This seems to be code for:
The radical leftist nexus of HHS Social Studies and English teachers who dominate the high school system want to re-educate the 9th grade students and help to shape their opinions into the correct mold: society is comprised of two differing viewpoints, that representable by the concepts of capitalism, meritocracy, and individualism, and that representable by the concepts of community, ethnic-cultural-political divisions within the community, and collectivism. Students will be "encouraged" (in other words, required) to struggle with the latter against the former. Technical subjects such as math and science are deemed less relevant to a student's learning (from a societal-change point of view) than encouraging students to prepare for or find productive jobs in the international technological marketplace.
This fulfills the view of Paolo Freire in his 1970 text (so favored among and adopted in whole by contemporary US education researchers), "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826412769/102-7970999-6338548) in which the viewpoint is expressed that education is a subversive force. In particular education is both subversive and real when it is liberating, and that schools maximize their effectiveness when students are led to become political activists, to transform the society in which they are presumed to be oppressed along class, ethic, race, gender, and sexual preference lines.
"Ongoing struggle" sounds so Maoist, so revolutionary.
I'd expect that from the Sensero Luminoso, not a high school teacher in Hudson, Massachusetts.
And how cynical to bring up an "active and informed citizenry" when the teacher himself believes that we live in a democracy (not a republic).
Civic engagement obviously does not include teachers being questioned by students- that results in a half-page article explaining how wrong the students are.