A global warming book was withdrawn from public schools for inaccuracy. It almost sounds like a small bit of sanity is creeping into the global warming discussion. After all, us skeptics all seem to have our nuanced opinions on the matter and not many of them are unreasonable. As a father of two kids ready to enter the US public indoctrination/brainwashing program, I’m very concerned as to how this issue will be presented. I already know Illinois schools are nuts and rife with leftism, doublethink and other illogical realities (like being passed with 100% failing grades). Of course this insanity has to be put to a stop, but the reality is that the indoctrination is going to be a big war for our family. I’m so bad that even most recycling programs are crap in my mind.
The title links the article.
Global warming book withdrawn
By Joe Dejka
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
“Although the authors have pledged to correct the graph in subsequent editions, the committee recommends that this correction be made to all MPS-owned texts before using it with students in the future,” Feldhausen wrote.
Lee and Robyn Terry released a statement saying they were pleased with the decision and “impressed” by the district’s handling of the case.
In the video, DiCaprio attributes global warming to mankind’s “destructive addiction” to oil. He says “big corporations” and politicians gained too much money and power “on our addiction,” making them “dangerously resistant to change.”
In the letter to parents, Feldhausen said the committee recognized there are “multiple viewpoints” on global warming. The committee recommended that all teachers using the book “make students aware of both sides of the global warming theory,” he said.
Millard Public Schools will stop using a children’s book about global warming — but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” contained “a major factual error” in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.
.
However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, he wrote.
Robyn Terry, the congressman’s wife, had described the video as a “political commercial.”
I’m not in the least surprised that they are teaching global warming this way. It is going to be a difficult pill to swallow when my boys start the program. So difficult, that you may see me in the news again when the time comes, after all, sometimes you need to take a stand in the courts. I just cannot accept the thought of my sons being brainwashed by leftist science teachers with no clue —- for 13 years.
Does anyone else here have some experience with their own children in their own wonderful schools (don’t care which country)?
the Air Vent 
Yet another casualty from this failed paradigm will be the increased cynicism about authority figures which this escapade from reality will create in our youth. Hey, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Given the authorities we’ve created.
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“I’m so bad that even most recycling programs are crap in my mind.”
LOL. You are not alone, brother. Recycling paper, cardboard, and aluminum is probably economically sound and defensible. Maybe some plastics and glass, if you generate a LOT (i.e., if you use the materials industrially). The rest of it is pure subsidized baloney, and I’m amazed at how the public has simply accepted this bunk, which is actually costing them a lot of money (if they only knew!). It really scares me just how dumbed down the public has become. Fact is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good landfill, especially when the methane is collected and used to generate electricity!
Jeff, in my opinion, there is a solution, albeit not a simple one:
Homeschooling.
Worked for me.
Relax Jeff. Let them brainwash your kids. If they are smart, they’ll see through it. Then your kids will lose respect for their teachers.
The best way to gain immunity is to acquire the disease.
The best gift you can give your children is to teach them to think for themselves and always question. An (the most?)important part of education should be about learning to ask the right questions. Is that missing in teaching these days? Certainly seems to be.
Jeff, this is sloppy reporting. the error in a graph, is a reference to page 18 of the book, which seems to contain a graph that has CO2 and temperature labels exchanged. (and this error seems to have been discovered a few years ago…)
the accompanying text is fine:
Deep down in the Antarctic ice are atmosphere samples from the past, trapped in tiny air bubbles. These bubbles, formed when snowflakes fell on the ice, are the key to figuring out two things about climate history: what temperatures were in the past and which greenhouse gases were present in the atmosphere at that time.
The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at the graph:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=43514
amazon has a couple of pages up, and i didn t spot any other big errors at first glance. and indeed, the negative “1 star” reviews either focus on the page 18 error, or offer just a sweeping 2wrong on all accounts” claim.
In 1983 the US Secretary of Education, T.H.Bell approved the report entitled “A Nation at Risk”. This remarkable document contained the following statement:
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
Instead of stimulating a total reform of public K-12 education in this country, this report’s main consequence was to dissuade Ronald Reagan from abolishing the Department of Education.
I have spent the last 17 years working to reform public K-12 education and I am looking for people like you to take up the task now that I am getting old and feeble. If you are interested let me know how I can contact you directly.
Yeah, my kid came home and told me about the ‘science assembly’ put on by
ACE.
