A guest post by Messenger
The Climate Change Schools Project (CCSP) brings together organisations, schools and teachers around the North East to support a novel approach in bringing climate change to the heart of the national curriculum. The CCSP has established a network of ‘Climate Change Lead Schools’ who [sic] in 2008-2009, consisted of 80 schools across North East England. Thousands of young people took part, representing a minimum of 14,000 hours of climate change related activity across the schools.
For those of you dear old-fashioned things who still think that 14,000 hours of education might be better spent on education in English, maths, science, history, a modern language or two and perhaps art or music or woodwork, think again. Following the Bishop’s post about the Climate Change Schools Project, I came across this associated report on the first year’s implementation of the project in a number of schools in the North East of England...
A new generation of children here are being indoctrinated- [and I wonder if this is with or without parental permission?] – into thinking the way that the government believes they should about six themes of climate change – “climate change science, climate change and the media, indicators and impacts of climate change, climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation”. This remit apparently includes encouraging children to watch their parents and to complain if Mum and Dad’s behaviour with regard to recycling, using the car, or turning off the lights does not accord with green instructions received at school. Success in this regard is considered a positive outcome. There were several criteria for viewing the outcomes of the CCSP as successful, which included having positive influences on other children and on staff attitudes and behaviours related to climate change.
A number of children from the Lead Schools were chosen for the trial year. Year 5 and Year 8 were selected in 33 schools (25 primary and 8 secondary). Eight schools were recruited as controls and there were 200-300 children in each group. Six smaller “focus groups” were also recruited after the first phase.
And who is paying for this new project? Well, mostly you are, of course, as CSSP is a joint initiative by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and also receives money from the Wellcome Trust. The paper from which I am quoting evaluated the outcomes of the first year’s trial and was funded through the Environment Agency by the Northumbria Regional Flood Defence Committee. [This does seems a trifle odd - wouldn’t the Flood Defence Committee be better off spending its money on – well, flood defences?]
Admittedly the Schools Project began before some time before the global warming juggernaut began to wobble, so the latest climate change news was not available to the instigators, but we find that the project was driven by the conclusions of the IPPC Fourth Report, the Stern Report, the actions demanded by EU and the UK Climate Bill CO2 targets, and the policies expected to emerge from Copenhagen in December 2009. The justification for introducing this extraordinary propaganda exercise was shaped round the usual paranoia surrounding claims of “thermal expansion and melting glacier ice”, and the resulting necessity to drastically reduce emissions of CO2 as a consequence of global warming. [I’m sure it must have mentioned polar bears somewhere.]
Schools and young children are seen by the global warming lobby and the government as the ideal place to change ways of thought and action in order to counter “the many barriers to adults undertaking the desired low-carbon behaviour …This rather closed environment [of schools] makes it an arguably unique situation where communications about climate change can work together to influence not only knowledge of climate change, but attitudes to and behavioural responses to it” [my emphasis]. Students were assessed both before and after the climate modules had been undertaken, in order to judge how far their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs around climate change and environmental issues had been altered - in other words, how far the conditioning of the children by such a propaganda exercise has been “successful”.
The document has some terms unfamiliar to me, in what sounds like the new ecospeak. What is the “New Environmental Paradigm”, for example, “designed for adults but successfully adapted for children”? I looked up the quoted authors, G.W Evans et al’s paper on influencing young children’s attitudes to the environment, but after reading it I’m not sure I’m any the wiser.
Two reliable and valid instruments to assess first- and second-grade children's …environmental attitudes and behaviors are presented. A series of games derived primarily from dimensions of the new ecological paradigm theory of environmental attitudes are described for the assessment of environmental attitudes. The games include felt board construction, a board game, and an adjustable worry thermometer.[?] Environmental behaviors are assessed in the same sample using magnitude estimation (jumping different distances to indicate frequency of engagement in behavior) based on an adoption of Kaiser's General Environmental Behavior Scale for adults. The behavior scale employs a Rasch measurement model because environmental behaviors are viewed as a consequence of attitudes in concert with difficulties to implement actions.
[Ah, so that’s what it is.]
What did the children do?
