Sustainability – USA Gov Policy

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its review of biased education in U.S. schools.

Much of what used to be objective science curriculum is now devoted to politically-oriented “sustainability” course work. The National Association of Scholars discussed the role of this on colleges, but the problem has now spread to grammar and high schools as well: “The sustainability movement is a way for people with a hugely unpopular political program to get into positions of influence so that they can advance their cause despite lack of public support… Sustainability advocates assume that no one can legitimately disagree with their message. They therefore have no qualms about imposing their politics on students, faculty, and staff. If someone does disagree, they attack that person’s motives and ignore his actual points…. Sustainability advocates don’t want to just add sustainability to the curriculum; they want to make it “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education… Sustainability advocates don’t like free markets or personal liberty. They believe markets ignore long-term costs and people typically make bad choices. Instead of liberty, sustainability advocates praise ‘social justice’ and ‘equitable distribution of resources’ as the foundation of a sustainable society… The proponents of sustainability aim to have ‘all students engaged as effective change agents in our sustainability challenges.’ ”

Pew Research found that “only 29% of Americans rated their country’s K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. Scientists were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16% called U.S. K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46%, in contrast, said K-12 STEM in the U.S. was below average.”

According to The 74 site , in 2016 “American teenagers’ math scores on an international test dropped last year, putting the United States in the bottom half among dozens of participating countries. ‘This pattern that we’re seeing in mathematics seems to be sort of consistent with what we’ve seen in previous assessments of mathematics literacy,’ said Peggy Carr, acting director of the National Center for Education Statistics. ‘Everything is just going down across the entire distribution. I think it is something we should keep an eye on as we move forward.’ U.S. students ranked No. 35 in math, down from No. 28 in 2012, among the 60 nations whose students took the Program for International Student Assessment in both 2012 and 2015. PISA is given every three years through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to 15-year-olds around the world, assessing performance in math, reading and science.”

As the Progressive philosophy is rammed into school curriculum, traditional cultural touchstones are forced out. This is followed to an almost ludicrous degree. The Daily Mail reported last Christmas season that “School officials in Texas are in trouble after putting up a poster “showing a picture of [the character from the Peanuts cartoon] Linus, along with a scrawny Christmas tree and a brief passage that sums up the meaning of the holiday.”

Also omitted in some jurisdictions are concepts as normal as “boy” and “girl.” Matt Walsh, writing for The Blaze reports “Charlotte public schools have banished the terms “boy” and “girl” from their classrooms. The new transgender-affirming policy allows students to select their own gender and then choose the bathroom (although that part is on hold for now), extracurricular activity, sport, etc., that best fits whatever label they happen to identify with at the moment. Boys will even be permitted to take part in “all-girl” overnight excursions, so long as they become girls for the duration of the trip. Of course, the studious observer might wonder how a boy can identify as a girl if we aren’t allowed to call people girls anymore.”
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Progressive perspectives are advocated by some educational commentators. Peter DeWitt, writing in Education Week, states: “Now that the Supreme Court made their historic decision regarding gay marriage it’s time for LGBT issues and curriculum to be spoken about in schools.”

Progressive school boards have a bizarre inclination, even while many American schools continue to provide disappointing scores in traditional subjects, to inappropriately introduce their strange version of sex education to extremely young students. In 2013, ABC News reported that “sex education will be coming to Chicago kindergartners within two years as part of an overhaul of the Chicago public schools sexual health program… Under the new policy, the youngest students – the kindergartners – will learn the basics about anatomy, reproduction, healthy relationships and personal safety.”

In addition to denigrating U.S. history and replacing cultural touchstones with sex education, outright political bias has entered the grammar school scene. In 2009, notorious—and creepy—scenes of students being led in songs praising Barack Obama were noted. The trend continues.

On the other hand, in what is becoming a commonplace scene, high school students like Maxine Yeakle, reports the Daily Mail, was threatened with suspension merely for wearing a pro-Trump T-shirt.

American schools have been transformed from an institution designed to produce well educated, capable and knowledgeable students into one dedicated to indoctrinate youth into progressive beliefs.

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?”

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“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.”

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.