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!

It was me who brought up History, sorry. The original post was about a 13-year-old in a Current Affairs class. To be honest, I can well believe it happened. We had a lot of teachers at my school with strong opinions... but parents would never have dreamed of challenging them. I remember we had an English teacher fresh out of university who was an ultra-feminist. There was a day when a bloke offered her help with her car and she went mad at him. 😂

Current affairs usually falls within PSHE not history and in many schools is taught either by the tutor (so every teacher teaches it to their form group) or by whoever didn't manage to escape it.

Either way it isn't history.

PSHE does have a syllabus but it isn't the history syllabus. It's usually in terms of developing political awareness and understanding of the politics of their country.

For a couple of years I made the resources for tutor time at my school and there were a couple of occasions where we covered something like this - eg when the war with Ukraine broke out. Many of the kids were worried about it starting world war three so the aim of the resources was to reassure them.

Obviously with 200 teachers some of them stay closer to the brief than others....

Tutor time or PSHE are less like normal lessons. It's often an opportunity for the students to ask questions that wouldn't be appropriate in other classes, and there are times in these lessons where the teacher sharing their view is appropriate.

@izimbra

I think you are getting too hung up on your point that the claims about Trump are true.

It's obviously possible to teach a biased and one-sided lesson using only true statements.

The issue is whether the teacher is giving context and balance, not whether the claims are true (truth is necessary but not sufficient).

'Trump is a liar, a racist, has affairs with porn stars '

That is not propaganda. It is just facts:

Trump is a convicted felon who has been accused of sexual assault. He had a well publicised affair with Stormy Daniels and has a long history of cheating.

He regularly make things up to suit is narrative in his interview and speeches.

He made a lot of disparaging remarks about immigrants.

If my child told me that was going on, I would raise a concern to get more information from the school, then if true and no sign of being corrected, I would raise a complaint.

But then I am American, and have had to raise concerns with a school due to a staff member making daily remarks for weeks involving my child about Americans that I didn't think were appropriate and were inflaming bullying she was already having around her accent and being a the child of an American immigrant that was being dismissed with "they don't mean it", when a lot of it was repeating what had been said in class about how dumb and incomprehensible we all apparently are. I'm probably a bit touchier than most on the idea of teachers ranting about anything to do with the US.

I am aware that the staff at my kids' school has had repeated training on remaining non-political and the farthest they've gone on this topic was announcing the election results in tutor time, though their PSHE has an ideological bend.

'Teaching'? Like in a formal sense - writing lesson plans, lecturing, setting assignments? Or by 'teaching' you mean 'expressing an opinion'?

My children's school has lesson plans, powerpoints lectures, and assignments around gender identity - I have seen them in parent consultation, the head of PSHE is very proud of them, thinks it's very important, even rewrote the relationship and sex education policy after it was repeatedly pointed out by some parents that copying the guidance that LGBTQ+ content should be integrated into wider topics and not a stand-alone topic while listing gender identity as a stand alone topic in multiple year groups made the policy make little sense, so took that guidance out and added paragraphs on the value of this content. With how everything and the kitchen sink is thrown into PSHE, I think his ideological side project is a waste of time, especially after he told parents that only one week in 5 years is dedicated to healthy relationship, but that it's okay because they teach about gangs regularly. He outright said that teaching about bad relationships will mean kids know how to have healthy ones. One week on healthy relationships while sexual and gender identity has a dedicated half term in two years groups.

My gender nonconforming teenager hates it as it made far too many start asking her pronouns/identity repeatedly (never of her conventionally feminine sister), so she started to telling them she identified as appliances and lost a couple friends over it.

That is not propaganda. It is just facts.

For some people, the timing and nature of facts is propaganda.

The teacher should not be pushing her own political beliefs onto schoolchildren. It should be open for discussion.

@RamblingEclectic

"while sexual and gender identity has a dedicated half term in two years groups."

Is this in a state school? My kids went to a London comprehensive and had nothing like this sort of time spent on those issues.

This is the PSHE curriculum - seems to have far more focus on what constitutes a healthy relationship than it does on gender or sexual orientation.

fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/20248256/Programme%20of%20Study/PSHE%20Association%20Programme%20of%20Study%20for%20PSHE%20Education%20(Key%20stages%201%E2%80%935)%2c%20Jan%202020.pdf?hsCtaTracking=d718fa8f-77a8-445b-a64e-bb10ca9a52d8%7C90ef65f6-90ab-4e84-af7b-92884c142b27

"For some people, the timing and nature of facts is propaganda."

When do you think is a more fitting time for discussing these issues, than just after the election of the first convicted felon and adjudicated sexual offender to the office of POTUS?

I mean - this is HISTORY!!!!

I didn't say it wasn't a time to discuss them. But some will.

And a grasp of history is essential - a sine non qua - to following the present.

