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 someone else who referred to indoctrination, I simply confirmed I was not keen on it. My original post and others posts were clear about what the thread was about - it was how my DC described the lesson and wanting to know how widespread it was. My opinion, fwiw, is that the teacher wants to teach what he believes is right, and nothing else - If that is right, that would probably be indoctrination but whehter that is right or not I do not yet know.

Moving on though to what is being raised here, teaching about healthy relationships is about teaching about psychological aspects - about what is and isn't acceptable behaviour, what respect looks like, what abuse is, surely. I am not sure how that could be termed indoctrination, though I am genuinely interested in what you are saying - what have parents said?

10 - 11 year olds are too young to be learning about this, and this is just storing up psychological problems for the future. I am not blaming you if this is what you are being told what to teach. Bringing up children to be empathetic, tolerant, emotionally intelligent will mean the children end up being able to understand and relate to other humans, and make good choices. Not trying to teach them concepts they will not be able to understand which will confuse them. It is really tragic imo.

I just wanted to add to this - my understanding is that transgender and reassignment is a very young subject and there is not yet enough peer reviewed research or consensus about it to understand it fully nor, therefore, to teach about it. What does the curriculum say you should say? The majority view seems to be that it is linked to early childhood experiences, unresolved trauma, in most cases, and that there is a statistically very high level of alcoholism and mental health problems in transitioned people. A lot of money has been thrown at groups who want to promote it, but the groups do not act in accordance with psychological or scientific knowns, they are mainly people with personal experience who want to promote rights for transitioned people and acceptance. Is this right? Or am I talking shite? If I am right, what benefit could being taught about this possible do for a class of 10 year olds?

My dc understands the issues partially now at 13, well enough to be accepting that it is a thing in society and not prejudiced, but not understanding why, the psychological aspects, the consequences, the sexual aspects - and in fact I would venture that none of us do. They would not have understood the issues at all at 10, it would not have helped them to have a class devoted to it, they would have found it really confusing. And I think my dc is pretty average in this respect.

If you think I am being an ignorant bigot here, please do say. I have personal experience. Someone close to me has transgendered as a middle aged person. I am emotionally supportive, but I cannot tell you the hurt and fall out with their children, their wider family, their spouse, and how that person after several years on strong hormones is now not the same person they were, at all, and is an alcoholic. I didn't explain it all to dc until last year and then only because the subject had come up elsewhere.

The long and short of it is that it is in the curriculum so I have a duty to teach it. I am expected to teach it. Whether or not I agree with it being taught is irrelevant.

Is this in an English school? History follows a curriculum, 13 (year 8/9) that would be industrial Revolution, British colonialism, slavery, ww1. What he’s saying is happening in class is current affairs, notwithstanding the perception that there is indoctrination happening, I’d want to know when the actual history is being taught. Also how is he managing to fit in these discussions about American politics? I taught year 8 history last year and honestly, you have enough on trying to stick to the scheme of work in the year.

"According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by age 4. They explain that research shows prepubertal children who assert a transgender or gender diverse (TGD) identity know their gender as clearly and as consistently as their cisgender peers.[10] A 2018 study in Pediatrics found that children with a TGD identity first recognize it internally at an average age of 8.5 years, but do not disclose it until on average 10 years later.[11]"

I'm not sure why it's ok for children of this age to learn about a young virgin being impregnated by a spirit, and Christ being tortured to death on the cross, but not to learn that transgender people exist. Why would knowing transgender people exist 'store up psychological problems'?

It's not a 'young' subject. It's not a new thing but that's a different argument.Parents complain about the content of many lessons complaining their children are too young. Particularly PSHE. The sad reality is there will be people in that class who need to know so that they can ask for help.
There are people who complain about any reference to gay people.
Even had someone who complained their child couldn't study texts with ghosts in. Amazingly, none of the things parents complain about elsewhere are a problem when they come up in Shakespeare.

This is an excellent point: my private primary school had us drawing pictures of the crucifixion! That's a bit more traumatising than being aware that some people are trans.

Given it’s not yet Christmas your DC sure seems to have covered a huge breadth of topics for 1-2 lessons a week.

I think some of this didn’t happen and you are projecting to get a debate and reaction.

Complain to the Head.

It’s not the teacher's job to push a political view. It’s also so basic - far better to ask why Trump won.

Why are they discussing this anyway? Wouldn’t have thought there’s time in the day and it doesn’t fit in to history as it only happened last week.

Just to add a little more here to the seriousness of the situation, the parent is right to be concerned. The school should be concerned, too. This is because impartiality is a requirement within the Education Act.

