My son spent his first few years of school in the nearest public school, and a number of
reasons led us to educate him at home for the 3rd through 12th grades. One factor
in our decision was the leftist propaganda that he was being taught, including the idea that
he could "save the earth" by picking up litter in his spare time and avoiding the use of
styrofoam. That was only a small part of it, of course, and we figured the
politically correct nonsense was bound to get worse – with later grades learning
only the humanist side of evolution, environmentalism, animal rights, and birth
control – and there was no point in sending him to school every day only to
un-teach him at night, so we pulled him out of the public school system.
This page is about the specific issue of environmentalism in American schools. It is my
goal to provide enough anecdotal evidence to show that the schools are being used as more to
indoctrinate kids than to give them the ability to make wise decisions and sort out truth from
fiction.
This is a spin-off from the page about Liberalism
and Political Correctness in schools. You may also find interesting material on my
page(s) about Environmentalism.
California State Senate Approves New Global Warming
Curriculum. The bill was controversial in the Senate because it simply requires "climate
change" to be taught, without requiring balance between the positions of alarmists and skeptics. "I
find it disturbing that this mandate to teach this theory is not accompanied by a requirement that the
discussion be science-based and include a critical analysis of all sides of the subject," state Sen. Tom
McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), said during the Senate debate, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Globally Warm Schools: As Global
Warming becomes an issue in people's lives, it has also become part of school's curricula. I recently learned that my
boss's son had an assignment and quiz in his Spanish class on Global Warming. In many of the questions students had to
translate sentences from Spanish to English but with a Global Warming theme. They even had to watch Al Gore's
movie, "Inconvenient Truth," which has been a part of several school courses.
Letters from Sixth Grade Students Reveal Global
Warming Indoctrination. If you doubt some teachers are trying to brainwash schoolchildren with
global warming alarmism, take a look inside the sixth grade classroom of teacher Michael Steria at David A.
Brown Middle School in Wildomar, California. Twenty-five sixth graders teamed up to write eight letters
to The Heartland Institute describing what they had been taught about global warming. Steria sent the
letters to the institute in March.
Is classroom Global Warming preaching
indoctrinating the next generation? Do you know what your children are learning in school about
climate change? Have you ever looked at their textbooks? Is it education or indoctrination? How
accurate are the facts? How much is it an ideological or a political message? Is it a balanced
curriculum offering options or one imposing a singular view? How much is fear the vehicle of
indoctrination?
Do kids learn junk environmentalism in
schools? Johnny can't read, write or do math. But he may know how to save the Earth.
Johnny knows about global warming, acid rain, nuclear power, deforestation, big oil and capitalism.
Johnny knows all this because his teachers have told him so. And they got help from interest groups,
the Environmental Protection Agency and green textbooks that purport to explain these Earth-in-the-balance
issues.
Junk Science: Why do teachers so often
force-feed kids one-sided facts and theories about the world? Wouldn't education be much more stimulating
if schools focused on broad underlying debates, instead of assumed dogma? For example, over the years my
children have all gotten scary lectures on "global warming." They learn that global temperatures could
rise 5 to 10 degrees celsius in the next fifty years mostly because of burning fossil fuels.
Polar ice-caps could melt. Oceans might flood coastal cities. No wonder kids want to be tucked
in at night!
Why is Public Education Failing?
Social, political, multicultural and especially environmental issues are rampant in the new
math programs and textbooks. One such math text is blatant. Dispersed throughout
the eighth grade textbooks are short, half page blocks of text under the heading "SAVE PLANT
EARTH." One of the sections describes the benefits of recycling aluminum cans and tells
students, "how you can help." In many of these textbooks there is literally no math.
Instead there are lessons asking children to list "threats to animals," including destruction
of habitat, poisons and hunting. The book contains short lessons in multiculturalism
under the recurring heading "Cultural Kaleidoscope."
All Wet:
P.C. in the Heartland. [Scroll down] A more egregious example is Application B on the same
page, which instructs students to use what they've been taught "and other research, [to] write a letter to your
legislator arguing against the sale of DDT to Third World countries when it is banned in the U.S." This
requirement is both stupid and cruel. Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes, is one of
the worst scourges on the planet, particularly for the inhabitants of poor tropical countries.
Students
Urged to Focus on Their 'Carbon Footprints'. Attention, class: This is National Environmental
Education Week, a time to actively engage K-12th grade students and teachers in "an inspired week of
environmental learning" before Earth Day on April 22. … The theme of this year's Environmental
Education Week is "carbon footprints." The lessons and activities are "designed to infuse environmental
education into everyday learning."
