![2013-12-30-TuftsStudentsProtestingforDIvestmentFossilFuels-thumb[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/2013-12-30-tuftsstudentsprotestingfordivestmentfossilfuels-thumb1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
There have been a number of stories recently about how Australian schools are doing wonderful things. Sadly, few of these wonderful things seem to involve educating the nation’s children.
According to Australian SBS;
Australian schools going green to combat climate change
A trial program is hoping to shine the spotlight on schools and show them how they can help to combat climate change.
A Perth high school was the first in Australia to be accredited carbon neutral, but the school still wants to do more.
South Fremantle Senior High School in Perth’s south signed up to the Low Carbon Schools Pilot Program to help reduce its carbon footprint.
Fifteen-year-old Taylah Kippo told SBS News the time to act on climate change was now.
She said she was worried about her own generation, but also the ones after.
“You see the effects of climate change every day in our life now at the moment,” she said.
“You see it in many other countries including Australia in areas like farming and many different areas from the changing of the climates.
“It’s not good.”
Fellow Year 10 student Lauren Hunter said her school, which uses photovoltaic cells and has air conditioners on timers, could do more.
Read more: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/11/27/australian-schools-going-green-combat-climate-change
Meanwhile, back in the real world, there is worrying news about the quality and standards of Australian Education;
OECD education rankings show Australia slipping, Asian countries in the lead
A new report shows it’s not the wealthiest countries that perform the best, but those that value education the most.
What is happening?
Asian countries are currently in the lead according to the most recent global education rankings published by the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD): Singapore tops the list, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
The ranking was devised by combining the mathematics and science test scores for 15-year-olds across 76 countries, using results from international tests including the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2012) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 2011).
The mathematics and science rankings are among several tabulated in the report, Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain, in which links between economic growth, social development and educational attainment are explored. OECD director Andreas Schleicher says the analysis encompasses a larger sample of countries than ever before, providing “a truly global scale” of education quality for the first time.
…
How does Australia fare?
In the latest OECD league table, Australia is ranked 14th behind Poland (11th), Vietnam (12th) and Germany (13th). In other data tabled in the report, Australia ranks 19th for secondary school enrolment rates, behind the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates; and 17th for having the lowest share of students (just under 20 per cent) who have not acquired basic skills. For Singapore and Korea, this figure is under 10 per cent.
Concerning to some, Australia’s performance in the PISA tests, held every three years, has shown a steady decline. In 2000, when the first tests were held, Australia ranked 6th for maths, 8th for science and 4th for reading (out of 41 countries), dropping to 19th for maths, 16th for science and 13th for reading in 2012 (out of 65 countries).
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/oecd-education-rankings-show-australia-slipping-asian-countries-in-the-lead-20150525-gh94eu.html
This is not the first time Australia has had a bad school report. But there is no sign of a change in direction – education standards are still sliding, and green rhetoric is on the rise.
Ignoring normal education standards, while celebrating the conversion of government funded schools into climate madrasas, preaching extreme religious doctrine, is the kind of trend which is normally associated with third world trouble spots, not with a modern country like Australia.
Perhaps if Australian schools put more effort into teaching children basic skills like reading, writing and mathematics, and spent less money, time and effort on useless green gestures, like installing photovoltaics, they could afford to leave the air conditioner switched on. They could use the money they saved to provide a comfortable learning environment, and better quality educational materials for their students.
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Hmmm. Teach people to think ‘eh, now there’s a novel idea. Bit like teaching a cat to sit. Cargo Cult much easier.
John McClure: I was referring to USA textbooks which require fact checking before publication.
John, would that it were true! I have learned amazing ‘facts’ from adopted California textbooks. One current text has a page with a map of California showing several regions, including the Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada, and the Coastal Range. A few large cities are shown in some of the regions. Each region is printed in its own color. The students are asked which city is at a higher elevation, Monterey, or Fresno?