Check out this fine propaganda;
http://www.acespace.org/teachers/about-presentation
I’m getting ready to insist on equal time from my local school board.
Too late for the seniors, they’re already fully ready to go out and vote.
Yikes…
They could tell that my kid wasn’t buying the baloney, and tried to make an example of him, pushing him to join the groupthink.
Keep track of your blood pressure…
RR
Sod at 12.32 The last time I saw the CO2 temperature link the warming lead the rise in CO2 by 800 years.Has this bit of history also changed?
My kids are nearing their exit from the U.S. indoctrination/brainwash program. Actually, it has not been so bad. Give your kids the tools to read, read, read and find, find, find information. Teach them not to believe every single thing they read and how to look for verification in other places. Teach them that nothing is black and white – you need to be able to see all of the shades of gray in between. Then they will learn to be critical thinkers. My daughter wrote a paper in 9th grade about global warming. She used information that supported both sides of the debate and concluded that the science is not settled. She got an A. My son is leaning ultra-liberal, but he can’t stand Al Gore. There is hope.
So, where did Leonard DiCaprio go to school?
At our son’s daycare they had kids coloring pictures of a sad-looking earth (with a face) with a hot thermometer in it’s mouth and a title stating that the earth was sick or had a fever or something. I plan on teaching him to think for himself…
#6 Sod, “The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at the graph:”
The book has the sequence backwards. The higher the temperature went, the more CO2 entered the atmosphere. The more the temperature fell, the less CO2.
This is what the ice core data show: that CO2 always followed and temperature always led, with the CO2 averaging an 800 year lag.
The book makes a very tendentious and fundamental factual error regarding a well-known embarrassment for those asserting human-caused climate warming.
That error alone reveals a studied negligence that ought to disqualify the book from use.
12 Hmmm
Better start now. Do you have enough hours when he is out of day care, or do they have more access to him than you do?
Think for yourself
Question authority
Think for yourself
Question authority
Throughout human history,
As our species has faced
The frightening,
Terrorizing,
Fact
That we do not know
Who we are, or where we are going
In this ocean of chaos,
It has been the authorities
The political,
The religious,
The educational,
Authorities
Who attempted to
Comfort us
By giving us
Order,
Rules,
Regulations,
Informing
Forming in our minds
Their view of reality…
To think for yourself you must question authority
And learn
How to put yourself in a state of vulnerable
Open-mindedness,
Chaotic,
Confused,
Vulnerability ,
To inform yourself.
Think for Yourself
Question authority
– Timothy Leary.
Jeff
As you probably know a British High Court found around 9 inacurracies in ‘An Inconvenient truth’ and by law these had to be pointed out prior to any screening of this Science Fiction classic at a British School. There is also a right to put an alternative view. This comes down to the Teachers exercising this right, but I have been asked to give lectures in school giving the sceptical view.
In my view children as young as 8 are being brainwashed by TV, news, film, etc, about CAGW, and they have become almost nihilistic about the future.
One of the first questions I asked a group of 11 year olds was how much of the atmosphere was comprised of CO2 and how much of that was contributed by man. The answers were 80% and 100% respectively.
I think we all have an obligation to approach our local schools and ask to be allowed to put the subject into a much better context than is usually the case.
Without reading the book in question I don’t know how contentious it really is, but bearing in mind a large part of my recent thread here on Historic levels of Co2 covered the very subject of Co2 in ice cores (still highly debatable)I suspect that getting hold of a copy of the book and going through it would be worthwhile.
By the way this is likely to be part of the programme funded by Sage 21-the education offshoot of the IPCC.
Tonyb
For my child it was private school grades 1-8 (lots of parental involvement REQUIRED by the schools), home schooling grades 9 and 10, and only then would I subject her to the public high school. She just graduated from college summa cum laude last month and she’s able to think. I can tell because she asks intelligent questions.
Whatever route you go, it’s key that you and your wife be involved with your children’s education. Resist the temptation to do their work for them, however. Teaching is opening up a mind, not supplying answers.
Jeff,
Ah the young…don’t be too concerned for them as they are tougher and smarter than we give them credit for – both mine have gone through secondary school; one has graduated with a business degree and now, after a stint in corporate America, works for me at my manufacturing company. The younger one is still in college and I warn her not to let too much academic poison into her head but to be open-mined and have fun and learn as much as possible.
