Klimaatindoctrinatie op middelbare scholen

Onder de titel, ‘Portland schools ditch textbooks that question climate change’, schreef Alison Flood voor ‘The Guardian’:

Oregon city’s education board will now insist on teaching that ‘the climate crisis is created by human beings’.

Schools in Portland, Oregon, have voted to abandon textbooks that “express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities”.

The resolution follows a proposal by environmental groups put to the Portland public schools board, which argued that “it is time for school districts to redefine what it means to educate students for a future of certain climate change”. Stating that “there is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that the climate crisis is created by human beings”, the proposal said that it was “essential that in their classes and other school activities students probe the causes and consequences of the climate crisis – as well as possible solutions – in developmentally appropriate ways”.

In testimony to the board reported by the Portland Tribune, Bill Bigelow, editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, criticised science textbooks’ use of words such as “might”, “may” and “could” when referring to climate change. He quoted the textbook Physical Science as saying that “carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants and other sources, may contribute to global warming”.

“This is a section that could be written by the Exxon public relations department and it’s being taught in Portland schools,” said Bigelow, according to the Portland paper. “A lot of the text materials are kind of thick with the language of doubt, and obviously the science says otherwise. We don’t want kids in Portland learning material courtesy of the fossil fuel industry.”

Writing in the Huffington Post, Bigelow also pointed to another text used for “almost all” Portland high school students, Holt McDougal’s Modern World History, which he said “includes a scant three paragraphs on climate change, the second of which begins: ‘Not all scientists agree with the theory of the greenhouse effect.’”

The proposal, wrote Bigelow, is the “product of a months-long effort by teachers, parents, students, and climate justice activists to press the Portland school district to make ‘climate literacy’ a priority” …

Maar het blijkt dat vele leraren er anders over denken.

In February, a survey of 1,500 science teachers in the US published in the journal Science found that 30% were teaching students that climate change was “likely due to natural causes” and not caused by human activities, despite the consensus of 97% of active climate scientists.

Zoals mijn trouwe lezers weten, is deze ‘consensus’ slechts misleidende klimaatpropaganda.

Lees verder hier.

Kritiek op deze beslissing kon niet uitblijven. Onder de titel, ‘Portland School Board Acting Like Nazi Propaganda Officers’ schreef Armstrong Economics:

Well if you live in Portland, you better get your kids out of school. The Portland school board is against free speech. Portland public schools have banned all textbooks that cast any doubt on climate change. They are tampering with free speech and denying any scientific examination by converting climate change into dogma and propaganda. This illustrates that once you give any group power over another, they ALWAYS abuse it.

If you remember history, Hitler also banned books. The Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans on a major scale. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints that threatened Nazi beliefs or the regime were censored or eliminated from all media. About a hundred years before the advent of Hitler, the German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, explained history: “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” …

Lees verder hier.

Ik schreef het al eerder: ‘klimaat’ maakt meer kapot dan je lief is.

Voor mijn eerdere bijdragen over klimaat en aanverwante zaken zie hier, hier, hier, hier en hier.