Friday
Jul262013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill What goes on in schools?
Jul 26, 2013 Climate: other Education Earlier this week I had a very pleasant lunch with John Shade of the Climate Lessons blog, who was down in my neck of the woods for a holiday.
Our conversation turned to what is taught about climate change and environmentalism in schools. While we are both aware of plenty of dodgy stuff in curricula, course materials and school-facing activist websites, we were less able to put our hands on evidence of what is actually said in the classroom, or the extent to which activist material is used.
Is anyone able to throw any light on this question, either through personal experience or, better still, from data?
Reader Comments (50)
Well my daughters year 1 and 2 Christmas play was about some penguin travelling around the world concerned with the effects of Mann Made Global Warming (tm). Parents were very concerned about the relevancy of the play given it was Christmas!
Lovely singing by the kids though :)
Regards
Mailman
At my kids secondary school, they are shown the Al Gore film one week, and the Global Warming Swindle the next.
I was on a speed awareness course last weekend (doing 36 in a 30....oops) and there was a bit about climate change in that. I suspect these courses are templated centrally with all the right-on messages and then adapted slightly for the local audience.
I genuinely hope this is not a widespread attitude but who knows. It sure makes this question relevant though.
“You might not see the effects of climate change – but your grandchildren will!” It’s a lesson I’ve had drilled into my subconscious in every environmental class I’ve taken. “Make a difference, Mandy. Do it for future generations. Do it for mankind.” http://mandyshold.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/do-it-for-the-animals/
It is really an educational goal to have ideas "drilled into the subconscious" of students in "every class taken"?
There is of course the first-hand experience of Alfred in New Zealand, previously mentioned here at BH.
My 14 year old son in secondary school in South West England was shown this video Tuvalu - Islands on the front line of climate change. I made him read one of the essays by Willis to get some perspective. This was in Geography, where I would have hoped that the teacher would have known what a coral atoll is ! As far as I can tell it is only the Geography department that are big in AGW, I don't see it being linked to from other subjects, but I'll check with him when he gets back from his literacy field trip on Dartmoor writing peoms about how there aren't any poley bears left ;-)
For a start, NOTE OF MEETING OF GEOGRAPHY EXCELLENCE GROUP, WEDNESDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2010 on Scottish Government Website.
Bish - good to hear you met with John, he has not been commenting much lately and I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him.
My eldest kid (P4) has not had any overt religious indoctrination yet, well not of the AGW type, but a parent I know who has a child in P5 had a 20 minute lesson on global warming last term which sounded very dubious. I get the impression that in Scotland, it is from P5 onwards that the Curriculum for
ExcellenceMediocrity with all its Global Citizenship bollocks kicks in, but much depends on the teachers and their interpretation of it, and to some extent the school management and local authority education dept. My eldest had an excellent teacher last year, but I am not so confident there will be such impartiality in August. To be fair to teachers, they are fed some appalling propaganda by Education Scotland - just look at the links on the right hand side - Skeptical Science, the BBC and the Met Office, WWF, The Guardian, Oxfam etc. Education Scotland climate bollocks and Education Scotland more climate bollocks.A niece in the 6th form (Gloucestershire) recently reported to me that the school debating society had organised a turn on the topic. Her interest is mild, but the take home message was that she certainly seemed well aware that a lot of alarmist bollox gets talked.
nb Hyperthermania, is that the same as facultative hyperthermia?
http://www.bcscience10.com/pgs/enter_hv.html
Why I wrote a letter of protest to the BC school board. Open the ecosystem link.
Sorry bish, but I lent my copy of HSI to my daughters chemistry teacher. He read it and said he agreed with everything in it. Unfortunately, he retired the next year so my other 2 daughters will not have the wisdom of an 'old school' teacher.
Incidentally, My eldest did general studies a level last year. There was a question about climate change. After hearing me going on about it for so long she decided to give her real opinions, and not just what the marking scheme demanded. She did well, very well and I can only presume that she had a marker who understood the balance of opinions, and not that the science was settled
I mentioned this in Unthreaded a while ago; I have a fragment of a timetable from the local comprehensive. Only two days are fully visible which show that whichever year it is have at least two periods a week of something called "Managing Environmental Resources", from what is visible of a third day there are another two periods which could be the same thing.
Ironically I have this item because one of the junior environmentalists concerned dumped it in my garden along with the rest of the rubbish which those unfortunate enough to live close to one of our beacons of learning fall heir to on a daily basis in term time.