Not advice, but shared ideas on bringing up kids to be smart: pay attention to their ideas and no matter how silly these ideas are or where they got them, listen to your kids. Restrain yourself from “setting them straight”. Let them discover truth on their own by asking them questions – gentle questions. I remember when that stupid Al Gore movie came out the younger one was a teenager and was quite impressed by her new-found knowledge and wanted to know if I was a “denier”. How funny that memory is for me. I cherish it. Her ernestness and seriousness so touched me.
I asked her that if sea levels would rise as predicted; what cities would be destroyed first? New York? Los Angeles? What were the elevations of these cities etc? As time went by and we had our chances to talk, I would (gently) bring up that city-flooding global-warming prediction. After a bit, she got it.
Be on the watch out for the stuff in the text books they study. I found so much crap I can’t even list it all. I am actually working on a math text book aimed at secondary school – mathematics instruction is atrocious. It’s just a crime. Science instruction wasn’t as bad but I can still remember running across some whoppers.
Yes, get involved with their instruction and let the instructors have it when they are teaching crap. No gentle Socratic method required here. They pretty much fear engineers and technically educated parents.
Have fun with your children – it is (in my opinion) most important to love them; keep them busy; and never give up on them.
Just my opinion.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3831440/Obama-internet-kill-switch-proposed
This must be a wind up!!!!
I would also reccommend a private school for the first 8, 9 grades and then public school. If you choose a good private school, they will be taught good critical thinking skills. Then when they get to High School they can’t be brinwashed, their cognitive skills are too high, and they will realize, as all my kids did, that current schools not only do a poor job at critical thinking, but also self discipline. Remember these are the people your children will most probably have as employees under their management, and need to be introduced to tham before they are managers.
These two attributes form the basis of the informed citizen. It is not a wonder, but rather expected that we produce poor thinkers and poor citizens. And it does not matter if you are a liberal or a conservative, good critical thinking and self discipline are the tools of this age, and both sides of the political spectrum could use more of both.
The Catholics usually have good schools especially if you can find one still run by the nuns. They make the kids learn. Grades are given for performance and performance is demanded. Parents are expected to help the children learn self discipline. The Catholic schools refuse to act as (poor) proxy parents as in the public system. Every one of my kids noted the difference when they went to public schools and all realized that we had given them a big advantage by sending them to a school that actually taught the skills necessary for proper learning. I cherish the memory of each discussion that I had with my four children.
You need such memories because it aint cheap. LOL.
“write a small volume, to be entitled-let us say- The Children’s Book of American Birds, and dedicate it to Mr. Worple.”
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I really appreciate the advice given here, and feel quite a bit better about my chances. You see them grow and know they have an independence that we cannot control. It’s just too bad that the public schools aren’t more locally directed and more accountable for idiotic teaching.
Trust the kids and guide where you can.
Thanks to all..
Re: Jeff Id (Jun 19 09:42),
You can thank your national and state Education Association, otherwise known as a union as well as gutless politicians. Maybe when California declares bankruptcy we’ll get a change in direction. Once upon a time K-12 teachers may actually have been underpaid relative, but that’s not true anymore in most places.
Karl Marx said to take over a country, you have to control the press and the schools. Where have the Left congregated? What have they done? Back in the stone age, when we learned by ‘rote’ if I remember, it was awful. (Even if we did learn the multiplication table) No, children should be taught to think. That was then. Now we’ve gone full circle. Schools don’t want thought, just repeat what you hear. Children are impressionable, they want to conform, fit in. And the schools exploit this. I survived the Illinois school system, it was not easy. Dad was an engineer, and a good one. He never gave me the answers, but showed me how to find them. The most valuable lessons of my life.
So, to echo what others have said: teach your kids to think. Instill a fascination with how things work. A sense of wonder. Question everything.
I work with young people, and so many of them have not learned this. They have learned to say “you want fries with that?”
#6
So to corrected graph shows the temps rising before the CO2 but the text is just fine. Amazing.
Could you move this post to an appropriate thread? Not sure where to post it. I know it is OT I apologize.
Some time ago a few members/posters at this blog had the pleasure of calls and visits from the police regarding Climategate.
At least, some people believed that a crime had been committed. This morning this story appeared in Wind Concerns Ontario regarding police of The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) visiting members of Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) to determine if a crime was being contemplated.
