[sokath]

I was speaking to a friend of mine on Saturday night. He's pretty outspoken and likes to think he's well educated. But often misses a key element of an argument before formulating his own opinions. As such, his arguments are often pointless, but it's fun to debate with him sometimes. Either way, enough of the introduction. On Saturday, we were dicussing the school system, and he came up with an interesting point. He said that teachers, at least in high-school, should not be allowed to teach contemporary politics. For that matter, he said, there should be no current-issues/politics classes at all.

His argument was that teachers, whether they wanted to or not, would invariably impart their own biases on to the kids preventing them from formulating their own opinions and ideas on current issues. He said that it didn't matter for historical politics, as it was in the past and had already happened, therefore the median opinions of history had already been established. But he figured that teachers shouldn't be allowed to influence young minds one way or another, at least on issues like politics, and sociology and stuff.

At first I was like "you're fucking nuts", but then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I certainly wouldn't outlaw teaching politics in schools, I think it's a VERY important subject and people need to be informed. But I think my friend still raised some valid points.

What do you guys think?

S./

[Krasniy Yastreb]

I think your friend's been drinking......

But really I suppose he's got a point. It can be so easy for a teacher to slip their views into a kid's education, but I think a greater danger is not teaching kids to think about politics at all. If that happens they'll take more and more of the biased media coverage of events to be factual, and before you know it we'll all be media drones.

[Tigerlily]

I think politics should be taught in school.

I want to be a teacher (if dictatorship doesn't work...) but I don't think I'd like to teach current politics. It would be too easy to slip up and be biased when teaching.I want to teach history. ^^

[Evan Roberts]

If your teachers don't teach you politics then it will just be a case of someone else passing their bias onto you.

I'm all for class discussions in schools. Here in britain we have a subject called "citizenship", where they skip politics and philosophy and just teach you how to be "a good capitalist citizen".

[Vassili Zaitsev]

In American schools they teach:

Captialism=

Communism=

See, they tried to indoctrinate me in school by that shit, but luckally I learned on my own the truth of Communism, and the evils of Capitalism. Damn school system! You'll even get punished for saying or wearing anything thats considered "Un-American". No wonder why America is like number 15 on the educational system world wide.

[sokath]

As I said, my friend has some pretty strange ideas about things. But yeah, I was thinking about it today. And politics HAS to be taught in schools. Evan's right, if teachers don't do it, someone else (like weird guys on internet forums) will.

S./

[Vassili Zaitsev]

Weird guys like us?

[Proctor]

I strongly disagree. For a start, no information in the world is unbiased. None. Even if you see an event with your own two eyes, you don't know everything that lead up to it or everything that will result from it, so you cannot have the full picture. With this in mind, it is a lot better getting your information from someone who is at least trying to be impartial to some fanatic in the streets/press.

And if students don't like what they're being taught, they will do a little of their own research and formulate a better informed opinion.

And slightly off topic, but we don't have current affairs/politics classes in New Zealand. I wish they did, but I'd be the most hated guy in school!

Weird guys like us?

*mock horror*US?! Surely not!

[RagnarokForAll]

Sokaths friend may have brought up some valid points but surely this raises the question of whether any politics should be taught in school contemporary or otherwise because historical information is also biased (from the point of view of whoever wrote the book or the point of view of the teacher...).

As Vassili Zaitsev said in this forum Americans are taught Communism= and Capitalism= . Much of what is taught about communism will be in history classes. Much of what is taught in history may be relevent but is not necessary contemporary.

I believe that we must be taught politics somewhere or else as Krasniy Yastreb stated in this forum we will all become media drones. This is true in New Zealand as was recently shown by the elections - when a party has a massive media bias for it, it is almost futile for the other parties to even make an attempt at winning the election.

[Seamus Warren]

I tend to think there is a left-wing bent in the Arts world and in Academe.

The product of our education system don't seem to be thinking for themselves and it may take a number of years of working in the real world before they come around to a more informed common sense view of the world.

I like this quote from an Australian Aboriginal leader that I think can be applied to seveal left-wing causes:

"Aboriginal affairs is dominated by what I call the intellectual middle stratum: journalists, academics, politicised clergy, politically active medical doctors, party careerists, writers, musicians, actors, cartoonists and other inner-city dwellers with socially suitable left-liberal opinions about everything."