Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – Connecticut state representative Christine Palm is alarmed that some children in her district choose to spend all their school time focussing on traditional studies like mathematics and science instead of spending some of their time learning about the “life and death” issue of Climate Change.
Teach kids about climate change? This state might require it
By MICHAEL MELIA
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A legislative proposal in Connecticut would mandate instruction on climate change in public schools statewide, beginning in elementary school.
Connecticut already has adopted science standards that call for teaching of climate change, but if the bill passes it is believed that it would be the country’s first to write such a requirement into law.
“A lot of schools make the study of climate change an elective, and I don’t believe it should be an elective,” said state Rep. Christine Palm, a Democrat from Chester who proposed the bill. “I think it should be mandatory, and I think it should be early so there’s no excuse for kids to grow up ignorant of what’s at stake.”
…
Palm, who represents towns along the Connecticut River in southeast Connecticut, said climate change deserves a more prominent place in children’s education because of the urgency of the threat posed by global warming.
“I’d love to see poetry be mandated. That’s never going to happen,” she said. “That’s not life or death.”
Read more: https://apnews.com/e19029381ba24b9c9c567e0924621888
Christine didn’t go into detail about what job opportunities a qualification in climate studies would create, or whether a mandatory qualification in climate studies would help students win entry to the university of their choice.
Can they start this a little earlier like as part of their pre-K funding push and delivery room instruction.
No mention of who will write the curriculum.
What will be the penalty if a teacher introduces additional readings not specified in the curriculum?
I would be fired for sure.
I would give my students in such a class a bunch of references they they should NOT read. Anybody caught reading them will have points deducted from their final exam. I would emphasize that there is no room for debate. Anybody questioning the curriculum will lose points from their final grade, and, hopefully, be excluded from student government and other extracurricular activities.
Teaching climate change (or even global warming) would be fine. What is not fine is that a topic so political would draw attention from Greenpeace and other organizations which run on the alarm money. So the teachers would be indoctrinated to tell stories. Gavin S telling doubling could mean +3K is not that bad; what is bad is telling the children there are evil people paid by oil companies trying to kill / drown / boil them. Think about the consequences. It is hate speech and a crime against the humanity.
Salem is only 120 miles away. Perhaps the study of witches should be put on the curriculum as well.
It would be great if more people where educated. Climate education would boost awareness of the real science behind the propaganda. That would be awesome.
I teach AP Chemistry in a very good public school in CT. I already teach “Climate Change”. I teach the actual facts. I don’t think Ms. Palm would agree with my curriculum. I don’t care.
+100
As a retired Science teacher with three degrees in Science and who taught Middle school Science the students up to and though High School just need the basics of Science taught. If you want to use the topic of Climate change as a case study that is fine but the only thing you accomplish the force feeding of a point of view is a lot of people ignorant of Science.
My students at the 7th and 8th grade level were so unprepared for advanced multi discipline topics that I spent my time just getting them up to a level of understanding basic science principles like forces, density, temp vs heat, basic weather facts, chemical reactions, the periodic table, motion, time, etc.
A sanctimonious politician is more dangerous than imaginary catastrophic climate change.
I taught high school science for decades, and during the 1990’s I taught fossil fuel usage/peak oil, increasing CO2, and a warming climate in the Chemistry in the Community issued based curriculum along with their predictions. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth played in every classroom. As time went on, the CO2 alarmist predictions did not come true, and I noticed how the scientific method was not being followed when the temp data was changed. I taught my students that conflicting valid data should change the theory, but that did not happen with the CO2 global warming theory. Then 18 years of no global warming occurred with much higher CO2 levels, Al Gore makes a fool of himself with his predictions, Climategate gave insight on the dirty politics of global warming, Dr. Mann’s temperature hockey stick turned out to be a fraud based on cherry picking weak data, ice core data shows CO2 was not a major driver of temperature, then fracking released more oil and gas which allowed people to desire to drive more SUV’s in the US than ever before. Gasoline is now cheaper than what I paid for it when I was in high school (accounting for inflation). When I shared all of these changes with my students, I had to close my classroom door because I was teaching them both sides of the global warming issues not found in the classroom next door. I had to keep quiet during our science teacher meetings discussions on global warming because they had a certain agenda that only taught the Al Gore ideas. The bottom result was over 95% of my students agreed with me that the modern global warming is mainly caused by natural cycles and CO2 is only a minor factor in climate. I expected an angry parent phone call or a disgruntled school administrator discussion at any random school day, but it never materialized. I am now retired but feel good inside that I taught 1000’s my students the real issues of global warming and they now believe that the natural cycles have a larger influnce than CO2.
EXACTLY ……
Wow. There is hope.
Good job, RSG. Let’s hope there are 1,000s more like you out there.
Until some wealthy billionaire buys out a major mainstream media network along with the Associated Press and starts refuting this nonsense along with other critical issues of our day, we are going to continue to see the propagandizing of our populace. As this example shows, it especially affects our children, since their parents, having been fed this stuff most of their adult lives, can’t or won’t give them critical thinking alternatives to consider.
