This guy (Headmaster Rob Benzie) has become Scrooge in England, except he doesn’t provide even one lump of coal, because, well that would mess up his “carbon footprint”. This is just too bizarre not to pass on, thanks to The Daily Bayonet who writes:
A headmaster at a British school decided a great lesson in sustainability would be to turn off the heat for a day. In December:
Pupils at Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, were forced to grip their pens through thick gloves and wear their coats and hats in class as temperatures dropped to 1C. The school’s headmaster, Rob Benzie, shut down the radiators as an experiment to show students how the school could cut its carbon footprint.
The headmaster is unapologetic and wants to do it again:
…headteacher Mr Benzie, 52, defended the day, saying it was ‘a success.’ ‘We turned off the heating as an experiment to see if we can lower our carbon footprint,’ he said. ‘We allowed pupils to wear as many jumpers as they liked and everyone seemed to be happy enough although it did get pretty chilly. ‘We gave letters to pupils to take home to their parents informing them about the eco day. ‘We only had one complaint and that came from a member of staff but they just got on with it in the end.’
Mr Benzie said he hoped to repeat the eco day again next term.
The local school authority and parents should probably teach Mr. Benzie the lesson that freezing children to push a radical green agenda makes his job unsustainable, before he does something really stupid.
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vigilantfish says:
December 7, 2011 at 12:05 pm
IMHO, given my experience with raising boys who seem to prefer walking home from school in sub-zero (Celsius) weather in T-shirts — rather than being put to the bother of putting on their sweatshirts and jackets — the younger children probably barely even noticed. The teachers, on the other hand….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Walking is an entirely different kettle of fish then sitting all day long. I often strip to a shirt when working out doors or X country skiing, even in minus 20 °C. However I am sitting wearing a sweat shirt in the house.
Nitpick Larry’s stoopid question of the day: What about the mold issue?
If Rob “Footprint” Benzie PERMANENTLY turned off the heat, his school would be shut down, because of toxic mold. In a cool damp climate, your buildings need some heating to prevent that from happening. Great lesson in sustainability you’ve got there, Rob. /sarc
Tony,
It is the zero order draft for AR5. The link worked fine for me.
@ur momisugly Richard S Courtney says:
December 7, 2011 at 12:51 pm
jfisk:
The totality of your post at December 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm says;
“This just shows how poor the school was insulated, a school full of childrenvab le” should have kept warmer, and the fact it went down to 1 degree overnight is just unbelievable!”
Perhaps, but it is certain that it is “just unbelievable” anybody other than an idiot would have provided your post.
———-
Not sure what you see as so idiotic. If the state in the UK is enforcing green totalitarianism and penalizing people who warm their homes with higher energy costs, then the state should lead the way in responsibility by properly insulating school buildings. We turn the heat OFF in our home overnight (I live in Toronto) and it is very rare except when temperatures dip below -20 that our house reaches as low as 10 degrees by early morning.
On average and overall I’d say good on the lad and not just because my primary school consisted of: Room 1= a converted chapel and Room 2 was a large wooden shed. Room 3 was the outside toilet block. And boys had to wear shorts till age 8.
These kids are getting an education in the value of ‘energy. I’ll wager that the parents dare not pull a similar stunt at home. Another good lesson for them was that strike that their teachers went on last week, They’ll have learn’t a lot about hypocrisy and the ‘me me me society’ from that little (ongoing) saga.
Also, we’ll remember reading about the various wind turbine experiments being conducted in school playgrounds, a proven fail Invaluable.
UK education gets interesting/real after years of just memorising stuff for the purpose of passing exams.
Don’t take just my word for it neither..Google’s boss says
Umm, the links didn’t show up too well 🙁
proven fail= http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/06/wind-turbine-fail-school-left-holding-the-bag-for-53000/
and
Google boss= http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/latest/2011/08/26/google-boss-attacks-uk-education-115875-23374777/
i find it vastly interesting and entertaining that the passages that managed to dodge the skips in these comments are four letter and four syllable items that would make a marine just out of boot camp blush.
this fellow has managed to irritate most of the group and my best advice on his future is that if you scout around you probably can find 10foot bullwhips for about $12 each in bundles of a dozen.
:-)))
C
I think he’s setting appropriate expectations for the children. Zero carbon footprint = zero heat. Now the little kiddies have that expectation well planted in their minds and will be more accepting of zero heat as a good thing when it happens. Now, when the blackouts hit at home, they can eagerly reassure their overly fossil fuel dependent parents that it is not to be seen as an inconvenience or loss of living comfort but rather a glorious opportunity to join in the huddled shivering masses sacrificing and doing their part to save the planet. /sarc
We used to play piano in gloves in the music college in Siberia, it was so cold inside.
Only we did it because there were finger-wide cracks in walls, not because there were cracks in our director’s skull… Oh, wait a minute… Maybe it wasn’t that different, after all.
Myron’s quote from Pink Floyd’ “The Wall” is certainly appropriate with regards to this particular school and teacher. But hopefully, as mentioned by several above, the school kids came away from this idiot’s experiment with an idea that hey, maybe carbon ain’t too bad.
pk says:
December 7, 2011 at 1:28 pm
i find it vastly interesting and entertaining that the passages that managed to dodge the skips in these comments are four letter and four syllable items that would make a marine just out of boot camp blush.
