Sunday
Oct242010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Climate education
Oct 24, 2010 Climate: other Education There are a couple of interesting posts I'd like to draw your attention to on the "Climate change in schools" front.
Climate Lessons is preparing a list of all the global warming websites directed at children and is looking for help and assistance.
Meanwhile, Harmless Sky asks "What the hell are we doing to our children?"
Reader Comments (24)
richard
Dr Richard Trol seems not even have matured enuf to find a hairdresser all by himself?
so why the ipcc author ship.
Why? why??
The entire school curriculum has been infiltrated with eco-babble.
Drilling down to the National Curriculum in science for Key Stage 3 (11 - 14 year olds) the syllabus is split into these areas:
organisms, their behaviour and the environment
Level 7 has an odd - and controversial topic: "...for example the short-term and long-term effects of environmental change on ecosystems"
But to rate as "exceptional" a pupil has to be skilled at "... addressing problems arising from global climate change."
Materials, their properties and the Earth
At level 5 a pupil has to describe "the benefits and drawbacks of the use of fossil fuels."
Energy, forces and space
At level 6 a pupil must explain the importance of "the responsible use of unsustainable sources of energy."
Level 7 is more bland stuff about the solar system, but it hots up at level 8:
"relating the dissipation of energy during energy transfer to the need to conserve limited energy resources."
And an exceptional pupil knows the importance of "alternative methods of electricity generation."
There's also pages and pages of boilerplate stuff from the PC handbook about "healthy eating" and "bullying" ad nauseam. It makes me want to start smoking.
Have just asked my 15 year old daughter in state education and she seems to know nothing about global warming............. but interestingly whilst writing I thought I'd rephrase the question
What do you know about climate change?
oh yeah this was an advert on television about using too much energy and poles melting and polar bears dying (slightly paraphrased)
However she doesn't seem to have collected that inofrmation in school
I have a three year old child so I am keenly interested in all of this.
For what it's worth, I suspect the most beneficial approach is pragmatism. As in, teach it to your child.
Help them understand that the game is to jump through the school hoops and get the piece of paper.
All the while encouraging an enquiring mind.
Deja vu
"We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficient influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_Soviet_Union
When I was 15, I asked my father if I could become a footballer. He said, you're too young to be a footballer.
When I was 16, I asked my father if I could be a footballer. He said, you're too old to be a footballer.
Indoctrination of our kids is just a step too far...they've crossed the line...contravined the unwritten law...
It's time Andrew climbed into the nearest phonebox and got his alter-ego gear on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpX3XdU-V9o
I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium yesterday. Overall a very interesting and educational experience, up to the final exhibit.
They call it "Flaming Flamingoes" and it is clearly targeted at children. It includes such nonsense as the wavy line at about 5 ft above water level round the flamingo enclosure, labelled as "Sea level by 2100", another section on "The Simmering Seas" (I kid you not), another on the dire fate of Emperor Penguins as Antarctica melts, another on the death of all corals due to acids seas, and more.
Not a hint of uncertainly in any of the statements about how we are destroying that planet.
I know this is a taboo suggestion, but it made me think of how the Hitler Youth were educated.
Avoid this misanthropic pollution of your kids' lives and minds - home educate. While it's still legal. (steveta_uk just reminded me of who banned it in Germany - and why)
Kids today?
They believe all that we say!
They have no other choice,
but to listen to our voice.
We tell them that they'll all die,
and all they do is cry!
The die is cast.
That's what we tell them.
In between the lessons of maths,
and spellung!
Don't worry, kids, about the past
just take a note.
You are the last!
RIP
For some reason many of us much prefer to believe instead of thinking. It is so much easier than working the answer our for ourselves.
Logic has given way to dogma. That is sad and even scary. How long will it take 10:10 and such "forward thinking" groups to reestablish the Inquisition?
For some time now I have watched the school systems go from educating the young to training them in what to believe. Now those children have grown up and become our "scientists". Who will do the real science now? Who will find the cures for cancer? Who will figure out the cosmos? Who will unravel epigenetics?
Those are serious questions, and the answers seem to get bleaker and and bleaker.
steveta_uk
While looking for teaching sites to publicise on the Harmless Sky thread mentioned above, I came across photos of rows of smiling children involved in sustainable activities wearing identical green t-shirts, and had exactly the same taboo thought. At least the kids singing “tomorrow belongs to me” in “Cabaret” were looking forward to something.
