British schoolchildren are being brainwashed by a deep green environmental curriculum which fills their heads with “confusion, ignorance and fear”, says a new study by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The report, by science writer Andrew Montford and statistician John Shade, finds that “eco-activism” has been given free rein within schools for at least three decades. Children are being encouraged to become “little political activists” with a duty to “save the planet” not least by putting pressure on their parents.
This agenda can be found in teaching across the board – not just in obviously relevant subjects like science and geography but even in unrelated areas like French, Maths and English. It affects everything from field trips (often with an environmental theme, such as “sustainability”) to projects and film screenings (An Inconvenient Truth; The Age Of Stupid; The Day After Tomorrow) and even how well children perform in exams (with marks given automatically to children who “correctly” identify Carbon Dioxide as a major environmental threat).
The rot can be traced back at least as far as 1984, when Herbert London wrote Why are they Lying to our Children?
In his introduction, London wrote:
One evening more than a year ago I came home from university to find my elder daughter – then 13 – with tears streaming down her cheeks… When I gently inquired why she was crying, Staci said, ‘Because I don’t have a future’. [She] produced a mimeographed sheet suggesting that a dismal future – or none at all – is what awaits her…widespread famine…overpopulation…air pollution so bad everyone will wear gas masks…befouled rivers and streams…melting of the polar ice caps and world-wide devastation of coastal cities…an epidemic of cancer brought on by damage to the ozone layer…
This brainwashing became more widespread after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, aided and abetted by useful idiots in John Major’s Conservative government such as former Environment Secretary John Selwyn Gummer (now Lord Gummer, a prominent eco-activist and investor in green technologies); then made even worse under Tony Blair’s Labour government which established a quango to advise on “sustainable” education and resulted in the study of sustainable development being made a compulsory part of teaching in geography, science, design and technology and citizenship.
Environmental initiatives described in the report include the Climate Change Schools Project, which encouraged children to police their parents like junior Stasi operatives. An evaluation report, published in 2009, said:
A really successful activity in this area was the “Climate Cops” event run by nPower. After an interactive event at a school, students were given police officer style notebooks, and they could ‘book’ themselves, friends or family members if they saw them wasting energy or performing other ‘climate unfriendly’ actions.
Subject areas which have been corrupted by environmental propaganda include:
Geography
Sample paragraph from a GCSE revision guide
Climate change isn’t something that is going to happen in the future – it’s happening now! Disasters, like the severe droughts in Niger, in sub-Saharan Africa, in 2005-6 and 2009, are wrecking people’s lives more and more frequently. And it’s going to get worse.
English
From a GCSE revision guide
Adjectives describe Things and People
‘Global warming is bad’ – Too boring – zero marks alert
‘Global warming is a serious and very worrying issue’ – Much better – the adjectives will impress the examiner
French
From an A level French text (with translation)
Plus personne ne peut le nier, les scientifiques sont unanimes, et nous le constatons chaque jour: jamais dans l’histoire de l’humanité, les menaces n’ont été aussi grandes…Ce sont l’air, l’eau, le sol, le climat…les animaux que nous sommes en train de massacrer méticuleusement.
Toi et tes ami(e)s, vous avez rendez-vous avec l’histoire. Devenez des consomm’acteurs’ avertis…et soyez avocats de la vie et citoyens de la Terre…
Nobody can deny it, scientists are unanimous and we see it every day: never in the history of humanity have the dangers been so great…We are in the course of meticulously destroying the air, the water, the climate…and the animals.
You and your friends have a rendezvous with history. Become responsible consumers…and be advocates for life and citizens of the Earth…
Economics
Sample question:
Explain why developed rich countries should provide money to poorer, developing countries so that they can reduce their CO2 emissions.
Religious Studies
Sample questions:
Explain two reasons why many religious believers are concerned about climate change
Explain actions religious people might take to look after the planet.
Physics
GCSE sample answer, deemed worthy of full marks by AQA examining board:
I think wind turbines are a good idea as global warming from burning coal is an increasing problem and needs to be stopped.
The report’s authors conclude:
The seriousness of what we have seen is hard to overstate. The fact that children’s ability to pass their exams – and hence their future life prospects – appears to depend on being able to demonstrate their climate change orthodoxy is painfully reminiscent of life in communist-era Eastern Europe or Mao’s China. Politicians seem to have given the nod to this process, effectively handing much of the curriculum to green activists. The question of whether what is taught in the classroom is scientific or political, balanced or biased, true or false seems to have gone unexamined.