they didn't use this as an opportunity to (for example) compare the bias in reporting instead.
Apart from sparking a useful discussion that might have given them some real lessons to take forward, but again I can see the appeal of that would have been less

“Ding Dong, the witch is dead’’

My teachers were very left wing, anti thatcher etc. tbh I think it’s inappropriate for children to know about their teachers politics.

If you are unable to host a discussion without making it clear what “side” you are on you shouldn’t do it.

Our history teacher at school once said that if he was ever diagnosed with a terminal disease he'd walk into the Tory party conference with a bomb attached to him. No I am not making that up.