Education vs. Indoctrination

We can no longer trust our most fundamental institutions.

David Wojick, a brilliant mathematician and CFACT contributor, has posted an important series of articles at CFACT.org focusing on the shocking way government and educational institutions are indoctrinating students with unsound global warming talking points.

Dr. Wojick’s latest piece focuses on lesson plans from the National Academy of Sciences that reveal “NAS has clearly lost sight of its role as the trusted science advisor to the US Government.”

NAS has created a “webquest” for children that takes them on a journey into the realm of junk science.  As Dr. Wojick points out, the “quest” gives children no chance of encountering sound science.  It is all about indoctrination, not education.

In is column “The National Academy of Sciences teaches climate advocacy, not science” Dr. Wojick writes:

The prestigious US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is off the rails when it comes to teaching kids about climate change. They have an exhaustive lesson plan for middle and high school kids that teaches a great deal of alarmist advocacy and very little science. NAS has clearly lost sight of its role as the trusted science advisor to the US Government. Al Gore could have written this lesson.

The lesson plan is called Climate Change Webquest. As the name “Webquest” suggests, it is basically a framework that ties together a lot of alarmist websites, which the students go to, to find answers for specific questions. (Some of these sites are not suitable for middle schoolers, but then neither is the framework.)

The structure of the framework gives away the game. The Webquest is supposed to be undertaken by a group of five students, each of which plays a specific role. Here are the roles:

1. Climate Scientist
2. Policy Analyst (!)
3. Economist
4. Energy Expert
5. Urban Planner

Clearly this is about policy, not science. In fact the scientist’s primary role is merely to saythat CO2 emissions are creating dangerous climate change. Then the other four players try to redesign society in order to solve this bogus problem. Their product is a “strategy portfolio,” including proposed new laws.

Here’s the problem.

While those who value freedom master the ins and outs of science and policy, the Left masters procedure and institutional control.

To compete we need to become procedural experts ourselves and return our institutions to their genuine missions.

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