Children and Politics

Chestnut, as the opening poster on this thread could you post a link to this "happening" as you state you "just heard" in that opening post?

I am sure that many would wish to know where this news is propagating from for people to hear.
Many thanks.

Good grief

Hopefully at 8 years old the children will let his comments wash over them and move on to the next lesson. I once had a parent come in to complain their 5 year old was distressed about a story I read the class with an ugly troll in it. The child himself was totally unperturbed so I don't think the Boris wolf comment will stick for long in the child's head.
Come to think of it, Boris did look a bit like a crazy wolf in the shot of his love actually advert!

Stormzy. What a role model.
Songs like this..

Yeah, yo

[Chorus]
Call me Gunshot Mike or Mr Skeng
Check one-two, man skitzed again
Dickhead yout in a dickhead crew
Getting gassed up by your dickhead friends

[Verse 1]
It's like dem man woke up pissed again
If I buck these pricks again
I got goons and you got goons
But the difference is your shit pretends
And..

Michael Gove promoting socialism seems odd. Reverse psychology perhaps?

Teaching violence to susceptible teenagers is the main reason we moved out of London! My DD1 was told to write an essay about putting Mrs Thatcher On a bonfire. There were lots of gang fights and eventually a boy was stabbed to death and his killer ended up in prison. Another boy was chased into an empty building and died when he fell down a lift shaft.

Children should not have any political education they are much to easily indoctrinated by adults with extreme views. When they do get older and topics like climate change are debated, a balanced view must be given, it’s far too easy to only give one side of a topic.

No idea why this man would be going into a school

Hopefully they will invite one with opposing views

Sense of balance is
very important

I've always believed that children should be taught the facts, then told that some people think this and some people think that. Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister, some people think he's good for the country and some don't. Maybe tell them why people think like that. But to blatantly say he's a very very bad man is way out of order. There has to be balance not extreme opinion one way or the other.

Schools ACTIVELY teach texts in my subject (English) which promote socialism. At the dictat of Michael Gove, when he was minister for education.

Not appropriate, what was the Head Teacher thinking?

If I were a parent of a child at that particular school I would be emailing every member of the Board of Governors, council members and my MP and Education Secretary.

Political education should be impartial at whatever age it is taught.

8 year olds can have a debate with an adult in their classroom ?

All teaching is based on personal opinion, though. How else can it be done? What led to the first world war? Was X Y or Z a good King/PM/War leader? Is a sonnet a pure form of poetry or a restrictive one? The answers to these questions are all personal opinions, but worthy of consideration, surely?

In the end, the point of education is (or should be) that children learn how to work out the answers to these things on their own, but they need to be aware that there are different points of view, and crucially what is the difference between a prejudice and an educated opinion.

As always, it is dangerous to have a knee-jerk reaction without knowing the detail. Was there a discussion about the comments? Were they presented as facts or as the basis for debate? Was another point of view given?

I totally agree with you Chestnut but there seems to be a national propensity of forcing one's political views onto others now. There doesn't seem to be any depth too low to sink to, including using young children to push their opinions onto.