Bill would require California's
science curriculum to cover climate change. Reading, writing and … global warming? A
Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require "climate change" to be among the
science topics that all California public school students are taught. The measure, by state Sen. Joe
Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public
schools include climate change.
Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Cult of Gaia (1999):
[Scroll down] The concept [of Earth worship] is also being promoted in some schools. Education analyst Eric Buehrer,
president of Gateways to Better Education, says: "The Gaia theory is another New Age idea that springs
up every so often in science curriculum. This is the idea that the Earth is a spiritual entity, that all
life on the planet is part of that entity — like cells in a global brain. For instance, I came
across an outdoor activity in which children were taught that trees had spirits we could talk to. At
the top of the student worksheet the activity was titled 'We are one with nature.'"
Alaska Teachers Indoctrinated with Misleading
Global Warming Materials. Schoolteachers across Alaska are being fed exaggerated and false global
warming alarmist materials to distribute to their students, thanks to the taxpayer-funded University of
Alaska-Fairbanks. This summer, approximately 60 teachers attended the university's Science Teacher
Education Program, during which they were given global warming propaganda that has been thoroughly rejected by
sound science.
RI Students Must Watch 'Inconvenient
Truth' to Graduate. To receive a degree from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, students
are being forced to watch "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary on global warming produced by former Vice
President Al Gore. The science class requirement has prompted one conservative student to declare
that "we should stop calling these schools 'bastions of knowledge' since they're really bastions of leftist
thought."
Gore's
Inconvenient Truth required classroom viewing? First it was his world history class. Then
he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In
total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth
shown to him by four different teachers this year. "I really don't understand why they keep showing it,"
says McKenzie (his parents asked that his last name not be used).
Public Schools are Not Accountable to
Parents. The past several decades have witnessed the systematic "dumbing down" of public
education: the curriculum got diluted with non-academic subjects and frivolous activities; proven
methods for teaching reading, writing, math, science and reasoning got replaced with unproven, inferior
methods; and objectivity got sacrificed to "political correctness" propaganda, such as socialism,
environmentalism, multiculturalism and moral relativism.
Environmental Disinformation
101. By every conceivable measure, the environment is getting better, not worse, with
time but most college professors are reluctant to acknowledge the improvement, particularly on their
own campuses.
Environmentalist Propaganda for
Kids. The Future of the Earth may be the most insidious of all because its target audience
is young people between the ages of 10 and 12, who are susceptible to big pictures, big print, and
oversimplified concepts. Young persons who have yet to grasp a significant perspective of our history can
be easily taken in by the excellent prose and attractive pictures and drawings in this book.
America's pristine myth: Next
week my daughter will go back to elementary school, and I will be faced with a choice. At some point the
curriculum will cover the environment, and she'll be taught that before Europeans settled the Americas the
Indians lived so lightly on the land that for all practical purposes the hemisphere was a wilderness. The
forests and plains, the teacher will explain, were crowded with bison, beaver, and deer; the rivers, with fish;
flights of passenger pigeons darkened the skies. The continent's few inhabitants walked beneath an endless
forest of tall trees that had never been disturbed.
"Earth Day
Every Day" proclaims the official sign for Merrill Middle
School in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The school [has an] apparent emphasis
on environmental activism instead of academics. Imagine what our
kids could do and learn if every day was math day, history day, science day,
and reading and writing day?
Photo
courtesy of Jeff
Lindsay, used with permission.
Talkin' Trash: Two
new reports charge that American school children are being manipulated and frightened by a
steady stream of politically motivated educational materials that distort the facts about
environmental issues.
Saving the Planet
Without Scaring Kids to Death: Parents need facts to counter
environmental extremism in the classroom.
Colleges
Foster Radical Environmentalism. There is nothing wrong with studying ecology or how the
environment works. Thousands of students learn important scientific facts each day, which allows our
nation to make technological advances. There is a problem, however, when faculty use theories and propose
solutions that are radical and unchallenged by alternative views. Environmental studies coursework often
lends itself to this type of unanswered, radical, progressive thought, much like women's studies, peace studies
and postmodern studies.
UT professor says death is imminent. A
University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population
dead. "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests
at St. Edward's University on Friday [3/31/2006]. Pianka's words are part of what he calls
his "doomsday talk" — a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and
Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a
fraction of civilization.
UTA
Scientist wants 90% of you to die horribly. Have you ever heard of Dr. Eric Pianka?
