Teaching and "propaganda"

[deeperdiving]

DC13 loves history and does well in it. DC has a new teacher and has said that the new teacher is teaching things in a very one sided way. I studied history at university and have instilled into DC the importance of being impartial and distinguishing sources and distinguishing fact vs opinion.

DC has said that they have a weekly current affairs lesson. Latest one was about Harris vs Trump. DC said that the teacher gave the Harris campaign narratives as fact, and when talking about various policies, misquoted things and when talking about US relationships with other countries gave no historical context. DC is quite keen on 20th c history, and is interested in context and why things happened as they did.

So, to illustrate, there are threads on here which have Harris or Trump supporters and for example one person will say "X said this" and the other side will say "no, they said this" and show a clip showing that what was actually said was completely different from what the other side was maintaining. The teacher here is giving the Harris campaign narrative, and DC is slightly confused about it.

Has anyone else experienced this with schools? I am not sure whether the teacher is following syllabus requirements in terms of how to present things. It doesn't seem to be being taught as it was when I was at school!

"That Trump is a liar"

Fair amount of truth in this - Trump has more documented lies than any other president on record.

"In his first 100 days, President Trump had 29 statements assessed by PolitiFact (17 false) compared to 12 statements from President Obama (1 false) and 4 statements from President Biden (2 false). As a raw count, Trump told more falsehoods than Biden and Obama combined." (Forbes)

Washington Post documented an average of 21 false or misleading claims a day throughout Trump's entire first 4 years stint in the Whitehouse.

"a racist"

Trump has a looong history of racism: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/

"has affairs with porn stars"
His 'affair' (lol) with Stormy Daniels isn't disputed by anyone.

"and will force women to have abortions even if medical advice would be against it or if medical opinion would support choice"

I think your son is a bit confused. Trump's actions in office have resulted in vastly reduced access to safe, legal abortion for women living in half of the USA.

Yes, this confused me. Trump's more likely to cancel abortion than force them upon women. Given his VP wants to stop women travelling between states for abortion, which in practice means what - proving you're not pregnant across state lines?

Trump has had affairs with porn stars

Ok, I didn't say anything about indoctrination and the thread actually has a number of posters claiming children are 'identifying as' xyz and talking about furries (yes I'm aware of the 'adult' nature of that). It seems you cherry-picked your way through it but no worries, I'm certainly not claiming teachers are indoctrinating children with this or providing litter trays! I just saw the thread and thought it might be more of a thing than I'd realised.

Thank you! I have to admit that I thought what he said about tyranny of the majority was awesome. It isn't something I have said (for all my "instilling"!) he read it in one of his DK books.

Not the point of the thread, but I am really interested in this as well. Are you saying that your class of this age can't use capital letters properly? Has there been a decline in relation to education levels and if so why do think that is?

Re this particular teacher, though, he is sort of down with the kids. He started off the year by getting the kids to all look at twitter (something to do with teaching about fake news but it meant they were looking at a whole lot of other stuff while "researching") and there is an element of influence.

The point is it’s not happening. It’s a hoax that crops up every few months to get gullible people and conspiracy theorists in a froth. The hilarious part (to me) is criticising the teacher for spreading propaganda when you’ve fallen for such obvious propaganda yourself.

You're right that it’s not actually funny, of course, that so many people do fall for these stupid and damaging lies. More ironic, concerning and hypocritical than funny.

To be fair I was very tired last night and just trying to communicate it all as briefly as possible but still giving an accurate picture. In real life I would be more likely to say "I have banged on incessantly about" rather than "I have instilled" if that makes it more readable. Though you might not like the word "incessantly" either. How would you have put it? (Not the point of the thread, just wondering!)

In fairness, Trump also can't capitalise properly or consistently and he's elderly and had a very expensive education. He may well have some special needs but we don't know as he's always refused to release his academic records. 😊

Children have always engaged in imaginative play. It’s only in today’s world of semi-hysterical transphobia that people take seven year olds claiming to be cats as a serious safeguarding issue instead of recognising it for what it is and saying ‘that’s nice dear now please finish your reading’.

👍
Thanks for setting me straight!

The only political bias i experienced in school was very right wing

Anyone with strong political leanings will tend to let them show

@deeperdiving
"Re this particular teacher, though, he is sort of down with the kids. He started off the year by getting the kids to all look at twitter"

Well done to that teacher.

