School influencing political opinions on kids

[wonderingstar01]

At a recent options meeting at DDs school, two of the teachers presenting their subjects to a room full of parents and kids decided to voice their opinions about Michael Gove's changes to the Maths and English GCSE exam curriculum. One of the teachers really got on her soap box and spoke for a good 10 minutes about why the governments decisions were wrong. At the time I thought it was very inappropriate, regardless of the rights and wrongs of her argument.

DD comes home from school today to say they had a really good history lesson where their teacher told them that if the conservatives return to power again this election, they plan to radically change the curriculum which would affect DDs year from entering university. Including girls begin disallowed certain subjects, RE being abolished and replaced by daily church services, domestic science, needlepoint and looking after babies will be subjects reintroduced only for girls, non-christian pupils would read from a separate text in class and at the end of year 11 all the children would have their noses measured and if more than 5 centimetres they would be sent to a concentration camp in Germany.

Now I'm trying to understand how this conversation could have taken place in a positive way and for the benefit of learning, but I can't.

Andrew.

Most of the times I've seen this lesson used it has been with a Labour example, rather than a Conservative one. It's the nature of the lesson. Possibly would have been less contentious on this thread if the teacher had done the same but I'm not sure they could really have predicted this outcome to their lesson.

Interesting that nobody seems to object to teachers being openly Christian. Indeed they are actually required to be! Or at least, pretend to be

I've heard it all now.

I'm a teacher, not a mouthpiece for the government. I have had to explain to my Y9s and their parents that their maths GCSE is changing, being made harder. That way it is being graded is changing from letters to numbers, that their other GCSEs are remaining graded as letters (except English), so their results will look a mess and be poorly understood by colleges and future employers. That the changes are entirely untested, and that I don't have a clue what their exam will look like and neither do the exam boards, even though we have already started teaching the course, so we are preparing them for something completely in the dark.

They don't need me to tell them it's a bunch of poorly thought-out bullshit that will be detrimental to their education, they tell me that. And I refuse to defend the government, because they are correct.

I have found that most parents of the current Year 9 pupils are informed enough of the changes to their children's exams that they have made their own mind up about how crap it is - without any political influence from me. Like noble I have had to explain the changes but most knew and were worried anyway.

Interesting that nobody seems to object to teachers being openly Christian. Indeed they are actually required to be! Or at least, pretend to be

I've heard it all now."

What do you mean?

I think the fact it suggests that all teachers at Christian or pretend to be

No one has ever told me that I'm required to pretend to be Christian

So what do you do about the assemblies of a broadly Cristian nature?

Nothing. I'm not a tutor so don't have to go to assemblies. When I was a tutor and went to assemblies the only overtly Christian one I remember was the Gideon society one. We never have to pray or anything so I don't have to pretend. Christian nature means I've been to plenty of assemblies about charity and forgiveness and being nice to each other.

I'm secondary though. I think primary schools have more God in them.

Tristram Hunt doesn't seem to like nuns as teachers, judging from his recent appearance on Newsnight!