Based on the content of the school newsletter I assume this is what they are taught rather than English.
@confused - That reference to still getting a good grade is encouraging, but was a brave thing to do. I encourage my son to give the 'expected' answer but add on a little doubt / 'other studies draw different conclusions' kind of statement at the end.
@ michael hart - facultative hyperthermia - had to look it up, but no, it's more along the lines of:
Hyper = obsessively concerned
Therm = Energy
Mania = irritable mood
(Sums me up quite well !)
Bish, it's not so much about the CAGW stuff, pernicious as that may be. It is taught in Ausatralian schools as a matter of course. What is really concerning is the "sustainability" stream, which is predicated on assumptions such as that we are rapaciously working our way through a small amount of finite resources; that future generations will be poorer for it; that "organic" is better than anything else for growing crops or raising livestock; and so on.
People will move on from the CAGW scare as it dissipates, but the damage done by the associated "sustainability" bullshit will linger. It is embedded throughout our school curricula in the ACT, Australia. I am happy to provide links in abundance to anyone who asks for them. They make no secret of it.
Could I put in a plug here for the Spiked website ("humanity is underrated"), which addresses these issues. I don't agree with everything they publish, but at least they don't start from the position that human existence is something that has to be compensated for.
My daughter brought home a simplified graph depicting the hockey stick for Geography homework.
Having said that, she has had other such influences such as ocean currents and cloud cover effects taught to her, as well as the usual all conquering CO2 effects.
In German schools, it seems children are being taught that only *males* are responsible for climate change:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/23/indoctrination-at-schools-in-germany-reaches-new-level-children-taught-men-cause-climate-change/
Phew, that's me off the hook, then ...
Barbara -
You may be off the hook, but surely my guilt is now doubled. I will consider polygamy as the way to mitigate my sins by amortizing them over a larger group.
Son No 1 (22) is reading The Delinquent Teenager at the moment. He says he has viewed everything I have said with an element of scepticism (sceptical of sceptics), having been taught for as long as he can remember, he says, about CO2, the greenhouse effect and global warming. He has asked me for the HSI which I will hand over to him, but thought I'd get him going with Donna's book as it is an easy read anad might stimulate more questioning from him. And, get this, he's a student engineer, but obviously hasn't learnt to question everything just yet.
Mind you, I am not surprised as it strikes me that you are battered with warmist propaganda every which way you turn. Whereas I might just shrug it off and roll my eyes, it is just the norm for them and possibly they don't much bother to question it, just accept it as a given and carry on with their lives. Until he's out of uni working and paying for himself and realising that the cost of electricity is so expensive he cannot afford to go out, I doubt whether the penny will drop just yet.
Son No 2 is a great cricketer and would probably welcome a bit of global warming as last season was a complete wash-out, much to his disgust. Roll on the next Ashes Test. The heat was a great excuse to blob in front of the telly to watch the last Test.
We were in Oz 18 months ago coming out of a restaurant chatting to the cuzzies as a drunk man fell out of a taxi, heard our English accents and started abusing us, claiming that we wouldn't have the Ashes for much longer, we were useless at cricket, etc. I hope he remembers the tirade and is squirming right now (although it would be bad to start counting our chickens just yet).
My children are adults. But you all might like leave a comment on the WWF 'New school curriculum includes climate change, but not sustainability'
http://www.wwf.org.uk/news_feed.cfm?6741/New-school-curriculum-includes-climate-change-but-not-sustainability=&utm_source=News+Mailing+List&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Untitled1&utm_campaign=NEWS_Jul13_GJJ016001_ShortTB&_ccCt=vkNMDsnzD6CAjyVWZQIypnp2uokEWpRr39F7P8nnMOH94mDhvphr5mrvZlcNWqqu
Harold
Talk about making your bad situation worse ;-))
I can't speak for what the school curriculums are here in Oregon, but we work with students in grades 1 - 12 from a number of school districts and I can relate what our programs present. They usually involve 1 - 2 days of in class preperation, where we practice sampling protocols and discuss what objectives the students are trying to achieve. Next comes a day in the field. The students are expected to have a hypothsis and a list of questions to prove or disprove that hypothesis. We proceed to sample and collect data. Our programs are mostly centered on aquatic and terrestrial ecology, with salmon habitat being a focal point. I make a point about recording their data and findings, as they have to give a 5 minute presentation to the rest of their class at the end of the day before getting on the bus back to school. It is also a chance to remind them of why recording data is important. Questions are usually answered with a question back to them. Hypothesis and theory which is headed in an incorrect direction are not corrected, but instead addressed with further questions. One of the primary goals of our programs is to develop critical thinking skills and not to lecture on subject matter. Another is to ensure the students have fun. While this last may sound like "progressive" and fuzzy learning, the simple fact is that enjoyment of their day doing science in the field can be a catylst to jumpstarting a student's interest in science and math. Best of all, we have follow up assessment programs, which are showing hard results. Students involved with our programs are scoring higher in achievement testing than their counterparts. We have kids who are going to college when they otherwise would not have. We have placed students in intern and job opportunities with organizations such as Portland Water Bureau, US Fish & Wildlife, US Forest Service, etc.