Among the activities and modules undertaken by the young participants of Year 5 and 8 was the composition of something called an “ozone rap”, a viewing of the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth [including, one hopes, but not mentioned, the obligatory caveats now demanded by the law in the UK], playing a computer game called Footprint Friends [to which they had to pay for access], watching a power point presentation about coal–fired power stations, watching a windfarm video, researching climate on the Internet, learning about the youth groups known as Climate Cops, watching a “recycling magician” and creating a fashion show. Some of these events were more popular than others. One student (Year 5) remarked:
I thought it was quite fun because we got to cut out food and waste from newspaper and made a big waste pile to show people
Another said of the ozone rap:
I thought I learnt a lot from the rap because like you got – you did research and you put it in a sentence and like you put it into a rap and you put it into a poem like and then back into a rap and you did it with your friends and that and then you got to add more to it and me and [classmate] did like the school assembly.” (Year 5)
The students obviously liked watching films, but what they got out of them is debatable. Could this following comment possibly refer to Al Gore’s offering?
It got a bit stuck in your mind because it kept repeating things. It was really good because when it started off with the music and stuff, it got you right into it, like an action film. It was really good for me, like everyone listening and getting involved and the way he was speaking and stuff just made you go like wow.
but some of them seemed a bit confused, and still fearful (emphasis added).
We watched a video on like lots of different topics, like how the world could end in 2012…
I read something on the internet about how the ice caps will be fully melted by 2013 so it’s a bit scary
Assessment after the project
The pupils were given a climate quiz before and after the climate change modules had been taken. Some of the conclusions reached in the second, post-project one seem pretty alarming, and one wonders about the wisdom of what these children have been told. We find that Year 8 students were more likely to accept the idea that climate change “is a risk to them and will kill plants and animals”, while it was noted that among the younger students the climate change activities raised fears and concerns about the future of the world, some of them writing:
I'm worrying a lot
I feel it’s really scary what is happening right now
It's made me a bit more cautious about what I do. I'm worried that the world will flood. (Year 5s)
On the other hand, some of the older ones responded
I care a bit more about it [climate change]
They have changed my feelings by making me angry about how we mistreat the environment (Year 8s)
Students who said they had changed their actions were also asked to describe in what way, but could not always explain how. Asked about other impacts of the project it was clear that it was the Year 5s who were most susceptible to the new influences.
[I have been] Encouraging others
I have talked to people about it and said what I do and convinced them to do it too which to be honest I’d never have done before!
I joined the eco committee
They let me know how other people dealt with Climate Change
They made me more passionate about climate change
To give them their due, the authors of the report indicated their concern that the message was not getting across as they would have wished, and they considered that teachers must use more discernment in the choice of materials, particularly because of the worries many of the Year 5 children had expressed. However, things were more prosaic with the children’s view of the recycling magician, who was universally disliked. They saw him as “boring, [he] talked too much and wasn't very good at magic”. [Let’s hope they can be as discerning about all the messages they receive at school these days].
Other aspects of the children’s attitudes to climate change were also assessed, with questions about how much they knew about it before the project and what they now felt about it. Before the project was taken two groups were identified: those that were indifferent or thought that climate change was someone else’s problem “I felt like it’s really not my fault” (Year 5); and those that already felt concerned, anxious or sad about what humans were doing to the planet:
“I feel awful sad, myself, that we’re doing something bad to hurt the Earth when we’re supposed to respect it.” (Year 5).
However the authors were encouraged by what they saw as the positive effects of the propaganda exercise, with those who had been indifferent now basking instead in the warmth and light of state-approved conclusions:
I thought they were being a bit over-dramatic with all the pictures of polar bears and icebergs. But I’ve found out how dramatic we should be about it, because it’s really bad. (Year 5)
[I knew there’d be polar bears somewhere…]
while individual fears were still being expressed by others :
And how sea levels with [sic] rise and maybe flood the land and then the sharks can come in and so on.
I don’t want any animals like to be extinct. Not like mammoths like because of the ice and like penguins. (Year 5s).
However, the project with the Year 8 students was not as successful as the authors would have wished because many of them “were also aware that they could not stop climate change from happening.” – [so could someone explain to me why they’re doing all this carbon footprint nonsense then?]
“Empowering” the children to change behaviours
But fear not, however scary or contradictory they find things, the project-indoctrinated children are now “empowered” to change their behaviour and save the world:
Now I know that it’s a really big problem for us to solve, so we’ve got to try and do whatever we can, like recycling, to stop the Earth from warming up (Year 5).
