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[Ghills]

Practically everything in Dwarf Fortress is ethically and morally wrong in some way. In order to make it 'suitable' for classroom use, you'd have to change so many absolutely necessary pieces of the game, and that's completely counter-productive to the idea in the first place.

Nope - it's only that way if you play that way.   The problems/challenges in DF are the same problems/challenges that people face in real life.  IRL, we have worker safety laws that mandate careful planning before making a mega-construction or dealing with dangerous materials, so the deaths are a lot lower than mega-constructions in DF.  DF isn't innately evil (which is what you're arguing).  It does afford for a lot of different playstyles, some of which are arguably immoral (depending on how seriously you take game playstyles).

To use your example, building a kitten-fall is choice the player makes, not something that's required in the game. 

The only part of DF that's innately problematic for kids is the combat log, but even that can be avoided since you have to specifically check the combat reports for it. 

You can even make the argument that large swathes of DF are more moral than RL - no stealing, very little lying, etc. 

[Mel_Vixen]

Combat-log can be educational for medicine students and as for pets .. DF just teaches us to spay and neuter  our beloved furballs or they propagate like tribles.

The wars can be also educational if elves fight against Humans or dwarfs as it shows how a advantage in numbers fares against a advantage in technology, just like when the spains conquered all theyr soon to be middle and south american colonies.

[nenjin]

As an elaborate example by a leftist sociology professor about what the darkside of societal inequalities can result in....maybe. Other than that I don't think it has a lot of practical applications for serious education. Other than computer science and theory, that is.