Pirate's Cove

This is giving the NY Times and lots of climate cult teachers a sad (paywalled Times piece here)

What Do American’s Middle Schools Teach About Climate Change? Not Much.

In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of seventh graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them.

It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year olds, Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of online disinformation. But she also thought it an important capstone to the end of two weeks she dedicates to teaching her Miami students about climate change, possible solutions and the barriers to progress.

“I’m really passionate about this issue,” she said. “I have to find a way to sneak it in.”

Sneak it in? Do the parents know you’re attempting to indoctrinate their kids? Who’s paying for the pro-cult material?

That’s because in Florida, where Vazquez has taught for more than 30 years, and where her students are already seeing the dramatic effects of a warming planet, the words “climate change” do not appear in the state’s middle or elementary school education standards.

Climate change is set to transform where students can live and what jobs they’ll do as adults. And yet, despite being one of the most important issues for young people, it appears only minimally in many state middle school science standards nationwide. Florida does not include the topic and Texas dedicates three bullet points to climate change in its 27 pages of standards. More than 40 states have adopted standards that include just one explicit reference to climate change.

“Middle school is where these kids are starting to get their moral compass and to back that compass up with logic,” said Michael Padilla, a professor emeritus at Clemson University and a former president of the National Science Teachers Association. “So middle school is a classic opportunity to have more focus on climate change.”

Moral compass? Doesn’t sound like science to me. But, again, it’s not about science.

Which is why climate education is now expanding into areas like the arts and humanities, and social studies. Beginning this year, New Jersey is incorporating some aspect of climate change’s effects, as well as solutions, into its standards for every grade band and in every subject area. National organizations representing English and social studies teachers have called for greater engagement with climate change in their classes.

Sounds like BS to me.