As a teacher I’ll say that political ideologies very much do belong in the classroom. How else can you expect a child to learn how to be a part of society and to care for people beyond their own self-interest?
Teaching “political ideology” isn’t telling a class of kids, “you should all be socialists,” it’s giving them a foundation upon which they can build their individual morality.
What is school if not a place to learn from the successes and failures of peoples past?
what is too far? what places? i hear this point alot, but do you have examples? real schools that are really going "too far" in some specific sense? where are they? what are they teaching?
The difference between *teaching about* an ideology and *presenting* an ideology as *true* or *correct* or *better*
Like, we should teach ideology -- all of them. We should teach religion -- all of them. Not in the way parochial schools do (as the truth) but holistically, as things that exist.
Too far is telling my sisters they should be vegans, too far is promoting body dysmorphia as something that should be celebrated and not treated. I have 3 sisters, none of which escaped the public school system without psychological harm. Two of which battle and were in hospice for anorexia.
your public school promoted body dysmorphia?? that's wild. did the school have a policy about telling kids they were fat or something? i really am having a hard time envisioning an ideological position that's explicitly in favor of inducing eating disorders in schoolchildren. i'm also just kinda confused at to how veganism plays into this. how does a school tell somebody to be vegan? diet is a pretty personal choice, and tends to involve a lot of effortful change. was there like a program for encouraging vegan diets specifically?
what ideological position is this school using? because... i don't really know what kind of ideology leads to anorexia. anorexia is a complex mental health issue caused by interactions between cultural notions of beauty and health and the psychology of individual humans. the closest ideological cause i can think of is like... sexism, or fatphobia, or patriarchal standards of beauty as imposed by the advertising industry.