My pessimism is based in part on my own family. I consider that I have three fairly normal and successful adult children and their spouses by today’s standards. Of the six, they are all college educated, and include teachers, a state disease specialist, a former lawyer and an engineering manager. Of the six, the only one I can get to intelligently discuss the global warming issue is the engineer! The others either refuse to discuss it with me, or just whiff me off as their lovable cantankerous old fogey “denier” father!
Their attitude is typical, I believe, across the spectrum of many of our adult voters today. The constant trumpeting of the “warming crisis” by the mass media and the “denier” label successfully applied to those who question it have permeated our culture. And while the trend is reversing somewhat as the dire climate predictions don’t materialize, the industrial and institutional changes put in place to “fix” global warming over the past 25 years or so aren’t going away until their consequences cause our system to crash either locally or nationally.
Sad, but true!
Remind them frequently that for them to believe in CC and then use fossil fuels every day is like being a member of PETA and then having dog fights.
Same in my family. I’m the only one with a hard science STEM degree, Geology (no “Big Bang Theory ” jokes!), but I’m the anti-science one. I can quote statistics out the wazoo, but the Truth has been Pronounced by Scientists, so real data is to be ignored.
Several years ago, my daughter, taking her first high school chemistry course, came to me one evening confused about the difference between polar covalent bonds and polar molecules. I explained the difference and then to confirm she understood, I quizzed her using atmospheric molecules: O2, N2, H2O, CO2, and CO. She got them all correct.
I considered then explaining to her why some were “greenhouse” gases and others were not. This would be the start of properly understanding this efffect. But I decided it was only the barest introduction to the topic, and she had her plate full with real course issues, so I let it go.
How many of these mandated courses explain this at all?
Are we getting dangerously close to talking about politics again? /sarc**2
Only once children are given a good foundation in Mathematics and Science do they have the tools with which they can BEGIN to examine the complexity of climate. At this stage they can BEGIN to appreciate the challenge of the extraordinary Mathematician, George Polya, who wrote in 1944, “in theoretical matters, the best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.”
Until Christine Palm BEGINS to understand Polya’s words she would be wise not to display her ignorance. This applies to many other voices who are so vocal about the “climate threats.”
She has no idea who Polya was, and couldn’t care less even if she did. That’s old stuff…it no longer applies 75 years later.
I think they ought to write a law requiring the school children to read WUWT daily. Then they will get both sides of the story on not only the climate but numerous other subjects of interest.
Of course, some of you guys are going to have to clean up your language a little bit if they write such a law. You should probably do it anyway since I imagine there are a number of children who do read WUWT now. 🙂
Here’s a wild speculation – ‘Climate Change’ education is not going to feature anything other than the alarmist view – NO SKEPTICS ALLOWED.
Taking bets?
Objectivity and the scientific method are right there with freedom and diversity as things to be eliminated or at least interfered with by all progressive do-gooders.
Hey, this is Connecticut. Don’t waste your time or effort there. I left 28 years ago when Gov Lowell “one term” Wicker backed a state income tax which was backdated to the first of the year (1991). This is the state that complained when several large company headquarters recently left due to high taxes. They cried “where will the money we need come from if they leave.” Dumbass liberals.
Remember this ad?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qAkfEX0sqAI
In France it’s more likely a police officer will die from his own hands than from some criminal killing him.
More than 70 commited suicide last year. (more than one a week).
It has some relationship to the kind of lunatic green dogma being forced down the throats of the population, followed by repression of all forms of dissent, causing acute stress to these “public servants”.
We have it the wrong way round now.
Instead of them serving the public, the public has to serve them.
From my reading of the way teenagers behave today, the logical consquence of the kind of policies being put into place, will be a spike in anorexia, and an enormous increase in suicide rates.
I hope they realise adults teaching this new dogma of climate agony, “hopelessness” and “nihilism” will be held fully responsible for this next wave.
Put CT on suicide watch.
Goebbels would be SO proud! The Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda at the time attempted to control the minds of the young and thus, among other means, intruded Nazi beliefs into the school curriculum. A major part of biology became “race science,” and health education and physical training did not escape the racial stress. Geography became geopolitics, the study of the fatherland being fundamental.
Goebbels could never DREAM of what’s being done today.
I think they should have a course in critical thinking skills first, then when they have the Climate Change course they can apply their enhanced critical thinking skills.
This would be a great life lesson and even alarmists will get on board this train.
“I’d love to see poetry be mandated. That’s never going to happen,” she said. “That’s not life or death.”
Neither is “climate change,” at least not in the way she means it.
I’d love to see it mandated that all Eco-Nazis be required to present PROOF through empirical observation of their “climate change” nee “global warming” claims, or, if unable to do so, to STFU about it until they CAN.
Which, given the fact that their claims are nothing more than “hypothetical bullshit,” should shut them up permanently.
You’re WAY too optimistic. NOTHING will shut them up permanently except having their jaws wired shut.
Modern Religions 101
ironically Chester doesn’t even have a school system. They are part of regional school district 4, but even then a small % of kids are actually from Chester Ct