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!

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

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.

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.

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.

Exactly!

That kind of moronic (and spiteful) attitude.

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.

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

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.

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

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 ❤️

Year 6 as in 10 - 11 year olds?

What brilliance did you teach to these very young children and what eloquence did you hear?

@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.

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

Deeper dive more like shallow end

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!!

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 was asking what specifically you taught during the lesson, to illustrate discrimination and prejudice, and what exactly you were proud of, ie what the
children were saying? So, was your lesson just about LGBT, or mainly about LGBT? Or did you talk in a wider sense about bullying, racism, any other forms of discrimination? Can you give some examples of what the children were saying? And is this lesson required of you, part of the curriculum?

Not keen on indoctrination, no.

Very keen on civil rights and equality provided it is taught at an age appropriate level.

Not the point of this f thread though. Which was to find out how widespread indoctination was, and to find out to what extent teachers were being asked to teach it. If you can contribute in relation to that, please do.

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

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.

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

Exactly...

I absolutely agree with you on this. Again not the topic of the thread, but I am also finding the porn overload in the playground to be a nightmare. The school does nothing about it, and very little teaching about healthy relationships. The school is quite good individually, if someone reports a specific thing the children are spoken to and the staff member in charge of this is pretty good, and the messages are good. But no regular talks about things like what a healthy relationship looks like, respect, etc and counteracting the negative messages from porn is entirely down to parents

All the things you mention are covered in PSHE in the National curriculum. I would argue that they are not covered early enough but when you suggest discussing them earlier parents complain. One person's age appropriate is another person's too early.
Many consider schools discussing what healthy relationships are to be indoctrination that should be left to parents.
You continue to only term some things indoctrination. It's all teaching. I encourage all my students to disagree with my opinions on all manner of things (subject related). It would be boring if I created a bunch of clones.
You could of course argues that the inclusion of An Inspector Calls at GCSE for decades is a prime example of (failed) indoctrination

Yes, transgender discussion and gender reassignment as a protected characteristic are now on the PHSE curriculum. I'm Y6 (10-11 years), England.