O/T
Prominent story in the Guardian... They have broken their promise (a promise made here on this site) to not use the term deniers in a headline.
Tea Party climate change deniers funded by BP and other major polluter
This particular journalist has a history on these things ... BP made $25,000 in campaign donations, of which $18,000 went to senators who opposed action on climate change.
To anyone understanding American politics, funding like this is the way it works, for both sides.
18,000? Barely the monthly mobile phone bill for one of their executives.
For all the companies? She just makes the unsubstantiated statement that it is because of Climate Change. Was it on the campaign donation form?
Reds under the bed...
UK state education is about concealing your ability to think coherently, concealing your intelligence, giving the politically correct answers on all tests and questions, figure out how to do multiple choices - this is the most important thing.
You cannot be known to be bright or independent or come from a literate family or you will encounter the hostility of classmates and teachers alike
UK state education us about learning to act. Its a valuable skill. Its just not one you'd expect to learn while ostensibly learning about literature or history or science.
Jiminy Cricket
The journalist Suzanne Goldberg is the Guardian’s US Environment Correspondent. Her job is to defend global warming hysteria. The job of the Guardian’s other permanent US correspondent is to defend the Democrats. The nub of the article is that big business is financing the campaign of Republican candidates who favour big business.
My views are to the left of the Guardian’s, which makes it all the more painful to see this once serious paper demeaning itself with this petty smearing. Reds under the beds indeed, from the very people who opposed such tactics in the past.
Meanwhile the 'Changed' BBC is unchanged !!!!
Warming 'destabilises aquatic ecosystems'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11575415
UK rail network 'at risk' from climate change
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11601014
UK needs green economics minister, advisers urge (this is the biodiversity trick)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11616229
More BBC propaganda
Nagoya biodiversity talks stall on cash and targetsBy Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News, Nagoya
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11609159
And the gravy train swaps platforms
Another draft clause calls for a 100-fold increase in international financing on biodiversity, which would be raised principally in industrialised nations and primarily spent in the developing world.
A little off topic I know, but a vague connection to school. My youngest having just learn't that C02 is made up of one part carbon and two parts oxygen has asked me the rather interesting question that as there are two parts oxygen, shouldn't we be watching our oxygen footprint as well!
I'm afraid I couldn't question her logic.
@JohnH;
Richard Black's article on the request for UK to have a green minister omits to mention little details such as Lord Oxburgh's involvement with GLOBE (which he forgot to mention when he was appointed to lead an "enquiry" into CRU. Previous members of the GLOBE committee involved some of the more shall we say, colourful MPs, Eliot Morley, Eric Joyce, Steven Byers and David Chaytor. The aims of GLOBE include "To provide a forum for ideas and proposals to be floated in confidence and without the attention of an international spotlight".
See the Bishop's entries (Navigation/Search/GLOBE)
When the seas don't boil there are going to be some very cynical young adults
sunderland steve - "My youngest having just learn't that C02 is made up of one part carbon and two parts oxygen has asked me the rather interesting question that as there are two parts oxygen, shouldn't we be watching our oxygen footprint as well!
I'm afraid I couldn't question her logic'
Here is Oz our pollies are still debating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Yes, astonishingly they call CO2, <gasp> carbon pollution. No mention of oxygen.
Your daughter seems to be a smart girl. I'm sure she will go a long way. She might even become a scientist one day, once the discipline returns to normality post climate science.
Dudes, it's CO2 - as in charlie oscar 2 - or as in Carbon Oxygen Two.
Not sure about this C02 stuff - charlie zero two.
Macca Steve, how true the saying that out of the mouths of weans... does wisdom flow!
It took a bairn to point out that the emperor was indecently clad, it took your wee lass to point out that Oxygen is the Mr Big of Climate Change while Carbon is but a puny opponent when pitted against the valiant defenders of the Faith.
Diamonds may be a girls best friend, mono-atomic layers of hexaprotonic elements may stand, in triumph on a Swedish platform while its amorphous, working class cousins power our civilisation but when contaminated by octapro, it becomes the stink of Shaitan.
How odd!
And how lovely that your daughter is still untainted by her teachers.
RoyFOMR, She must get it from her Dad. She got into trouble at Sunday school for insisting the bible wasn't the oldest thing in her home as she had a fossil!
I'm not a mackem by the way, just live there. No offence taken though, they're lovely people.