I don’t have children, but am curious to know how our educational system teaches Trump. Whether you like him or not, no one can argue that he is changing how we as a country view politics. Many of the things he does or says don’t have precedent. At a middle school or elementary school level, when kids are just beginning to develop critical thinking, how are educators presenting Trump? Is it possible to present in a neutral manner information about a very polarizing figure and his administration?
Usually, to the extent that schools teach current events at all, it’s student-driven: Each week, a few students will have to pick out some news story, and give a report about it. Most students usually pick nonpolitical topics, and the teachers generally make an effort to stay entirely nonpolitical.
It was a long time ago, but until I got to HS, I think they steered well clear of politics. HS was during the McCarthy era and many of the teachers did denounce him. One of the teachers was called before the un-American committee (for allegedly having been a Communist) and fired. After a multi-year court battle he got his job back with full back pay. Good teacher too (he taught English and I never heard him make any political statement).
My kids get those little 4- or 8-page Scholastic magazines sent home with them. After Trump was elected they did a story on him. The piece was very surface level and talked about he was a businessman, how many states/EVs he won, and what he plans to do as President (i.e. “reduce immigration,” “grow the economy,” etc.).
I’m a school teacher in the UK; I teach what Americans would call middle and high-school. So, I’m not best qualified to answer the OP, but for what it’s worth…
Academic departments tend to follow curricula that are set years in advance; current affairs aren’t ‘taught’ in the same way as (say…) quadratic equations or desertification - and neither is their understanding formally assessed in the same way.
That said, teachers might sometimes incorporate consideration and discussion of current affairs (such as Trump’s election/inauguration/presidency) as part of working towards a certain educational outcome. This might be independent research skills, giving a presentation, comparing/contrasting political systems or whatever.
Staff (at my school at least) are under quite explicit instructions to not sermonise to the pupils about their own political beliefs. Discussion and debate between the children is fine, but for the teacher to wade in with their own opinions would be a definite no-no. If word got to my Headmaster that I had been banging on to my kids about how great/terrible Trump was, I’d be hauled into my boss’s office.
If I were (say) to set a task for the children to compare and contrast the policies of Trump and Obama, I would (frankly) probably do so under the assumption that most would come back with scathing indictments of Trump. But the learning objective (and assessment criteria) would not (ever) be ‘How Awful Trump is’; it would be along the lines of how well the kids did their research and formulated their assertions.
At a primary level, I imagine that the same principles would apply but with simpler learning objectives. There, I imagine the end-goal might be something along the lines of ‘Why do presidents change?’ and ‘How can people’s political views differ?’
This is not to say, of course, that no teacher in the real world ever lectures their students about what is ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ politically speaking - but we are certainly not supposed to.
My wife is principal at a private pre-K through 12 school. I don’t happen to know how (or if) they’re dealing with Trump in social studies classes, but one of the really big concerns that she and her staff have is making sure that the students understand that he is not to be seen as a role model when it comes to his treatment of women, minorities, foreigners, etc. It’s a big problem.
Oh God. It’s hard. For years in my third grade class I’ve begun the morning with a quick news story: I dealt with ISIS’s rise, Syrian refugees, wildfires, out west, wildfires closer to home, government shutdowns, HB2 (NC’s Bathroom Bill), marriage equality at the Supreme Court, and more. I generally steered away from terrorism and from anything else too bloody, and I’ve peppered the political stuff with awesome stories about outer space–but otherwise it’s a challenge to do my best to present complex stories in ways that third graders can understand, and also to do so without revealing my own political leanings.
The reward has been the many parents who tell me with pride how their child talks with them about news over the dinner table, sometimes being better informed about the issues than the parents are. And when I have parents whose political leanings are opposite my own, I feel comfortable reassuring them that I don’t indoctrinate, except inasmuch as I talk about our nation’s freedoms.
But Trump? Fuckin hell. How can I tell the kids the lead story is “Grab them by the pussy”? How can I tell the kids that their president just fired his national security advisor for talking with a nation we’re not on friendly terms with in a manner that may have been illegal?
I still talk a bit about what’s going on, but the percentage of awesome space stories has, pardon the pun, skyrocketed.
My daughter’s APUSH class (AP US History) is having a field day. They are Juniors in high school - and they spend some time daily talking about Trump as he relates to the History they’ve studied and what they know. Its great.
Their own political leanings range from far left to alt right to Libertarian. But its easy to compare Trump to Jackson, or Harding.
I assumed this would be about the future. I can’t think of any class that would discuss a current president. I fail to see why an AP History class would even be discussing them. It’s a history class, not a current events class. The point is to learn what happened in the past.
I mean, you have history (World, American, State), civics, geography, and social studies. The first three don’t fit, and the fourth one is so overloaded with stuff that I don’t see how you’d have time.
I mean, sure, you could bring up Trump as an example in a civics class, to teach about how the branches of government work, I guess.
I cannot recall ever discussing Clinton or Bush in junior high or high school.
Well, yes, but things come up–there’s passing periods and before and after school, if nothing else. And generally speaking, organic discussions on tangents are a good thing in moderation. So yeah, Trump comes up. I mean, we have schools in my district that are 40% undocumented students and probably at least as many children of undocumented parents. How do you NOT talk about Trump with a group like that? It would be like not talking about 9/11 in the year after that happened. This is really different than other political years–it feels much more personal. Most of the kids in my school lean pretty far left, and on one hand I feel bad for the conservative kids when they are outnumbered in argument, but on the other hand, when you’re hoping to go to college on DACA, it’s really hard not to see someone else’s support of Trump as a personal desire to get rid of you. When you’re a survivor of sexual assault, it’s hard not to see someone’s hand-waving away “grab them by the pussy” as a dismissal of your own trauma. When you are gay or black or Muslim, it’s hard not to see someone supporting Trump as someone personally out to get you. So I don’t blame them for not being willing to compromise, not being willing to agree to disagree, to treat this as an abstract personal opinion, like waffles vs pancakes. So I’m sure that the handful of conservative kids we have don’t feel like they are free to express their opinion, because when they do, a ton of kids line up to tell them they are wrong. But I don’t really care. During class time, I try to redirect, but I don’t act like expressing an opinion is inherently wrong.
I’m not a teacher but I’m not seeing the problem here.
Trump was elected President. You can explain how the Electoral College works and how he was elected even though Clinton got more votes.
Some people support Trump and some people oppose him. That’s how a democracy works.
Beyond that, what is there to be taught? It may be a widespread opinion that Trump is a terrible President but it’s still an opinion not a fact that should be taught in a classroom.
It depends on if your a good teacher or teach what you believe. Right or wrong, your supposed to teach the facts.
If you can’t or won’t do that, just be quiet.