When it comes to science in the classroom, are American schools educating or indoctrinating?
In 2010, MRC TV reported that a middle school near San Bernardino, California produced a video featuring students dressed as members of an “environmental police agency” arresting “non-environmentalists.”
Art Horn, an independent meteorologist writing in PJ Media, gave a presentation to an elementary school which included some skepticism towards global warming theories.
“At several of the elementary schools,” he wrote, “this was actually met with approval. Some teachers approached me at the end of my talk and thanked me for giving the kids a different point of view — since all they hear otherwise is that the future will be a climate calamity..”
However, in response to his pointing out that polar bears were not drowning and that their numbers have been increasing, and that nature has changed climate in the past and would likely continue to do so in the future, complaints were lodged.
One teacher who invited him actually had to do a special project about global warming to set the parents minds at ease.
Jo Kwong, writing for the Acton Institute, presents a similar report:
“A growing number of people are disturbed by the methods and strategies used by the environmental special interest movement, particularly in the realm of environmental education… Educators have embraced environmental extremism, fully accepting the anti-man, anti-technology, and anti-economic growth positions. School systems across the nation, often at the requirement of government mandates, are incorporating environmental education into traditional subjects such as mathematics, history, languages, and civics.”
Her review of environmental education teachings revealed a number of unsettling trends and strategies. She notes: “…it is apparent that 1) children are being scared into becoming environmental activists, 2) there is widespread misinformation in materials aimed at children, 3) children are being taught what to think, rather than how to think, 4) children are taught that man is evil, and 5) environmental education is being used to undermine the simple joys of childhood. These findings raise an important question: Are we raising critically-thinking leaders, or are we merely raising automatons that can recite the latest environmental dogma?”
The next time you feel the urge to complain viagra for cheap , consider the alternatives our ancestors have had to deal with it. When the man fails viagra for women uk to make proper erections. One of the important things cheap cialis is that your selection of mattress align your spine correctly. Without the proper viagra pills in india amount of high quality screening examinations. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) focused on the issue at the college level. In a recent report, on “sustainability,” (which uses the theory of manmade global warming as a reason to impose substantial and costly regulations that are often little more than old big-government mantras,) it found:
“Sustainability has become a discipline in its own right. We identified 1,438 degree programs at 475 colleges and universities in 65 states and provinces focused on or relating to sustainability studies. In the U.S. alone, there are 1,274 programs, with at least one program in each of the 50 states…The sustainability movement – a major force on college campuses in the United States and the rest of the Western world – has largely escaped serious critical scrutiny, until now… on campuses across the United States, where sustainability has become dogma, honest investigation of global warming is nearly impossible…Sustainability activists blur the line between pragmatic environmental protection and their utopian dreams – dreams of a carbon-free economy and dreams of a new social order that imposes redistribution of wealth and their own version of “equality.” We support good stewardship of natural resources and agree commonsense conservation measures should be encouraged. The sustainability movement works against those goals by turning environmental policymaking into regulatory power grabs.”
In response to the harms being done by the sustainability movement in higher education, NAS offered ten recommendations under three categories:
Respect Intellectual Freedom
- “Create neutral ground. Colleges and universities should be neutral in important and unresolved scientific debates, such as the debate over dangerous anthropogenic global warming. Claims made on the authority of “science” must be made on the basis of transparent evidence and openness to good arguments regardless of their source. 2. Cut the apocalyptic rhetoric. Presenting students with a steady diet of doomsday scenarios undermines liberal education. 3. Maintain civility. Some student sustainability protests have aimed at preventing opponents from speaking. Personal vitriol and ad hominem attack have no place in institutions of higher learning. 4. Stop “nudging.” Leave students the space to make their own decisions about sustainability, and free faculty members from the implied pressure to imbed sustainability into the curricula of unrelated courses.
Uphold Institutional Integrity
“Withdraw from the President’s Climate Commitment. Colleges that have signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment should withdraw in favor of openminded debate on the subject. 6. Open the books and pull back the sustainability hires. Make the pursuit of sustainability by colleges financially transparent. The growth of administrative and staff positions in sustainability drives up costs and institutionalizes advocacy at the expense of education. 7. Uphold environmental stewardship. Campuses need to recover the distinction between real environmental stewardship and a movement that uses the term as a springboard for a much broader agenda. 8. Credential wisely. Curtail the aggrandizement of sustainability as a subject. Sustainability is not a discipline or even a subject area. It is an ideology.
Be Even-Handed
- “Equalize treatment for advocates. Treat sustainability groups on campus under the same rubric as other advocacy groups. They should not enjoy privileged immunity from ordinary rules and special access to institutional resources. 10. Examine motives. College and university boards of trustees should examine demands for divestment from fossil fuels skeptically and with full awareness of the ideological context in which those demands are made.”