It has occurred to me that an invitation to Dr Mann and some others (David Appell, are you listening) might not be a bad idea. It might do him good to be reintroduced to what real science looks like. I've had 3rd graders exhibit the scientific method better than he does these days.
I seem to recall Tallbloke had some examples of this a little while ago.
Watching the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, one young lady when asked whether she knew what principal gases made up the atmosphere was quite positive in her answer: Carbon Dioxide was the one!
There's a rather good UK-based blog on this very topic:
http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/
invisibleserfscollar.com
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invisibleserfscollar.com
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Bish, have you looked at GCSE and A-level past papers in the relevant subjects (science, geography, maybe other subjects)? These should be available online on the exam boards' websites, along with the mark schemes which show the expected answers. They will probably be in PDF format and searchable for key words such as 'climate'.
Mrs Morph and I were invited to an evening with the teachers at Morph Juniors school recently. As it is a fee paying one they wanted to show what he was going to be taught.
One of the lessons was in English language - an ode to a leaf. I failed that one I'm afraid.
The second one was Geography and the subject was "wind farms". We were supposed to sit on one side of the class or the other depending on if we thought they were good or bad, I sat on the bad side with 2 others. We three heretics were subject to looks ranging from pity to outright hatred.
Anyway it turns out the teacher had prepared answers to key arguments.
Parent 1 - they kill birds. Answer - oh no, more die by flying into buildings.
Parent 2 - they are ugly. Answer - look at this power station (picture of Torness put on screen). I actually think Torness PS looks quite nice, but I have worked there once or twice.
Parent 3, me - They are unreliable and expensive. Answer, er - there isn't a slide for this. Did you know there was a period last winter when there was no wind or solar at all ? No she didn't. Also do you know you can't run a steel plant on renewable energy ?
The lesson was closed at that point.
One of the other "doubting" parents turned out to be a fascinating chap who works for charities in dangerous parts of the world as security. Glad I went for the chat afterwards alone.
Morph junior already knows the skeptic arguments and already knows he will have to make his own mind up at some point. At the moment he cares more about whether his Xbox works and whether he is banned from it or not!
I wouldn't get too worked up about it. What is taught and what is learnt are two very different things.
If a teacher rams green sustainability down kids' throats, then they will mostly reject the message. If a teacher teaches a "sustainability" unit, but clearly doesn't care personally, then the kids will take home the unsaid message that it's all a bit of bollocks.
The teachers that might make an influence are those that do it discreetly, as part of their everyday activities -- that is, those who actually live the message. And there is nothing you can do about those, because they teach it outside the curriculum. Of course there are also those, like me, that actively subvert the "green" and "sustainable" message in our schools, so the personal influence tends to balance out.
People put a lot of faith in what is in curricula. It is misplaced faith. The Soviets tried for years to get their message in schools. And they really, really tried -- starting from kindergarten and dismissing anyone "off message". It failed utterly in Eastern Europe, because as soon as they came home the kids' heard a view they were much more likely to listen to (it was more successful in Russia, but only because the parents bought in too). Conversely religious conservatives have tried in many countries to teach a conservative religious line. Say Franco in Spain, who ladled on the Catholicism. It was no more successful.
Data point: in New Zealand it's no secret that at least 75% of teachers are Labour voters, and not shy to hide it. Yet National (our Tories) still manage to get young voters.
In my school it would be 90% Labour in the staffroom. Yet most of our kids are openly National supporters (being country kids and/or maori) and are totally impervious to their teachers' effort to persuade them.
Hi Mooloo - I would agree with you except for one thing: The opportunity cost of a lesson packed with BS.
When the teacher is droning on about Carbon being the enemy they are not learning calculus or even learning say the atomic weight of carbon.
A long time ago my daughter went on a "healthy eating" day trip where they learnt all kinds of deadly percentages - eg foods that were 60% fat or s-s-s-seventy percent fat or whatever. Problem was that they had not done percentages yet so they came away with the idea that "percentage' was a measure of evilness.
