The Lemon Fool

Roanch21 wrote:Interested in a second opinion on wether I’m being unreasonable here.

You are not being unreasonable to be concerned how your child is being educated. It would be unreasonable for any headmaster not to engage in dialogue responding to any concern. I would raise such if it concerned me sufficiently.

dealtn wrote:

Roanch21 wrote:Interested in a second opinion on wether I’m being unreasonable here.

You are not being unreasonable to be concerned how your child is being educated. It would be unreasonable for any headmaster not to engage in dialogue responding to any concern. I would raise such if it concerned me sufficiently.

I would certainly be on the phone to the school head asking if this is within policy. If not then either the head should fix it or the next call would be to the LEA.

The one case where this might be OK is if what was being taught was media bias. And in that case I'd expect that the following week an editorial from the Telegraph could also be used to show how both papers introduce bias in different and opposite ways.

But as a comprehension exercise it is inappropriate to use an ideologically biased opinion piece. I suspect the piece aligns with the teacher's own personal biases and he thought he would just slip it in as a little impromptu indoctrination, and that is not on. And I would say the same if the piece instead was biased to the right. Just pick a neutral topic for comprehension study, and keep your political views at home.

XFool wrote:I have to say this thread is starting to remind me of Conservapedia (always worth a chuckle!)

Originally I came across this via it's Relativity (Einstein) page - cannot begin to remember how, now.

It was a hoot! The guy who started Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly, is a real home schooling, right-wing nut with absolutist views.

Ah! Son of Phyllis I see ... the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree then!

OT, but if you haven't seen it already catch Mrs. America. It's excellent, with a star cast and is (was for me at least) quite educational about the female battle against the Equal Rights Amendment in the US in the 1970s. It's on iPlayer. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p08ggcmd/mrs-america

dealtn wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:There's nothing particularly leftie about asking teenagers to think for themselves, or to read their way through a problematic viewpoint so as to perceive the underlying reality, which they might or might not agree with. It's preparing them for independent thought, which might protect them in later life from the deliberate myths and untruths of social media. In fact, if the righties could only manage the same thing half as well, we might not have fallen into such a mess in the first place.

There's nothing from the right against independent thought either. What is it that "righties" are failing to do the left are twice as good at?

From where I'm standing, (some) "righties" appear to be coming to all sorts of rather bizarre conclusions seemingly based on fundamental misunderstandings. See above.

Well, you did ask.

But overall, we still don't have enough context on this matter to come to any very certain conclusions.

XFool wrote:

dealtn wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:There's nothing particularly leftie about asking teenagers to think for themselves, or to read their way through a problematic viewpoint so as to perceive the underlying reality, which they might or might not agree with. It's preparing them for independent thought, which might protect them in later life from the deliberate myths and untruths of social media. In fact, if the righties could only manage the same thing half as well, we might not have fallen into such a mess in the first place.

There's nothing from the right against independent thought either. What is it that "righties" are failing to do the left are twice as good at?

From where I'm standing, (some) "righties" appear to be coming to all sorts of rather bizarre conclusions seemingly based on fundamental misunderstandings. See above.

Well, you did ask.

But overall, we still don't have enough context on this matter to come to any very certain conclusions.

What bizarre conclusion? I have asked a genuine question. Not sure why you have involved yourself as you haven't even attempted to answer it.

Perhaps the op's 12 year old is being primed in readiness for studying for an OU degree?

Based o Mrs Bnc's experience many years ago of the Open University, left-wing was all the rage.

...Tell us more! - Or possibly less?