Incredibly, the teacher’s manual gives the answer as Monterey. To our readers who are not familiar with California, Monterey is on the beach (nominal elevation 26 ft) and Fresno is deep in the Central Valley (nominal elevation 357 ft). The authors seem to have made the same mistake as many of the students will: just because a location is in a region described as mountainous it must be higher than another location found in a region described as a valley.
The good news is that blunders like this give me the opportunity to show the kids why they shouldn’t just assume that because something is in print, it must be true. And then explain what information regional maps do or don’t show.
The bad news is that the ‘experts’ who wrote this text, the publisher that printed it, and the state curriculum commission that reviewed it, all failed to catch this error. Even worse, that the classroom teachers who presumably piloted it either failed to notice it, or did not care enough to report it.
Eric Worrall:
I know nothing of education in Australia and I would not want to comment on it because I am not Australian.
I write to comment that in the above photograph a banner demands “Climate Justice Now”.
Climate is natural and nature is not ‘just’: nature does not treat everybody the same or equally. Hence, “Climate Justice” is an impossible dream.
Morally educated youngsters would know that nature is not “just” and, therefore, compassionate care consists of helping those assaulted by natural disasters of disease, weather, geology, and etc.. Morality does NOT include campaigning for nature to obtain impossible anthropomorphic qualities of justice, morality and/or compassion.
Please note that my point is not pedantic. I am writing about teaching the young an ability to understand what is true and what is not.
Richard
Down here on the Southern edge of the tropics, nature is that beautiful yet terrible phenomenon you keep at arms length, with regular application of powerful pesticides, household barrier sprays, suncream, bug spray, insect repellent, flea treatment for the pets, keeping the grass short, avoiding long grass when you are out walking, wearing a hat, don’t swim when the beach is covered in poisonous jellyfish. Admire it, but keep in mind it wants to eat you.
Welcome to Australia.
Patrick,
Priceless.
thank you
Hahahahaha
Privilege points.
Can the pendulum swing any further out of whack ?
Richardscourtney –
“Please note that my point is not pedantic. I am writing about teaching the young an ability to understand what is true and what is not” – You are so right.
That is a subject, much neglected these days, called “philosophy”. And that is far more important than teaching children “subjects to help them get jobs in the modern world”. We all need first and foremost to use our God-given brain properly – not just to blindly accept all the “brainwashing” going on in our schools.
This is what religious cults do, they indoctrinate children! The earlier they are indoctrinated the more fanatical they become!
Now down south, values education rules,
not skills, once 6th for maths, for science
8th and reading 4th, now dropping
down the ladder but say, what does
this matter, when you hafta’ ‘educate’
the flock to save the world.
Australia is a fine example of a country where the government finds nothing wrong wit politically indoctrinating school kids. The government cannot fool the adults so it decides to have zero-based indoctrination instead… using school kids, like taking an empty glass and filling it with bullish_t!!!! And the parents are too busy ‘chucking another shrimp on the bar-bee”, to even notice.
When these kids finally start working, that’s when they realise that there actually is a real world out there in which they have to live, and that all that they were taught at school was about a world of make-believe.
Thankfully I was schooled in the UK, Ireland and Belgium before all this rubbish started in earnest. I was laughed at for my interest in planetary science and the solar system, even being called up in front of class to explain my doodle (A solar burst) during story time (I was 8 then).
But here in Australia, the indoctrination starts young, especially now that all students must have a some form of PC to do homework. I help out my friend’s daughter with maths, she is 10. She receives extra-curricular maths studies too, which I help her out with. But sometimes after her homework, which is driven from a school website, she can select only what can be described as “prepared” quizzes. These quizzes are hosted on another website. Some of them are fun, but some of them are clearly targeting pliable minds. The anti-oil and climate change propaganda is disgusting. And just like the video Val posted, the “correct” answer to some of the questions is actually, technically, the wrong one to get a pass (Such as using only the word carbon, an element, to describe carbon dioxide, a molecule and calling it pollution).
ThisisatestSeemsIcanttypecorrectlyonthissiteanymore
On BBC News this morning, Professor Richard Allen, of Reading University said, “I have been learning about climate change since I was a boy in the 1980’s and the picture is becoming clearer and clearer.”