No? Well you might want to learn a bit more about him. Why? Because he reportedly
wants you to die. Specifically he wants you to die of Ebola virus. You might also be
interested to know that he is the Denton Cooley Centennial Professor of Zoology at the University
of Texas at Arlington.
Parents,
Schools Urged to Create 'Eco-Conscious' Kids: As a new school year begins, one environmental
activist group is urging parents and schools to make concern for the environment part of the younger
generation's mindset and "lifestyle." For starters, kids should use "post-consumer, recycled"
notebook paper and cedar pencils — and they should know why they're doing it.
Editor's Note:
The story above is an example of a government school being used for leftist indoctrination
instead of education. If the curriculum included more of the basics — reading,
writing and responsible citizenship — with less emphasis on environmentalist
propaganda, we would all benefit.
Paul Bunyan Meets Sierra Sue Happy
and the Democrats: The politically correct and powerful Sierra Club is having a contest for
America's schoolchildren. The idea is to give Paul Bunyan a makeover. No, what it really amounts to
is re-education camp a la the Chinese Red Guard's Cultural Revolution. The idea is to deconstruct and
remake folk heroes like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Sunbonnet Sue, Mike Fink and others by reconstructing them
into politically correct green icons.
Green zombies: Are our
schools producing green zombies? Ask any student in any grade what causes global warming; odds are that
their reply will be cars, or fossil fuels or "human activity." Take, for example, the workbook
entitled Vocabulary Workshop, published
by Holt, Rinehart and Winston for middle-school English students. Among the 29 lesson
titles, consider these:
Down to the sea with Jacques Cousteau
What is the forecast for Brazil's rain forest?
Jean of the environment
Balancing society and the environment: Global warming
Catching the sun for energy
This in an English workbook?
Group
Cries Foul Over Alleged Liberal Agenda Textbooks: "By omitting important facts and by distorting
others, these textbooks do not prepare students to think critically about important environmental issues,"
said Chris Patterson, Director of Education Research for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Among the
issues most disputed are acid rain, pollution, species and rain forests, Human population growth, and climate
change. In one instance, Patterson said each textbook gave different numbers for the remaining size of
South America's rain forest. "Glencoe says that 75 million acres of rain forest has been destroyed,
Holt says 32, Prentice Hall says 15," Patterson said. "None of them cite where they got the information,
but in fact, according to a NASA study, 7.5 million has been destroyed."
Other countries' experiences:
Indoctrination at school really works.
Children losing sleep over global warming.
Half of children between the ages of seven and 11 are anxious about the effects of global warming and often lose
sleep over it, according to a new report. A survey of 1,150 youngsters found that one in four blamed
politicians for the problems of climate change, while one in seven said their own parents were not doing
enough to improve the environment.
Gore
film made free and convenient for schools. All Australian high school students will be conveniently
able to get their hands on a copy of the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, with the movie
to be given to schools free of charge.
In England, they take it one step further:
Every British teen to see Gore's An
Inconvenient Truth. The British government will send a copy of Al Gore's film about global
warming, An Inconvenient Truth, to every secondary school in the country, the U.K. environment minister
announced Friday [2/2/2007].
School row over Al
Gore film. Parents who claim that an award-winning film on climate change is inaccurate and
politically motivated are threatening a legal challenge over the [British] Government's decision to send
it to every secondary school.
Update:
Father
in High Court bid to stop Al Gore's 'sentimental climate mush' being shown in schools.
Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth was described in the High Court
today [9/27/2007] as containing "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush".
The attack came as father-of-two Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of The New Party,
challenged the Government's decision to provide the film to every secondary school in England.
Updated again:
Schools
must warn of Gore climate film bias. Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils
Al Gore's controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday. The move follows a
High Court action by a father who accused the Government of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda by showing
it in the classroom.
A convenient fraud now
being exposed. Be aware that a judge this month instructed British teachers showing the film to
tell their pupils that [Al] Gore makes at least 11 false or unsupported claims. I hate to think it is
necessary to remind our own teachers to do likewise, but I fear the worst. Every school in [Australia]
has now been offered free DVDs of An Inconvenient Truth, by Paramount and Jackgreen International,
which makes money from the global warming scare. Even the Environment Protection Authority is urging
schools to show it.
Al Gore's
inconvenient judgment: An Inconvenient Truth won plaudits from the environmental lobby
and an Oscar from the film industry but was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in
London. Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential
candidate's documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children.
Some Inconvenient Truths For Gore:
Al Gore's documentary on climate disaster has been ruled a work of fiction by a British judge. In legal
terms, his global warming hysteria has been assuming facts not in evidence.
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