It's not just gender...climate propaganda dominates the schools
It’s easy to focus all our attention on the vile transgender
propaganda spewed out in schools across the country. Transgender recruitment is
a clear and present danger to children, threatening their bodily integrity and
their mental health. The menace is real. The threat is now. The consequences of
failure to stop it in its tracks are dire.
But schools are filled with Leftist propaganda, all intended
to deconstruct every aspect of our social order, our economy, and our political
system. And all these ideological movements are, ultimately, the same: some
version or another of critical Marxism, which holds that our present society is
irredeemably oppressive and must be destroyed. And destroying that is the goal
of the ideologists and their public school teacher followers.
RealClearInvestigations did a deep
dive into the Climate Change propaganda being taught in our
schools, and their findings are troubling.
For those of you unfamiliar with the site, it is a sibling
to RealClearPolitics, one of the most respected political sites on the
internet. We refer to it often, and pretty much every politico or analyst has
it on a “must read” list. They combine original reporting with links to diverse
source articles, presenting a broad based view of what is going on in politics
and what people are saying about it. When one of my articles appeared on their
list I was over the moon. I made it!
RealClearInvestigations extends the brand and the approach,
taking a deeper dive into stories with a centrist, objective approach. They try
not to take sides, at least not before they outline what is really going on.
You know, like real journalism is meant to do.
What RCI found was shocking, but not surprising. Shocking
only because the penetration of our education system by activist groups is so
extensive. They essentially control the curriculum when it comes to
environmental science, and of course on many other issues.
Public
school districts are adopting curricula on climate change from well-funded
progressive groups casting the issue as a threat to life on the planet that
students should respond to through activism.
As of fall 2020, 29
states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards that require science
classes to teach human-caused climate change as a peril beyond dispute,
according to K12 Climate Action, a
group that is part of the progressive Aspen Institute.
The
school districts often rely on information provided by advocacy groups
including the Sierra Club and the U.S. Green Building Council. A Sierra Club
teaching “toolkit” signals
a wide purpose across subject areas: “The ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of moving our
entire society to 100% clean energy — and for fighting climate change more
broadly — can be woven into many subject areas, including: biology,
chemistry, physics, and even social studies.”
Still more curricular
guidelines and suggestions are distributed by well-funded progressive groups
that include the United Nations’Office for Climate Education,
and the North American Association for Environmental Education.
You may have noticed that the younger generation is 100%
committed to the idea that life on earth is at risk; in fact, many students
believe that the human race is doomed. Many more believe that the doom is
imminent should we not radically reshape society in precisely the same way that
Leftist advocates have proposed for decades: population control,
deindustrialization, and the implementation of a communist society.
The solution is always the same; it’s only the crisis
requiring that solution that changes over time. Overpopulation; resource
depletion; insecticides; pollution; climate change. It is all the same
argument–human beings are racing headlong to a self-created apocalypse.
The only difference between now and earlier generations is
that the activists own the education system, and we have invited them in.
Many
scientists agree that human activity has contributed to the warming of the
Earth in recent decades. But it’s still not clear how much temperatures will rise in
the future and the effect that might have on society.
While the Biden administration and progressive groups who help shape the school
curricula argue that it is imperative to end or limit the use of fossil fuels,
there is vigorous debate among scientists and policy makers about the best way
to balance mitigation measures with economic and other tradeoffs that, critics
say, are largely ignored in schools.
“It’s
fine to teach climate if you summarize the pro and con arguments of climate
change,” said John Staddon, professor emeritus of biology at Duke University
and author of Science in an Age of Unreason. “But you don’t talk
about it as a concluded issue. It’s a very political area and [climate change]
is about scientific data, which is not a consensus.”
A
RealClearInvestigations review of materials used to advance climate learning
found that many contain an uncritical examination of climate change; they tend
to emphasize worst-case scenarios, and to urge encouraging students to organize
as activists.
“There are a lot of
resources out there that are … helping students draft policies as well, and
getting them involved from the beginning. And this is what we want to see, this
whole-institution approach where we’re creating this culture of climate
action,” Kristen Hargis, who works on research with the North American
Association for Environmental Education, told attendees of an August webinar.
Lesson plans for schools are written by activists, parroted
by teachers, and then students are organized to form pressure groups and even
engage in the kind of active resistance we are seeing break out around the
world. By promoting the idea that human beings and indeed all life on earth
faces extinction because of human economic activity students have been
indoctrinated with communist propaganda. Only this time the class struggle has
been replaced by a racial struggle and an environmental justice agenda.