=================================================================
Trust me, it takes an awful lot to make a Marine blush. Even one just out of boot. I was a US active duty combat Marine from ’63 to ’84, and I don’t recall ever blushing. 🙂 Not even in boot camp.
If this experiment had been framed differently, I think many here would approve. E.g., suppose a skeptical teacher had turned down the thermostat in an ecology class he was teaching, or a lecture he was giving, to a bunch of mostly greenie zealots, to “give them a taste of their own medicine.” I’m sure we wouldn’t be outraged!
Another way a skeptic could have framed the experiment would have been as a way of showing what people had to put up with in the past, before central heating–and the blessings of our energy-rich society.
Luxury!
When I were a lad,in my early days at high school,my home had no central heating.
I still remember one cold winter night,doing homework in my room, seeing my own breath and getting so chilled I had to go stand on top of the living-room fire to stop shivering (burning good old British coal).
What do you want from the Brits? Common sense? They give African immigrants million dollar council homes. The EU rips them off for billion and the Brits talk themselves silly. 1/3 of that nation is on welfare. Of course that’s HOME to the East Anglia AGW hysteria. They whine about the BBC but proudly pay their BBC license fees with no one challenging the system over there.
Compared to the above this head master is entirely reasonable.
CuriousGeorge,
I’ve wondered what the odds are of finding someone over at RealClimate who is prior service. Not very high, I’m betting. But then what does this dumb ass former sub torpedoman know? And dumbness must run in the family as I have a son who picked the Corps while in college, graduating from San Diego in 08 and then commissioned in 2010.
If the heating failed in near freezing winter conditions, a responsible headmaster would cancel school for the rest of the day and send the kids home.
This guy should be fired.
Roger, I think understand your spirit and intention, but I think you may be missing the seriousness of this event. Quote ‘If this experiment had been framed differently, I think many here would approve. E.g., suppose a skeptical teacher had turned down the thermostat in an ecology class he was teaching, or a lecture he was giving, to a bunch of mostly greenie zealots, to “give them a taste of their own medicine.” I’m sure we wouldn’t be outraged!’
Perhaps not. But perhaps ‘skeptics’ in general have a higher moral standard and are not willing to subject children to discomfort in order to engage them in politics. Perhaps ‘skeptics’ in general would rather the children were left undisturbed by such fooling-around in order to pursue their studies and enjoy themselves. Perhaps ‘skeptics’ in general respect the basic adult responsibility of shielding the young from speculative fears and destructive mindsets? Perhaps they also feel that those same adults should be sorting this out amongst themselves, and not go sneaking around proper debate in order to indoctrinate the young. Fortunately in this case, the sneaking, the authoritarian ‘we know what’s right for you’, the parroting of fantastical views about ‘carbon footprints’, does seem to have backfired in a big way.
I think the head teacher’s idea was excellent and should be extended. How about turning the heating off in the Houses of Parliament, but for more than just one day. That would show our MPs and Lords what things will be like when we are largely reliant on renewable energy resources such as the wind!
NO,NO,NO !!!!!!
While I’m really sad that the child had to suffer through this stupidity, it is one of the most valuable lessons that can be taught !!!
That is, if you continue to believe that reducing your “carbon footprint” actually means something and all of the Green/Eco wack ideas get implemented, sitting around in the cold will be our future because all of the eco nonsense will have been done and we will have voluntarily stepped back to living in the 19th century!!!
Let us hope that Mr Benzie has not had the class reading Oliver Twist.
It will up the chimney to clear all that nasty soot and bricking them up so that they can never ever be used again:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/25/article-1369746-0B531D7D00000578-921_306x423.jpg
I’m not sure the criticisms are entirely fair – or even true.
The local rag’s article on this is here: http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Somerset-head-teacher-defends-eco-drive-turn/story-14069180-detail/story.html
The Daily Mail story (which as far as I can tell is where the story began) has a number of comments from students saying that the description of conditions in the school were exaggerated: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070496/Staff-parents-fury-head-turns-schools-heating-save-planet.html
IF the temperatures did drop below legal levels then there really is something to complain about, but otherwise it just makes those of us in the skeptical camp look stupid by association with those who believe everything printed in the Daily Mail.
tim56,
Thank you and your son. You too CuriousGeorge.
Presumably this is just a joke report – a sort-of gentler version of the 10:10 idea!?
Derek Sorensen says:
December 7, 2011 at 2:43 pm
“I’m not sure the criticisms are entirely fair – or even true.
The local rag’s article on this is here: http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Somerset-head-teacher-defends-eco-drive-turn/story-14069180-detail/story.html
”
Thanks for posting that. They say it was the students Eco group who suggested one heating free day per week in Winter; so what we have here is the usual bunch of totalitarian do-gooders who try to get away with suppressing the interest of the majority.
So it was not only the headmaster who was a total Richard Cranium but they have strong ecofascistic tendencies amongst the students as well. I’d try to get my kid outta there.
Ok. this demonstration took place on a very cold day. What is CO2 supposed to do the atmosphere?