Beyond the basics such as reading, writing, maths etc and practical skills such as cooking and woodwork, education on a specific subject will almost always reflect some underlying bias.
Smurf remembers quite well something in about grade 3 about state (Tas) development, resources and so on. Nice thick book to go with it, films to watch and so on. It all seemed a bit of fun, and a nice change from the normal spelling and so on.
But looking back, I now realise very well that it all amounted to one simple point being made: Hydro dams = good, any other form of power = bad. Such was the politics of the time, and this was a government school. OK, there was a bit about timber, minerals and so on but power was the key point being made that's for sure.
Same year we all got in a bit of trouble for damming the local creek at lunch time and ending up covered in mud when the "dam" broke. Pretty obvious where that idea came from... And the teachers were in a bit of a bind too - no way were they going to say there's something wrong with dams as such, just that they'd rather we didn't try building one behind the school because being covered in mud might upset our parents, and also the bus would get dirty on the way home...
Then in grade 5 & 6 I had a truly outstanding teacher who went way off the curriculum on a very regular basis and taught us all sorts of things. Finance and investments, legal system, how government works, media bias and so on. Computers were the future, and no way were we not going to learn how to type at a decent speed. We even made a film at some point in that class. Then he decided that we needed to know about industrial OH&S as well.
One of the "outside the box" subjects he taught us was "the greenhouse effect". It wasn't a political issue back then but the idea was around in a scientific sense and we explored the theory and looked at the realities of how emissions could actually be reduced globally. A lot of what is in this thread, I first learnt in grade 5 at school. I understood very well back then, that there was no simple answer. Closing factories = lost jobs etc is a point that was certainly made, as was the "no jobs on a dead planet" argument.
We built a few things in that class too and yes, a solar water heater built from scratch was among them, noting that none of us had ever seen a real one at the time. So were all sorts of electronic contraptions and we nearly ended up with a zoo as well. The water heater did work by the way, as did the electronics. A few things went wrong, like the mice escaping and an aquarium blowing up (due to student error by the way), but it was a fantastic learning experience those two years. And he did manage to fit all the usual maths, writing etc in as well - and with pretty tough pass marks and lunchtime detention for anyone who failed.
Most useful thing you can do in the education of any child is what my grade 5 and 6 teacher was really trying to achieve. Teach them to get of their ***,
do something about it rather than whinging (absolutely his key point), think for themselves, do proper research into how things really are, and don't just believe what they are told. I've kept that principle ever since, and it has served me well thus far.