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Wouldn't the ideal be if the school system stayed largely apolitical. Public schools having to avoid topics such as this. Private being free to teach what ever
by xupybd 5y ago
Wouldn't the ideal be if the school system stayed largely apolitical.
Public schools having to avoid topics such as this. Private being free to teach what ever they want?
The problem I see is that this puts parents at odds with their children. If the parents are conservative should the schools challenge that? Or if the parents are liberal should the schools challenge that?
It becomes difficult becomes some academic topics can't be separated from politics.
- watwut 5y ago> Wouldn't the ideal be if the school system stayed largely apolitical. The textbooks themselves are political. If you are approaching anything like history or sociology, your politics and worldview matter. And you cant strip it entirely out, because it affects what you teach.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThe textbooks are fine, mostly. The bigger problem is the curriculums being set in a way that precludes coverage of ideologically inconvenient topics. History teachers in big government states simply don't have the time to pay more than lip service to jim crow and the government screwing the natives. Biology teachers in the bible belt are going to made to teach a requirement where the most realistic way to do their jobs is to give scant coverage to the evolution adjacent topics.
- aaron-santos 5y agoBeing apolitical implicitly supports the status quo which itself is a political position.
- joshuamorton 5y agoHow do you define "apolitical"? Can you teach government, philosophy, economics, or history in an apolitical way? Was it the war of northern aggression or the civil war? Was it fought over slavery? Or states rights? Is one of those ways of teaching history more political than the other? The problem is that propaganda is political, and how history is taught is propaganda.
- UncleMeat 5y ago"Apolitical" is not a thing when it comes to teaching history. Assuming that teaching systemic racism is political while leaving it out of a curriculum isn't political is simply false. Courses such as "Women in Medieval Europe" and "18th century Native American History" are decried as political. A friend of mine had a student complain that there wasn't enough discussion of the presidents in their course on Native American History. The "apolitical" approach that many people want means the almost total exclusion of subaltern voices from the historical record, and that is obviously BS.