Criticizing Capitalism in Classrooms: Taboo? or Good Citizenship?

The New York Times published an article this week on how teachers in classrooms around the world are using the environmental advocacy video, "The Story of Stuff," to get students to think about the consequences of our high-consumption, throw-away lifestyles. Teachers, scientists, and curriculum experts all agree that textbooks do a horrible job covering this topic, and argue that global warming and other environmental crises make it too important to ignore, or to give the three-paragraph short shrift alloted to it by textbooks. Here's the video on YouTube (the Story of Stuff website has a Flash version, with many resources not available on YouTube):
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The Times gives two examples of evidence that the video works to make students re-think their consumption habits: a 9-year-old boy struggles over the consequences of buying a Lego set at a "big box" store, and a high school senior persuades her mother to stop buying bottled water - "the bottles don't just disappear after we use them" - and to install a tap filter instead.

Some parents, though, complain that it is "anticapitalist" and "biased," and object to its use in the classroom.

Their complaints raise interesting questions: Is capitalism a subject that is to be shielded from criticism in classrooms out of ideological loyalty? Is capitalism unable to change and adapt in the face of emergent signs of its unsustainability? Or can shining an honest spotlight on its problems in classrooms lead to next-generation entrepreneurs and policy-makers who lead capitalism in healthier and more sustainable directions in the future?

As for that "bias" charge, it points, as member Jodi Rice points out, to recent discussions in this space about teaching students to think critically about their textbooks. One teacher using "The Story of Stuff" in his classroom in Portola Valley, California, did exactly that: he had his students create a series of video responses to the film, criticising what they felt was a too-heavy reliance on fear and a too-light inclusion of constructive suggestions. Here's the first video:
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More interesting was what happened next: students at a school in Mendocino, California saw the students' video, and made their own to suggest the kind of constructive responses possible. "Don't be scared," they say: "Here are your options." And here they are:
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It's all so interesting on so many levels. I wonder if Portola students ever responded to their peer teachers in Mendocino. It's certainly nothing like the analog schooling of my childhood.