I would like to thank Mary for allowing me to publish her work. This appeared here. RK
Remember the children singing praise songs to Obama back
in 2008? Remember young teenage boys marching in formation and shouting out
thanks to Obama for their promising futures?
The appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of
Education initially was seen as a savvy bipartisan move. But under
his watch the Department of Education has become a propaganda arm used to
influence the next generation to accept the idea of catastrophic man-made
climate change as per the UN, the Environmental Protection Agency, and such
groups as the National Wildlife Federation.
In a multi-pronged approach, the Department is teaming up
with various non-profit and government organizations and curriculum companies
to promote “fun” contests and activities for students, while promoting the next
phase of Common Core “State Standards”—in science.
For example, the Department’s latest Green Strides
newsletter (February 28) announced three contests for K-12 students who display
their agreement with the government’s position on climate change.
In that newsletter, the Department of Education announced
that another federal agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and its
National Environmental Education Foundation, have “launched an exciting video
challenge for middle school students called Climate Change in Focus.” In this contest, middle
school students are asked to make a video that “expresses why they care
about climate change and what they are doing to reduce emissions or to prepare
for its impacts.” To win loyalty to the EPA, it is announced that winning
videos will be highlighted on the EPA website. The effort sounds like the kids’
cereal box promotions of yore: the top three entries will receive “cool prizes
like a solar charging backpack,” winning class projects will receive special
recognition for their school, and the first 100 entrants will receive a year’s
subscription to National Geographic Kids Magazine.
Another contest, National Wildlife Federation’s Young Reporters for the
Environment, invites students “between the ages of 13-21 to report
on an environmental issue in their community in an article, photo or photo
essay, or short video.” Entries should “reflect firsthand investigation of
topics related to the environment and sustainability in the students’ own
communities, draw connections between local and global perspectives, and
propose solutions.”
Students are also encouraged to make nominations for “Champions of the Earth,” a “UN-sponsored award for
environment, Green Economy, and sustainability.” Among the 2013 laureates are
Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, who orchestrated a public-private biosphere reserve
status for a region in Mexico, and Brian McLendon,
of Google Earth.
Students already get exposed to climate change and
sustainability in textbooks which are bought with taxpayer funds, as well as in
videos and online materials produced by taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting.
Many students, of course, have had to sit through Al Gore’s documentary, An
Inconvenient Truth.
Quite obviously, a middle school student does not have
the necessary scientific knowledge to make videos about climate change—a
particularly challenging scientific problem.
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)—the next
phase of Common Core—will make the situation worse, however. Students will be
even less capable of distinguishing science from propaganda. These standards,
like those for math and English Language Arts, were produced by Achieve, a
nonprofit education group started by corporate leaders and some governors.
As in the standards for English Language Arts and math,
the NGSS are intended to be transformative, or as Appendix A states, “to
reflect a new vision for American science education.” They call for new
“performance expectations” that “focus on understanding and applications as
opposed to memorization of facts devoid of context.”
It is precisely such short shrift to knowledge
(dismissively referred to as “memorization”) to which science professors
Lawrence S. Lerner and Paul Gross object. The standards bypass essential math
skills in favor of “process,” they asserted last fall at the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation blog.
Common Core standards, in all disciplines, are written
with a lot of fluff to conceal their emptiness.
Lerner and Gross discovered “inconsistency between strong
NGSS (and Appendix C) assertions and what was actually found by the
mathematicians, among others, of our reviewing group.”
(The Common Core math standards themselves have garnered
much criticism among teachers, parents, and students; focusing so much on
“process,” they make simple problems bizarrely confusing, as a collection of examples
illustrates.)
Lerner and Gross condemn the “Slighting of mathematics,”
which does “increasing mischief as grade level rises, especially in the
physical sciences.” Physics is “effectively absent” at the high school level.
“Several devout declarations” appear, however, the
authors sardonically point out, as they note this one from Appendix C:
In particular, the best
science education seems to be one based on integrating rigorous content with
the practices that scientists and engineers routinely use in their
work—including application of mathematics.
Lerner and Gross attack the “practices” strategy, as an
extension of the “inquiry learning” of the early 1990s, which had “no notable
effect on the (mediocre) performance of American students in national and
international science assessments.”
With some sarcasm, they write, “It is charming to say ‘.
. . students learn science effectively when they actively engage in the
practices of science.’” However,
Students will not learn best
if they practice science exactly as do real scientists. A firm conclusion in cognitive
science contradicts that claim. Beginners don’t and can’t ‘practice’ as do
experts. The practices of experts exploit prior experience and extensive
build-up in long-term memory of scaffolding: facts, procedures, technical
know-how, solutions to standard problems in the field, vocabularies—of
knowledge in short.
Not only do the Next Generation Science
Standards shirk the necessary foundations in math and science
knowledge, but they explicitly call for including ideological lessons, such as
“Human impacts on Earth systems.” For grades K-2, students are to understand,
“Things people do can affect the environment but they can make choices to
reduce their impact.” In grades 3 through 5, students will learn “Societal
activities have had major effects on the land, ocean, atmosphere, and even
outer space. Societal activities can also help protect Earth’s resources and
environments.” This is from part ESS3.C of the NGSS standards.
“Human impacts on Earth systems” are huge topics, when
approached legitimately. They present quandaries to scientists at the top
levels. Yet NGSS imposes them on kindergartners. The objective, of course, is
not teaching legitimate science, but indoctrination.
Amazingly, ten states have already voluntarily adopted
the Standards.
Such efforts, coordinated by the Department of Education,
threaten the future of science itself.
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