I think the teachers love these kind of things cos they can have a day off while someone else bores the kids. Have you seen Harold the freakin Giraffe? I've got a photo of the Harold brainwaschung staffel having a fag outside McDonalds.
Oddly I just bought a helper book for the AQA GCSE in science.
It's packed with this kind of thing:
"Gold is a soft malleable metal with the symbol Au. Poor people cannot afford to buy much gold. Write how you feel about this injustice"
OK this is an exaggeration but the book - and I guess the syllabus - covers loads of stuff that is outside of science. Science (and engineering) will build you an atom bomb but science will not say if it is OK to drop it on your enemy. Science will never answer this question and its a waste of time in the science class.
Jul 26, 2013 at 10:21 PM | Jack Hughes
Don't get started on the whether fat is unhealthy topic....
In a previous life I was a Physics teacher in Scottish comprehensive schools.
At times, I would despair at how unquestioning my pupils would be when entering my class.
So, I used to wind them up!
Once they'd caught on they would start to question what I'd said and then it became fun to teach them.
Strangely enough, they all responded well and their examination results were consistently above average.
At the time I congratulated myself about how great a teacher I was and took enormous pleasure from the consternation of my more didactic colleagues!
Over the last quarter of a century I've met and talked to many ex-pupils and their peers and the observation that deflated my ego was that both groups, as adults, had turned into self-reliant and questioning individuals (without my help for the most part)
The kids will be alright, apart those few, sad perpetual-adolescents who never experienced the transition from childhood to adult exemplified by the quote:
“If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”
After my youngest daughter graduated from high school 12 years ago, I stopped paying attention to what is being taught in the Boulder Valley School District (home of NCAR and all the other climate-catastrophe organizations in and around Boulder, Colorado).
But, during the time my kids were in the public schools, and especially in elementary and middle school, I had two glimpses into the climate propaganda that was being inculcated back in the 80's and 90's. I have no reason to assume it's gotten any better since then. One is the "Odyssey of the Mind" program that was being used to brainwash impressionable young minds about all things environmental and sustainable. The other was blatant brainwashing done by a fifth-grade teacher using unapproved teaching materials. I wrote about those two things in the one and only blog article I ever wrote in December 2009. For those who might be interested in seeing what one particular teacher got away with for years before my wife and I became aware of it and put a stop to it, click on my name above.
(I don't provide the link in a sneaky attempt to drive traffic to my blog. Like I said, it's the only article I ever wrote on it and then lost interest/got busy with other stuff, and never made any attempt to monetize it. It's just easier to point interested readers there than to repeat everything I wrote there. But as a teaser, the drawing that my 11-year-old daughter brought home to finish coloring was shocking, to say the least.)
Lynn, your link does not appear, and googling has not helped me to find your blog post. Can you please just copy and paste your link - which we can then put into the google box to find it?
http://oldfartmusings.blogspot.com/2009/12/escapees-from-asylum.html
Here it is.
I think she must have been embarrassed about the name ...!
In a local newspaper I came across some evidence of what young children are taught in school. I've hosted the picture I took of the newspaper on my own blog. Click here to see it.
Called a "glimpse into our tropical future" it shows the frightening pictures that children drew imagining what would happen to the local area if we were flooded by rising sea water (though we are some 400' above sea level).
Agenda 21 is something they plan for to happen in the 21 century?
What about Climate Change propaganda for adults.
I posted this once before I got done by a speed camera up north about 2 year ago and it was either 3 points or a speed awareness course.
So this speed awareness course was in a working mens club in Dartford run by Kent County Council.Slightly surreal it was in a bar place stank of stale beer.Wallpaper and the plaster was peeling off and the carpet was worn.About 30 of us all sat around tables.It was 2 driving instructors showing road safety vidioes.
Usual thing as you would expect droning on for about 3 hours about car crashes and why you shouldnt speed.Okay fair enough get on with it then lets get out.
Eventually they got around to "how driving slower protects the enviroment". Fairplay one of them did say "some of you may not agree with this but dont blame us its what we have been told to tell you".
Driving faster produces lots of extra CO2 which traps heat blah blah blah.So I put my hand up and piped up with "whats this got to do with road safety".These instructors had had this question before so they went to their default position "just drive slower and save a bit of petrol".Now I could have made a my little heroic stand against totallitarian authoritarianism
In the road safety world,However by then them us by then just wanted to finished and go home.
