“I don’t like the idea of a Ministerial ban on what I can and cannot decide to show students in my classroom.”
I do. Until 100% of the pupils are performing at or above their grade level you as a teacher should be concentrating on being certain the students in your charge can read, write, compose a coherent paragraph, all at the grade level.
And if you showed this sort of stuff to my child without my express written permission you and the administrators would be very likely to enjoy lengthy hospital stays nursing contusions and broken bones.
Keep your politics out of the damned classroom.
Clear enough?
L
My students are well above grade level. I rarely have a student who leaves my teaching with a grade below the 90th percentile in my state.
I'm also a history teacher, so while I don't ignore grammar, and other issues, I'm teaching something different.
If my students weren't meeting basic standards, then, yes, I'd focus on those basic standards - but they are exceeding them by very large margins and if I didn't extend them well beyond what the curriculum requires we'd be doing nothing at all in the classroom for the vast majority of times.
Keep your politics out of the damned classroom.
I don't push my political beliefs on my students - I deliberately don't - but I will not let them remain in ignorance because of the prejudices of other people (especially of governments) either and I will not allow the official curriculum to stop me from teaching them more than it requires and other points of views besides those mandated by the curriculum.
When I encounter a geography textbook endorsed by the government that calls military personal 'harmworkers' (and that's a real example) as a retired Naval officer, I will make no apology whatsoever for telling my students about the humanitarian work carried out by the military. And that's just one example.
I do my best to give my students all sides of the arguments. If I only taught the curriculum, I wouldn't be doing that. In most cases, I'd be given them a highly left wing viewpoint I don't agree with if I did that.