Why don't you sit down with your son and research the claims the teacher has made about Trump to really embed the lesson.

You could talk to your son about how to identify reliable sources of information - talk about media bias across the political spectrum. Maybe have a look at fact checkers in relation to the claims the teacher has made?

But, @izimbra , as you well know, what you are saying here is what is being said on a lot of threads by the people who supported Harris, and people with other opinions about what is fact and not fact have been pushing back on those threads, with explanations about inaccurate or biased reporting or incorrect interpretation, or whatever. This thread is not about that, it is about how to teach children. You might say all those things are accurate but on the other side someone might say that the parody about the Harris campaign ad which said she was an incompetent puppet of the deep state was accurate. Neither way of presenting things, on its own, is the way you should be teaching children about current affairs.

I still have my text book on current affairs from the 1980s and in there is not only accurate and balanced reporting but also historical context. All of this was missing. It is absolutely fundamental that we teach children about impartiality for historians, balance, context etc.

Replied to this already - will repeat but firstly, if you think that there is bias in the media, why are you quoting media to support your ideology? Other than this I am not engaging with you. I have seen your posts on other threads. This is about how things are being taught. If you know anything about studying history or teaching, then comment. If this is just a chance for you to spread your ideology please go elsewhere.

Repeating what I said to you upthread:

"As you well know, what you are saying here is what is being said on a lot of threads by the people who supported Harris, and people with other opinions about what is fact and not fact have been pushing back on those threads, with explanations about inaccurate or biased reporting or incorrect interpretation, or whatever. This thread is not about that, it is about how to teach children. You might say all those things are accurate but on the other side someone might say that the parody about the Harris campaign ad which said she was an incompetent puppet of the deep state was accurate. Neither way of presenting things, on its own, is the way you should be teaching children about current affairs.
I still have my text book on current affairs from the 1980s and in there is not only accurate and balanced reporting but also historical context. All of this was missing. It is absolutely fundamental that we teach children about impartiality for historians, balance, context etc."

"that the parody about the Harris campaign ad which said she was an incompetent puppet of the deep state was accurate."

I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to say this if they had any checkable, independent evidence that this was the case.

Of course they haven't.

But there is independent evidence that Trump slept with a porn star, that he's been racist and that his lies are all documented and verified as falsehoods by independent fact-checkers.

Not all 'claims' are equal. Except in Trump's 'post truth' world, which you seem to inhabit.

Think I just dislocated my eyelids with the force of my eye roll. Away with your culture war nonsense.

Unanswered questions can sometimes be their own answer 😎

Your views are very one-sided, like the teacher's. Do you think teachers have been asked to present opinions in the way the teacher presented them?

Not the point of the thread, but I thought that the affair with a porn star you are referring to is "alleged"? The relevant aspect relating to that was the indictment for falsifying docs. It wasn't a trial about whether the affair happened. But as I say, not the point of the thread, I don't really want to debate it here.

And also the Politifact you referred to - accordinging to the American Press Institute, it "cannot determine whether there are partisan biases in Politifact's judgments about truthfulness nor selection of which statements to examine."

Isn't this the sort of thing the teacher should be exploring?

And also the Politifact you referred to - accordinging to the American Press Institute, it "cannot determine whether there are partisan biases in Politifact's judgments about truthfulness nor selection of which statements to examine."

Isn't this the sort of thing the teacher should be exploring?

"Isn't this the sort of thing the teacher should be exploring?"

Yes - absolutely.

I think they should examine every claim made by both candidates.

For example the claim that schools are performing gender affirming surgery on children without their parent's knowledge that Trump made in a recent interview with Moms For Liberty.

Also Trumps claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets.

All the claims.

Investigate all the connections between Trump and the genesis of Project 2025, which Trump has said he 'knows nothing about'.

All of it.

This is so true- if I was going to indoctrinate my students, I'd be pushing the 'revise for exams' agenda 😂

I thought this what was happening in a uni tutorial once, but when I suggested the issue being presented should be at least up for discussion (yes, it was about gender identity legislation) the whole class including him behaved as though I'd drawn a Hitler tache on myself with my own excrement.

If your child is studying GCSE History why are they discussing 'current affairs'? Don't they have the curriculum to get through. I'm impressed that your GCSE teenager talks to you about this.