It makes for an interesting morning read over coffee when you realize that you are now likely the target of background searches and criminal investigations for a crime that you might contemplate in the future. I have variously seen this in fantasy and science fiction described as “Future Crime” and “Thought Crime”.
What more could I say?
Charter schools. Public schools with accountability by contract amongst teachers, students and parents.
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#8 RuhRoh,
ACE was started by Michael Haas, big Obama contributor and founder of Orion Energy a wind power company that has been acquired by….. wait for it………
BP.
Tony B
Unfortunately it is not British, but English (and possibly Welsh) schools that have to include the legal caveats on Gore’s film. The Scots decided it could be shown without further comment.
Messenger
It would be English and Welsh presumably as they share the same judicial system. I wonder why Scotland opted out? Presumably as the High Court ruling didn’t apply there no one challenged the film in that country’s jurisdiction.
tonyb
You are not alone. In the Australian State of Victoria, we are required to pay a large increase in our quarterly electricity bills for an undefined “service charge” that is linked in an undescribed way to the provision of “smart meters” for electricity. These meters provide little benefit to the consumer, who never gets to own them, but they seem to be intended to build up a war chest so the Government can instal wind power on a large scale to (among other things) drive a desalination plant. The people have not been asked if they want smart meters, which will help the utilities to modify electrical output from various sources for times like when the wind stops blowing. BTW, the public has not been asked if it wants windmills or a desalination plant, either.
As to the educational topic, dissident groups have long sought to control teaching, but the smarter pupils/students have long been able to see through the propaganda. I rather feel that the exposure of students to teacher silliness makes for inquiring and more valuable minds. But Mum and Dad have to guide them.
The danger increases when the dumber, indoctrinated kids graduate as teachers. Teachers should be given annual exams, sacked if they fail.
Conservative schools sounds good….
Thought police is what is in the works,
control is what “they” have been after.
guns will come into play soon…….
no electric power, big trouble!!!!!!
“they will weep for the losses”
dang!
@26 DanC
Hey, thanks for the tip.
I’m open to any suggestions about a concise reply package to that ACE thing which seems to rely primarily on IPCC 4th Assessment Report.
My challenge will be to not get lost in details, while presenting a terse, credible challenge to the overstated assertions, to my local school district directors.
This is the real contest, to reach the folks who are only hearing about the overwhelming consensus.
Where I live, most folks are on board with the ‘imminent crisis’ perspective…
TIA
RR
Your kids need to know how to play the system. Check out Mark Lopez’ “Little Black Schoolbook”. You can hear Lopez talking about it on the excellent Counterpoint radio program.
I don’t know the right answer to this. It’s an issue that’s not limited to climate science as seen in reactions to the recent changes the TX board of education made. People of differing beliefs about things interpret facts differently. So how are we to all agree on what to teach our kids? I don’t think we can completely get rid of public education. I guess you could blow it up and have some voucher thing to send kids to different private schools. Even that won’t really fix things though. You can’t please everyone. I’d also hate to see a situation where a kid has to move to a different area and finds out much of what was learned previously is considered wrong at his new school. I think the current situation is probably about is good as it will get. People elect those of similar beliefs who appoint others to make these decisions. If they make decisions that people don’t like, those people complain and try to get the school(s) to correct their error. Like this case. Beyond that, it’s up to each parent to teach their kids what they want. Finally, it’s up to the kid to figure things out.
At least once a year, my kid is offered ‘extra credit’ for watching ‘Inconvenient Trooths’ .
I expect that most kids have seen in >3 times before they graduate HS.
RR
Ok, someone made a nice coherent summary thing over at
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/heartland_conference_establish.html
for my pitch to my local schoolboard for permission to present Non-IPCC perspective,
Thanks to all.
RR
Jeff, sometimes it is kids that see things the adults miss.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100621/sc_space/7thgradersdiscovermysteriouscaveonmars
Kids bring a fresh look to science, not accepting that the status quo is necessarily quo. Maybe GISS needs to hire some seventh graders to do the temperature index.
(I’ve changed my email)
Jeff, you migth wish to check out this site:
“A blog aiming to share information about materials presented to children on climate, especially those which seem intended to frighten or mislead them.”
http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/
I’m sure you will be able to teach your kids to think for themselves, though.
Best regards