Dodo Birds In American Education
Here is what you need to worry about: Now that the Dodos of Climate Change have been proven wrong and their prizes for “science” are all bunk and rubbish, what do they do next? Answer: Ignore facts and indoctrinate the heck out of everyone, man, woman, and child in the country.
The Dodos are not going away, unfortunately…extinct though they may be. Someone has forgotten to tell them their bone-headed ideas don’t fly. (The Dodo was a flightless bird, after all.) No, they just keep showing up with more bunk and rubbish.
The bad news is this garbage about Climate Change has been flooding the school systems thanks to the Federal Core Curriculum requirements and even state and local indoctrinaires on the subject. So our children are growing up with abject, foul lies. It’s deeper than just the bogus climate science claims. The system is full of lovely “Sustainability” indoctrination (straight from the Agenda 21 handbook). Remember Race To The Top? That much ballyhooed program that was supposed to elevate the quality of education in America? Guess what? It wasn’t all about education; it was also about indoctrination.
Have you heard of S.T.E.M.? It is sold as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Yet, turns out it is also another arm of “Sustainable” indoctrination for turning our students into global Marxists.
I’m a little late getting into this education subject, but for a feel of where the Obama administration has it headed, look to these nuggets from Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s remarks, headlined “The Greening of the Department of Education,” delivered during a Sustainability Summit:
“Through the Race to the Top and other programs, we’ve unleashed an avalanche of pent-up reform activity across the states and literally thousands of districts.
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“Historically, the Department of Education hasn’t been doing enough in the sustainability movement. Today, I promise you that we will be a committed partner in the national effort to build a more environmentally literate and responsible society.
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“Until now, we’ve been mostly absent from the movement to educate our children to be stewards of our environment and prepare them to participate in a sustainable economy. That work is taking hold in corporations, in other agencies of the federal government, as well as colleges, universities, and schools across the country.
“But this Education Department is just getting started in this important work. It’s been clear for a decade or more that education plays a vital role in the sustainability movement. In 1996, President Clinton’s task force on sustainable development issued its goals. One of them stated that all Americans should have access to lifelong learning opportunities so they will understand the concepts involved in sustainable development.
“This week’s sustainability summit represents the first time that the Department is taking a leadership role in the work of educating the next generation of green citizens and preparing them to contribute to the workforce through green jobs. President Obama has made clean, renewable energy a priority because, as he says, it’s the best way to ‘truly transform our economy, to protect our security, and save our planet.’”
And by the way, the U.S. Green Building Council is involved as well: “The U.S. Green Building Council is working with school districts and universities to incorporate green technology into schools.” You know that has to be good; and don’t mind that the U.S. Green Building Council only promotes the International Code Council regulations for American buildings.
So what does all of that mean? Well, let’s see who is training the teachers to implement this scholarly greening indoctrination plan:
Kim Rakow Bernier is the Outreach Director at a nonprofit organization called Facing the Future (www.facingthefuture.org) and the Co-Chair of the K-12 and Teacher Education Sector of the U.S. Partnership for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (www.uspartnership.org). She has facilitated over 200 professional development workshops and keynote presentations on integrating global sustainability into the K-12 classroom at conventions including ASCD, American Association of School Administrators, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, National Council for the Social Studies, and National Science Teachers Association.
And what does she have to teach teachers who teach students? A few samplings:
A middle school science teacher addresses the concept of ecological footprint and the relationship between humans and the environment by asking his students to identify the component parts of a cheeseburger. Easy, right? A bun, a beef patty, and cheese. Then he guides his students as they trace each part back to where it came from and what was involved in producing it and getting it to their table.
For example, of course a beef patty comes from a cow, but there are many steps in between the cow and the burger“ the grass and grain used for feed, the water needed to produce that feed, the fertilizers and pesticides used on the grazing land, the slaughterhouse, the transportation of the beef to a restaurant, the energy to heat the stove to cook the burger, and so on. Students are asked to think about impacts, both positive and negative, of each of the processes, products, and technologies along the way. After their diagrams are complete, students then brainstorm creative ways to reduce their footprint related to a cheeseburger.
They come up with all kinds of ideas including eating organic beef, eating smaller patties or fewer burgers per week, informing themselves and others about the beef industry and its impacts, and making their own cheeseburgers. Through this exercise, students are unpacking their connections to the cheeseburger on their plate and finding tangible ways that they can make both small and large impacts on economic, social, and environmental issues.
Well, O.K. Let’s make sure the kids lower their carbon footprint and consider every step of food process before they sit down to eat. Now that will certainly put a damper on one’s appetite. Not that all of that knowledge is horrible, but really…do you need to tell every child they have to consider every aspect of producing and eating a cheeseburger, or they will be killing the planet? Yes, according the Federal Common Core Curriculum. I wonder if Bill Clinton thought about all of that when he was eating all of those cheeseburgers? Hmmmm….
Here is one from a “Sustainability Math Lesson.” The teacher relates her method:
She developed a unit on habitat to provide a context to teach math skills like area and transformations. Her students explored the concept of habitat as they calculated areas of various habitats around the world for the endangered snow leopard and reflected on ways to support the survival of endangered species. This lesson also had an unexpected geography connection as they located snow leopard habitats on a world map.
I guess you have to include endangered species into a math lesson, otherwise a student might think math would have something to do with manufacturing a product or some other tragic consequence. I’m sure that will make a huge difference to figuring out how much gasoline costs to drive 30 miles in an obsolete car. You won’t be able to drive out of your neighborhood, but you sure as heck will know where the snow leopard lives and how many of them exist. Hmmmm…..again.
So there you have it. The Dodos are in charge of teaching our students how “unsustainable” their lifestyles are and how they better shape up or they will be extinct as ….well…as Dodos. Thank you so much Bill Clinton and Arne Duncan for taking over our classrooms, so the world will not fry itself out of existence with the help of human beings. I’ll bet Bill Clinton has no idea where the snow leopard lives or how many cheeseburgers he has eaten in his lifetime.
A friend of mine wrote me these words in an email the other morning:
“Marx could only dream of this level of indoctrination; Lenin worked for it; Stalin killed for it; and the Hitler Youth stand supreme and alone as to what happens when education is propaganda and indoctrination.”
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