And how have the students been empowered? By being encouraged to change their own behaviour in any number of greenly acceptable ways, included conserving electricity, recycling (both at home and at school), using rechargeable batteries, conserving water, using sustainable forms of transport and [the one that really annoys me} influencing others to change their behaviour.
Well a few of my friends, well I told them about climate change because some of them they just binned a lot of their stuff. And I told them about it and so they thought about it and now so instead of binning a lot of your stuff you should recycle it to stop – because it burns a hole in the ozone and also it’s rotting away at the earth and just not very nice. (Year 5)
And now to the epitome of all that I abhor about this global warming propaganda exercise, Climate Cops, a friendly little section full of fun and games for the children. As I’m finding it difficult to keep my blood pressure down, I can do no more than quote directly from the project report.
A really successful activity …was the Climate Cops event run by nPower. After an interactive event at school, students were given police officer-style notebooks, and they could ‘book’ themselves, friends or family members if they saw them wasting energy or performing other climate unfriendly actions. This worked by the child (the climate cop writing out a ticket and asking the other person to sign it and agree to a forfeit, such as helping with homework. This appeared to work well to give the students a fun mechanism for influencing others to be more climate friendly.
Many other Lead Schools reported …that they had delivered activities with similar elements to some of those in ‘Climate Cops’ …such as establishing ‘climate monitors’, ‘climate champs’ and ‘green police’, and they had experienced similar successes.
[Oh, what fun, - if you like that sort of thing].
What next?
All the schools involved felt they would continue to implement [in view of the number of films, videos, power point presentations, computer games, etc, someone of my generation would not think the word “teach” to be appropriate here] and perhaps extend the modules used in the project. The report says that the next phase will be for the project to be delivered in all schools across the country, so watch out for your own children and grandchildren. Quite how the teachers will fit it all in remains to be seen, as the report indicates that state primaries are already offered a hundred and one green involvements with such groups as Eco Schools, Sustainable Schools, Green Flag, Healthy Schools, Prince’s Rainforest, Arts Mark, Food for Life, International award, School Travel Plan, Let’s Grow Appeal, British Council Connecting Classrooms, Fair Trade, Earthkeepers, Walk to School Week and the Primary Science Enhancement Project. CSSP is just one more to add to the green list. Is there any room left for over teachers to prepare and teach the basics of education?
What do I think about CSSP now?
The question of the fear engendered by this project, especially among the younger age group, is one which concerns me greatly and did concern the authors too, although they felt that other school subjects might also be alarming when first encountered. [I was racking my brains to think what these subjects might be- zoology perhaps, or chemistry, or physics?- oh, I forgot, they aren’t taught anymore.] It is sad and reprehensible that the state seems to feel the need to make children face all the difficulties of the world, including sex, drugs, and the supposedly imminent end of the world, when many of them are too immature to cope. Can’t our children be carefree for a little longer?
Children are not the property of the state. I would say: ”stop telling my grandchildren to behave in ways that I and their parents do not agree with”. Why should the state insist that schools impose on young people what I consider to be an outrageous doctrine, or creed as it is now, and one which so many of us in the community at large find unacceptable, largely untrue and apocalyptic? The teachers involved seem to cheerfully adopt the indoctrination process, and it worries me that the authors of the paper and their colleagues appear to have no concerns about this unethical stance. If belief in global warming is now a religion, perhaps my grandchildren could be withdrawn from lessons like the ones described in CSSP. If this project is “rolled out “ across the country, as it undoubtedly will be, unless you can choose a fee-paying school with a more balanced viewpoint, home education seems to be the only answer, but unfortunately it is one that is impracticable, impossible, or just too difficult to undertake for so many people.
The MSM ignores or belittles the sceptic viewpoint, 99% of the MPs toe the warmist party line and the government and the EU give loads of our money to whichever green gimmick or shady carbon cabal appears over the windfarm-covered horizon. The nursery rhyme television advertisements on global warming produced by the state shows how they have tried to influence our children at home. State education attempts to influence them at school, but parents must not permit this usurpation of their own responsibilities.
I am not aware that the instigation of this new green propaganda project has been discussed anywhere, in Parliament or at the NUT conference or on school councils. Do you know better? Are you teacher? Do you live in the North East? Did you want it? What do you think of it? What can we do about it? Those are the $64,000 questions, or if you read Richard North at EUReferendum, possibly quite a lot more money than that. Answers in the comments please.