See page 6 https://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/23-03-23-Political-impartiality-in-Citizenship_-a-guide-for-secondary-schools-V2.pdf

So, while it’s OK to teach about US politics, it is not OK to coerce children to take one side over another.

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?

I question the objectivity of claims about what the teacher has done when its made by someone who posts this about expectations of a Y9 history teacher.

A teacher of y9 should be able to identify credible sources. One of the posters here mentioned politfact to back up her claims and I was pointing out that the problems with credibility of her sources. Her other sources were media. It wasn't the point of the thread, but the teacher here has in fact already given a class about checking sources (ironically). Anyway if you read the thread in full you'll see the context. Hope that is clear now.

It is most definitely a young subject. There is zero consensus about the psychological roots or the best way of helping people.

About the only thing I would agree with you on is that the idea of crucifixion is horrific. I was also taught about torture methods of the middle ages when I was at primary school which was pretty damn traumatic too. I will read the article you referenced (the one single article - both references in your quote are to the same article) when I get a chance and reply, but I doubt very much that it will confirm that it is useful to be teaching this to 10/11 year olds.... anyway, I will read when I get the chance and post afterwards.

I am sorry that was full of errors, will repost so that it makes sense. A teacher of y9 should be able to teach about identifying credible sources. One of the posters here mentioned politifact to back up their claims and I was pointing out problems with the credibility of her sources. The teacher I referred to in my original post has in fact already given a class about checking sources (ironically). Anyway if you read the thread in full you'll see the context. Hope that is clear now.

Just to clarify that I am talking about teaching a subject to an entire class, not that children of this age may or may not have experienced individual problems.

Some of the children in the class may have experienced individually traumatic events, such as sex abuse, other types of abuse. Improving identifying problems and improving help given to those children is worthwhile. But this does not mean that there should be a class given to an entire class outlining the horrors which some children experience. Can you see the difference?

Out of interest, when do you think treatment of trans people began?

tyranny of the majority

Sounds like democracy to me, majority rule. Sucks if you're in a minority view group.

Are you able to list accurately all of the policy decisions made by Trump 2016 - 2020 and why the decisions were made? Very, very unlikely because the vast majority of the reporting was about things like this. You may have a list of policies or decisions which you have been told to write about - eg not signing up to the Paris accord - but not anywhere near a comprehensive list, nor of the reasons why decisions were made. There has been significant efforts to discredit Trump and it is worth looking into this and working out why. In relation to the press, they confined their efforts to digging up dirt like this (this recording is from 2005), to misquote, to quote out of context, and not nearly enough accurate reporting. Which is pretty outrageous - how can people make decisions without correct information? The vast majority of people do not know anything about Trump's policies or political work from this period because it was not reported comprehensively or accurately, the focus was only on discrediting.

In relation to the comments in your link, from 2005, I agree that they are sleazy. But I have to tell you that they are pretty average for people in Trump's line of work - Trump decided to go into politics relatively late, and up to that point was a property developer. And pretty average for most people in business.

Moving over to the Democrats, and the comments here that they cared about people and the Republicans didn't, this has been the traditional perception - but in the past caring about people was about welfare, education, literacy, housing, pensions, equal opportunities, etc whereas most of these appear to have been sidelined by other issues, and so how does the Democrat party show that they care? Do you think that nowadays the narrative is so dominated by LGBTQplus the party has lost sight of the needs of the many other sectors of the community? If not, can you give details of the Harris policies which were about welfare, education, literacy, housing, pensions, equal opportunities?

You can do a quick google and find a lot of information on wiki. The history is interesting but it doesn't relate to what I said, which you quoted?

We have now a huge body of scientific peer reviewed research in relation to child development, it goes back decades, and more recently neurological research has grown. This is what would be relevant when considering how to talk to children about issues and when to teach. Do you agree that there are statistically compartitively high levels of alcoholism and mental health problems in the trans community? Do you agree that mental health problems are increasing in the young, and that this might be linked to the increased focus on tramatic concepts and the reduced focus on traditional education, building emotional intelligence? This is surely evidence that it is a young subject, and what is being done now is akin to a human experiment.

I had read all your comments and still posted mine, as it’s my belief you think your knowledge is superior to the teacher. And it might be, but you are not their teacher judged against set performance criteria.

Are you aware of the curriculum for this term?

To clarify, are you suggesting a teacher needs to list sources for every single statement they make, even when it’s in the spirit of debate. If so YABU. It’s a Y9 lesson not a PhD viva.

Whilst I agree teachers shouldn’t be overly pushing personal views, your evidence is biased because it’s being viewed through your personal lens of what should be happening.

I suggest you review the curriculum for this term and assess it against that before jumping off the deep end.