Teaching about the environment in this manner dovetails
nicely with both Critical Race Theory and Transgender ideology, since they
share a similar and complementary view about the oppressive and harmful nature
of liberal capitalism. Capitalism is a threat to life on earth itself, and must
be replaced with one based upon a social justice model.
To
question the widely disseminated doomsday view of much climate science is to
invite outrage and personal attacks, as Wade Linger found in 2014. As a member
of the West Virginia Board of Education, Linger sought to change the wording in
a proposed lesson that would, if his amendment were adopted, allow students to
consider “factors that have caused the rise and fall” of global temperatures
over the past century, rather than only considering the idea that temperatures
have increased. Linger also suggested students be allowed to consider the
credibility of climate change data.
The
lessons he challenged were developed largely by Next Generation
Science Standards, developed by a series of mostly progressive science learning groups; they encourage
students to “[take] action within their own spheres of influence” to combat
what is presented as out-of-control global warming.
“This
was a precursor on the education scene to all the indoctrination stuff like
[critical race theory] and the gender conflicts,” Linger said in an interview
with RCI. “This was an early trial balloon to see how they can use the
system to indoctrinate kids.”
His
stance drew widespread criticism, with strangers shouting him down on
social media. State universities and
science groups sent letters to the board, denouncing Linger’s proposal.
“Adding the words ‘“and
fall’” to [the lesson] risks confusion among students between the concepts
of weather and climate,” read a letter from the National Science
Teaching Association.
Schools are being rated by non-profits based upon how well
they promote the Climate Change Narrative™, helping ensure that they aren’t
just genuflecting to the woke mafia. They must actively promote the most
radical parts of the agenda.
The
non–profit National Center for Science Education issued a report card in 2020 evaluating states on
how their public schools teach climate change. The report stated that 26 states
and District of Columbia have standards that earned a B+ or better.
The
review said its grading favored instruction reflecting that “human activity is
responsible for the global change in climate,” and that “It’s bad: climate
change is affecting and will continue to affect nature and society.”
As these standards
advance, public school districts, with enrollment this year
of some 50 million American students, are also collectively
paying millions of dollars to “sustainability officers” and their staff to
ensure schools are following “green” practices and to help districts meet their
self-imposed goals for clean energy and carbon neutrality.
All of this aims to train students not just to believe, but
to become the shock troops of the Left. Out of the ranks of the schoolchildren
in classrooms will come the teens and 20-somethings who will throw soup and
glue themselves to walls. Antifa has been nurtured by the radicals inside the
schools and those who are creating the supporting curricula. Even teachers just
seeking an easy way to build a class schedule can get sucked into the
propaganda machine, uncritically teaching a pre-prepared classroom curriculum
that is designed to create true believers.
It all adds up to a dangerous corruption of our education
system, and one that likely can’t be repaired. Just as the Left now owns academia,
they have taken over the public schools.
Some
of these administrators help foster activist student groups. In
Denver, sustainability director LeeAnn Kittle is listed as a “key community
supporter” of DPS Students for Climate Action
Policy. The student group this year successfully pressed the school
board to pass a climate plan that includes a pledge to use 100%
“clean” electric power by 2030.
Other student groups,
led by adult activists, have filed lawsuits against governments including those
in Rhode Island, Virginia, and Oregon.
Seven
Utah schoolchildren, ranging in age from 9 to 18, in March sued Utah Gov.
Spencer Cox. The lawsuit alleges
Cox, a Republican, along with several other cabinet offices and officers, are
harming the plaintiffs through “unconstitutional” fossil fuel policies.
Kittle,
whose career includes serving on the board of the U.S. Green Building Council,
said the students in the Denver advocacy group were acting on climate
“anxiety,” fed by what Kittle said were the students’ concerns over climate
change-related weather and events in the region, including wildfires and
increasing temperatures.
“None of this came from
what was taught in class,” she said. “They taught themselves how to be advocates.”
We all know that’s not true. The Left has built the
infrastructure. They created the propaganda. They disseminate it throughout the
public schools. They recruit students to engage in direct action. And they
breed the next generation of activists and rioters.
What to do? First of all, if you are parents, take your kids
out of the schools. Demand school choice from your state. Demand to see
curricula and the supporting materials. Harass your local school board. Replace
the school board. Fight back.
Can we succeed? Will we? I don’t know.
What I do know is that the danger is much larger than we
have realized. It goes far beyond remaking the gender binary, as awful as that
it. The point is to destroy Western Civilization itself, and they are well
placed to do just that.
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