So scientist of his generation were first indoctrinated over 30 years ago, and confirmation bias will ensure that they will not change their minds because all facts will appear confirm their beliefs.
Here in NZ a high school science end-of-year exam has a question for how a steam engine works, using coal as fuel, but before it dares to ask such a thing it first, as a preliminary question, asks “why is it bad to burn fossil fuels?”. Apparently this style is a sort of disclaimer, an apology, for teaching real science. With that style, how long before the real science is removed altogether?
NZ Willy says, “Here in NZ a high school science end-of-year exam has a question for how a steam engine works, using coal as fuel, but before it dares to ask such a thing it first, as a preliminary question, asks “why is it bad to burn fossil fuels?””
I have some Common Core aligned science books for the third and fifth grade. They are just work books. They have whole assignments selling worthless wind turbines to the unsuspecting children. The text books also slip in a worthless wind turbine here and there. But our text books are older and we really like certain publishers. They actually fulfill the promise on the cover, “Learn about science and how things work.”
Also, the fact is that we do not just burn fossil fuels.
There are so many products made from coal tar and from petroleum, that I emphasize to my kids that nothing is wasted. Those coal tar and petroleum products are every where. Those who rail against fossil fuels do not seem to understand the ways inventors have found to make new and very useful and diverse products from those nice enormous carbon molecules. Like these:
A very good documentary that appears to be published in May of 2015.
Only 1800 views. Pretty shocking actually because it’s very good.
Learned about the history of the proliferation of the CO2 rush to hysteria.
Thatcher, mining protests, desire for nuke power coupled to replace vulnerability to oil and miners.
Then hijacked by the anticapitalists who merged with green zealots.
Quite the little party of bedfellows.
Many more tidbits and connections.
I’ll watch I more than once.
Encourage folks to check it out.
Only negative that I’d add is they should have hammered on ice history history more.
What this all says to me is that if a top quality doc can be made with articulate interviews it’s just a matter of marketing the message …. more, better, keep it a coming.
Sorry dashed that off in a hurry, but I’m using my privilege points today.
“I” should be “it”.
“history” should be “core”
A bit dated – released orginally in 2007.
Thanks Ian. Yup no Obama timeline.
How do you like the gist of it ?
What would you improve ?
Climate change is reducing education
As someone who lies in the area that this school resides I would say that the “carbon neutral” achievement of the school is symptomatic of the misguided focus of the education departments.
My oldest son is 2007 started at this school. It had a poor reputation but a new principal who was making good strides to bring it up. Once we found out the principal was leaving we took our son out as he only has one chance of high school). We then had the Rudd/Gillard governments who pushed the carbon programs. Prime minister Gillard made two visits to the school lauding its Carbon achievements. I would ride past the school every day and see the carbon achievements on the school billboards thinking they have lost the plot. Of my school teacher friends none put their children there (they went private).
The parents voted with their feet so now the school can house 800 students but only 320 odd are enrolled.
It is now being merged into a neighboring high school (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/fate-could-be-sealed-for-fremantle-secondary-schools-20140408-36b1g.html) because they cant get the numbers. Before you say demographics are the cause West Australia where this school is has healthy population growth and private/Independent schools are full.
So I don’t blame the “carbon neutral” for leading to the demise of the school. However it is symptomatic of how the administrators (State & Federal) have lost focus on whats important.
Not surprised, what other bit of idealism, nice and simple but not too demanding, do we offer the young generation? Bombing the ‘radicals’ we do not understand? At least this obsession with ‘carbon (!} goes beyond the ‘selfie’ and watching copulating. Is this obsession not a substitute for religion?
Surely the State should not decide what is important? But isn’t only follows the ‘market’.? We have lost the plot….but does the private sector do better? There is a lack of a humanistic ideology, even culture in our schools in west) which has been replaced by green ideology and hence fear of teh futute UNLESS…It is a religion of a sort. What do private school teach instead? Sectarian religion|?