As the school strikes began (Summer 2019) and Extinction Rebellion were gaining supportive airtime on Channel 4 I was approached by someone who had set up a group on Facebook to oppose climate alarmism. He asked if I would be an admin and I agreed. The group had six members. It now has over thousand but is tiny in comparison to some climate-alarm critical groups. One Scandinavian group has over 160 thousand members.
The Facebook group gained a few score members within a month. But to my surprise, I began to be messaged by parents who were worried about what their children were experiencing in school. As the school strikes became a more regular occurrence, some reported bullying of their children over the subject. One reported that her child had experienced bullying after she had dropped her daughter off at school by car. “Your mother is killing the planet.” she was told. One sent me a photograph of a huge Extinction Rebellion mural that had suddenly appeared at the end of her street.
Another complained that far from discouraging school strikes, teachers had been broadly supportive of them.
This week I attended an online forum for educators. It was organised by Pearson Education Ltd and entitled “From COP27 to the classroom – how can we achieve sustainable schools?”. The panel gave presentations on teaching climate and sustainability subjects in the classroom. Subjects covered included “What schools need to know: the climate education movement and reducing carbon impact”, “The student view: why sustainability and climate action matters” and “Connecting learners to nature through the curriculum”. Nearly all of the presenters used hyperbolic, alarmist and scaremongering language about climate.
During their separate presentations, two of the participants Ross Hutchinson, and Aisling Creevey both from ITV Weather, independently of each other, stated that there was no reason to teach the other side of the climate debate. This was rather odd and betrayed awareness on their part that this was a politicised and contentious subject and that there were, in fact, alternative viewpoints. Would a zoom discussion on the teaching of geography in schools have two of eight presenters state that, in teaching geography, there was no reason to cover flat earth theory?
I asked how they could justify this stance, who had made this decision and on what basis. No answer was forthcoming.
Environmentalism and sustainability have featured in our childrens’ education for two decades. The National Curriculum was revised in 2000 to make teaching sustainable development compulsory in design and technology, science geography and citizenship. But challenges to the content have been successfully made by parents. In fact, the teaching of climate change subjects may be unlawful if done so without presenting alternative material or if done in a manner which promotes a political bias.
In 2007, the UK government, issued 3,500 UK schools with copies of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. A parent mounted a legal challenge to its showing and in October 2007 Judge Michael Burton said, in his High Court decision, he had no doubt that the points raised in “An Inconvenient Truth” were broadly accurate but added that they were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.”
Judge Burton outlined nine problems including Gore’s claim that sea level rises of 23 feet might occur in the immediate future something the judge characterized as “distinctly alarmist.” He also cited claims that Hurricane Katrina, the evaporation of most of Lake Chad and the melting of the snow on Mount Kilimanjaro were all caused by global warming. Burton said there was insufficient evidence to back those claims.
The ruling was that the film could be shown but only if there was accompanying guidance to teachers that balancing material should be provided, and it was not done promoting a political bias.
But clearly there is evidence that climate alarmism and environmental alarmism is being taught in some schools laden with political and activist bias. As Fraser Myers tweets
Sandy Moor writes of this incident in spiked online. https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/03/07/keep-kids-out-of-the-climate-debate/
“Last week, St John’s Catholic Primary School in Bebington, Wirral, tweeted a video of its schoolchildren staging a classroom protest against fracking. ‘Stop fracking’, chant the children in unison, sat around their desks, holding placards they made in class. The tweet was one of many showing children drawing pictures of pollution and environmental damage. Twitter users accused the school of ‘indoctrination’. The video has since been deleted and the school has made its Twitter account private.”
The BBC, meanwhile, gives uncritical 20-minute adverts to a private company with funding from the UN which provides “climate educational materials” to nearly 3000 schools in the UK and in scores of countries worldwide. Harwood Education runs training courses for climate change teachers. But its postings on its Facebook page and its website do not seem very measured or apolitical.
https://www.facebook.com/educcateglobal
So, it seems a good portion of the education system is being geared towards teaching children that our current society is unsustainable, and that Man’s activities are destroying the planet and their future.
Children should not be used in such a political way. It has so far only been authoritarian regimes which have used children for political purposes. Children lack experience and judgement and that also lack a completed and balanced education. They trust what adults tell them and this is right and proper. But past chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was in no doubt of children’s place in climate propaganda. Children should be used to “shame adults into taking the right steps” he said.
See also
This video was created some ten years ago, scripted by the British writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and planned to go out as part of the environmental campaign 10:10, which hoped to spur people into cutting their environmental impact by 10%. Fortunately, the campaign was short-lived, and the actual film was pulled just hours before it was due for cinema release. No doubt the team responsible for it thought it a joke and the distaste for it an over-reaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsbqoytInTY
Dave O'Toole 