And vice versa.

"And a grasp of history is essential - a sine non qua - to following the present.
And vice versa."

No, no it's not. You can bear witness to an important event without having a full understanding of the historical context.

How is the teacher getting through the history curriculum if they are spending one lesson a week on current affairs?

Surely it's not a state school. No state school I know has a current affairs class. 🤔

We all do current affairs in form time (state school )

You can. But you probably won't understand it. Your choice.

There's always propaganda in schools. There was no neutrality in the poppy pushing this year, as usual.

If you're not happy, speak to the teacher... though it sounds like this teacher was teaching facts. I'm not sure what your point is?

DC has said that they have a weekly current affairs lesson.

I think these style of classes PSHE can be odd. I know my DC got told odd "facts" about gender and even qualifications in them. It's usually clear to them quickly if the teacher open to discussion or correction and my kids tended to do heads down mouth shut and check anything they were left unsure about later.

You could try checking with the school about what's been said - but as you weren't there they may come back with your child misinterpret or misunderstood.

Best thing is probably keep teaching at home the skill of distinguishing sources reliability and biases and distinguishing fact vs opinion.

Including questioning your own biases. Sounds like OP is only worried about bias towards the side she doesn't like.

I'd assume she'd be doing that or teaching her DD that. It's why it helps to take in a variety of sources with different biases and view point - it's always easier to spot the opposite biases rather than your own.

It used to be you'd argue the other side in debates to counter them better - there's episode in west wing when that causes problems with adult child of one of the staffer. I think it's a rapidly decline practise and skill.

I did start to wonder if the media I was consuming about USA election was right - it was all saying how close it all going to be - and it wasn't at all.

Trump massively won even the popular vote. It's not something I personally understand he looks like a truly terrible option and frankly an awful person - but I'm not going to understand it if people I was relying on to cover it were clearly not anywhere near right.

I haven't been able to post on MN for a few days, and just wanted to say thank you for all the useful responses, and for the linked guidelines.

In relation to posters still talking about me having biases etc, please could you read my opening post again, as these comments have taken the thread off topic.

Just to address these things notwithstanding, my opening post explains that the concern was that only one thing was talked about by the teacher, ie the Harris campaign narrative. If the teacher also talked about the Trump campaign narrative, and also about the other candidates' campaign narratives, and had also talked about why voters might have voted for Trump, and compared stated policies from both sides, and relevant things were put in historical or political context, etc etc, it would not have been a problem.

American MNers have said that in the last few years food prices have basically doubled, fuel prices have gone up, illegal immigration (note the use of the word "illegal" as distinct from any immigration) has caused huge problems and there are miles and miles of streets full of tents of homeless people in major cities, etc, and that this is why they think so many people voted Trump - i would have expected this to be talked about. I would also expect foreign policies of all candidates to be talked about, especially as many voters are afraid of ww3 and the US stance is pivotal in the world in this respect.

If you watch interviews with normal people on youtube you can see many people saying they would vote Trump because he "gets things done". So there is more than one way of seeing Trump - the narrative given is just one way.

I do not think that it is appropriate to talk about affairs with porn stars with a group of 13 year olds, it is not age appropriate. A poster has pointed this out and I completely agree.

In relation to the things listed on this thread by some posters as "facts" are not facts - I am not saying this as a supporter of one side or the other, I am commenting on what constitutes facts. The only issue mentioned on this thread (but not by the teacher) which could correctly be called a "fact" is that there is a conviction for a felony. To what extent people think that Trump has been racist or dishonest untruthful will come down to their belief systems and/or the extent to which things were taken out of context or misrepresented, there is no "factual" or "convicted" dishonesty or racism or affairs. Even the likes of Kristoff - very firmly of the Democrat camp - has pointed this out.

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.

DP told me that when he was at university studying politics during Trump's first attempt, the university forum was a hotbed of long, nasty posts decrying Trump, including some from tutors. He simply wrote, "Trump will win."😂

I worked briefly at a faith school - despite being a card-carrying atheist!

I was shocked that on the day Mrs Thatcher died, a sixth-former came into my room doing a dance. I asked her why and she said her history teacher had got them all to do a dance 'on Thatcher's grave' to celebrate.

Now, I lived through the 80s - I know the issues, but I thought this was awful. Mrs Thatcher was a controversial figure - and history has yet to fully assess and evaluate her - but Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot she certainly was NOT!

I'm afraid I fell back on 2 points. I said "When i was teacher-training you weren't supposed to pass on your personal political bias to your students!' and also..."this is supposed to be a Christian school - what is your history teacher playing at?"

Whatever your opinion of Margaret Thatcher, that was an awful thing for that teacher to do on many levels. Really unprofessional, just for starters.

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.

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.

“Ding Dong, the witch is dead’’