One of those occasions when you wish I wish I had said that"so if we go outside and hug a tree for 10 minutes can we all have our 3 points back.".Lucilly for them they didnt mention speed humps.
Barbara wrote:
In German schools, it seems children are being taught that only *males* are responsible for climate change:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/23/indoctrination-at-schools-in-germany-reaches-new-level-children-taught-men-cause-climate-change/
I'm ashamed to admit it but the Germans are absolutely right. After all, (and not meaning any offence) how many machines can you think of that were invented by women?
If only men had paid more attention to women's views back in the Stone Age, the world not be facing an environmental catastrophe today. :-)
If you are including universities in the term school, then students are generally catastrophists when told to say so and are generally skeptic when allowed to speak freely.
The Open University is full of AGW BS. See Book1 of the S104 course.
I would have started a science foundation course with physics, chemistry, biology etc and ended with a few paragraphs on the current fahion. There is also very little practical experiment in 104 but S101 was full of useful informative experiments and zero AGW.
+1 for SJF's comment re past papers. There are some iPhone apps depending on the examination board. If it is in the exams, it will be being taught.
//
Maybe more of interest to John Shade, but try getting hold of some evaluation copies of text books or try your library. For example look at Pearson Exploring Science series "How science works, book 7" ISBN 9781405892469 section 7I. Note this publication series is backed up by BBC Active:
"The number one KS3 science course
Fully accessible for all your pupils, these best-selling Pupil Books are differentiated to four levels of ability to cater for a range of teaching and learning styles. Visually stimulating and packed with fascinating facts, they are built around real-world themes and integrate How Science Works throughout to provide the best tools to motivate your pupils. "
https://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Secondary/Science/AssessmentforLearning/ExploringScienceHowScienceWorks/ISBN/StudentResources/ExploringScienceHowScienceWorksYear7StudentBookwithActiveBook.aspx?try=1
http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/secondary/search.aspx?pearson_keywords=active&pearson_subject=36318
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exploring-Science-Student-ActiveBook-Works/dp/1405892463/ref=sr_1_1/280-7156501-6745231?ie=UTF8&qid=1374958865&sr=8-1&keywords=9781405892469
http://www.bbcactive.com/
//
Also try searching some forums like "the student room" to see what pupils themselves are saying. Good category filters and try both "climate change" and "global warming". For example:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/search.php?query=climate+change&filter[forumid]=%2885%29&applied=1
//
Plus mumsnet will give some parental views:
http://www.mumsnet.com/info/search?query=global+warming+gcse
//
PS = re: past papers - the marking schemes will show what were the "correct" answers.
johanna,
matthu found the URL by clicking on my name at the *bottom* of the post. (It's hard for us old farts to remember which blogs put commenters names at the top and bottom of comments while we're typing a comment.) But since you asked, here is the URL for your copy-and-pasting pleasure:
http://oldfartmusings.blogspot.com/2009/12/escapees-from-asylum.html
And no, matthu, I wasn't embarrassed by the name. I was just trying to use the optional "Author URL" field in the comment form. Next time I won't try to be so tricky.
Also, "she" is a "he". Gender-neutral names suck. ;-)
Off-topic. but I'm amazed - and encouraged - by how many responses there are on here from our dear friends in distant lands..
Thanks - and keep reading the Bish..!
I'll have to put the audio up to my daughters infants school song (Saving the Planet is in the chorus) :(
If your looking for collegiate material I have a wealth of information for you.
At UNH we were required to take a class called energy and the environment. The lectures were essentially a pitch of hypothetical green tech sans any empirical or cost data. We learned about solar roads, Indoor farming, mag-lev trains and even the benefits of restricting agriculture and diet to locally grown foods just so we can cut down on oil use.
I was a chemical engineer during our design class we had to watch gasland, not the whole thing but the highlight reels. I presented contradictory evidence which was dismissed including explaining the problems with the exploding faucet.
there are others that I'm willing to share if you need them
This is what has been recently going on at a school near <A href="http://www.countingcats.com/?p=12303">Blackpool. The story was reported in the Blackpool Evening Gazette. Even now no one has questioned the huge gaps and timeline anomalies in the narrative. It was taken at face value by the journalist.
Sorry, I screwed up on the html.
Here is the link.
Lots of good (bad?) stuff here in these comments. The most recent one from Lynne leads to a vivid post from which I quote this extract
The senior undergraduate student whose blog Mike C links to above (July 26) is, in my view, another such victim several years further on.