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Portland Public Schools Bans Any Dissent from Climate Dogma
The Portland Public Schools Board.
The Portland Public Schools board this week voted unanimously to institute a ban on allowing any materials or discussion that express doubts that human activity is causing a catastrophic climate crisis. They might as well have just put out a resolution promoting homeschooling.
The story outlining this in the Portland Tribune is absolutely incredible. It is filled with so many layers of nonsense, ignorance, petty tyranny, and moral preening that it seems a bit much, even for hopelessly lefty Portland. I do wonder, however, if they will host a book-burning ceremony at the football stadium. It’s the logical next step, right? Because, apparently, their text books are infected with terms like “might,” “may,” and “could” in some passages that address climate change. We must make sure those doubts don’t accidentally infect the minds of the children they are charged with educating indoctrinating. So why not purge all the sin from the books by fire?
Have these lefties not even an inkling of self-awareness? Do they not see how they have created a climate alarmist parallel to the Scopes Monkey Trial? They are demanding that their unshakable faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming be the only thing taught in school. Because, “science.” But even today, proponents for Intelligent Design don’t demand that’s all that’s taught in school, only that it be included in the discussion. Right or wrong, it’s a more open-minded approach than the Climate Cultists — especially considering there are volumes of peer-reviewed evidence that “might,” “may,” and “could” are conservative hedges.
Some of my favorite/most-outrageous parts of this story:
“It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”
That’s right. The first quote in the story to bolster this idea, in the second graph, is from a high school senior, everyone’s go-to expert for identifying credible and effective curriculum. Gaby also sees her generation as already uniquely informed and wise enough to save the world previous generations have ruined. Of course she does. She’s gone to Portland public schools her whole life. Here’s a shocker: This drive to purge doubt about the dogma is being driven by a radical environmentalist group.
Bill Bigelow, a former PPS teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a magazine devoted to education issues, worked with 350PDX and other environmental groups to present the resolution.
“A lot of the text materials are kind of thick with the language of doubt, and obviously the science says otherwise,” Bigelow says, accusing the publishing industry to bowing to pressure from fossil fuels companies. “We don’t want kids in Portland learning material courtesy of the fossil fuel industry.”
So, a former teacher has apparently long entertained the fantastical and paranoid idea that just having the words “may,” “might,” and “could” in any discussion about the causes and consequences of climate change was slipped in there “courtesy of the fossil fuel industry.” Big Oil — what can’t it do?!
Another shocker: That former teacher and radical environmentalist just so happens to produce a textbook for children titled A People’s Curriculum for the Earth. That sure sounds like science to me, with not a hint of radical politics. Asked if his interest in producing climate science books for schools might be a conflict of interest, he says it doesn’t because his organization is “a nonprofit, not a money-maker.” Okay, then.
Oh, I almost forgot: The school board member who introduced the resolution — which, again, passed unanimously — has a pretty large conflict of interest, too:
School board member Mike Rosen … leads NW Ecoliteracy Collaborative, a project focused on environmental curriculum standards. However, he says that work has been on hold.
“I have become concerned about its ability to make progress and not have a conflict with being a school board member,” Rosen said, noting that he is now instead working part-time for the Audubon Society of Portland. “I don’t want there to be a conflict between my school board work and this nonprofit.”
No worries, Mike. You’ve made progress.
Published in General
I am so looking forward to the Buck v Bell of the climate change movement. I truly want to see whom these climate changers want to see bear what Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested when “the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives.”
All Oliver Wendell Holmes did was rob a woman of questionable “imbecility” of her civil rights, and for dubious cause.
Example zillion+1 that no matter who you are or what you believe (Right/Left, gay/straight, black/white/brown/yellow/red/blue, rich/poor/in-between, religious/irreligious, etc./etc.) you need to get your children out of the public school system. Private or homeschool them.
If you don’t have kids, encourage and support those that do in making their break from the public schools.
And some people wonder why school choice is important.
Did they pass this resolution before or after opening the girls showers to boys. My goodness,what a mess.
When will the 1st prosecution for a thought crime happen? Not civil liability, actual criminal prosecution. I’m guessing next September 7th. Next time the teachers want a raise, tell them you are preventing them from increasing their carbon footprint and cutting their pay by 15%.
Aren’t these the same people who said during the Bush administration that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”?
What is particularly bizarre about this is that the UN IPCC reports on climate change include all sorts of hedging and uncertainty language and caveats and thus would be banned from use in Portland schools!
Bill Bigelow and the Portland Public Schools Board appear to be in thrall to the facile fool industry.
Oy…
homeschool rocks
Karl Popper – Marxism is a religion.
Michael Crichton – Environmentalism is a religion.
There are some real gems in the text of the resolution. They will root out any signs of heresy!
I wonder if their environmental justice curriculum will include a discussion of the role of increased CO2 levels in increasing crop outputs and greening of the earth?
Portland was the original ” Weird City”, then it stepped far over the edge of sanity some time ago. There are more Admins than teachers, the good teachers retired and PPS cannot even manage their own properties well. Old Hippies are a Pox in the town leadership as well.
Trust me on this –
No kidding. Pretty much anything with the word People’s in it means it’s a Communist organization.
I’m gob-smacked by the term “climate justice.” These words do not go together in any way. Meaningless blather that, I fear, cloaks a lot of hoped-for mischief.
Still, when the Chelsea Clinton administration produces a Department of Climate Justice, I hope it will address the unjust distribution of summer heat. August in Alabama is purt-near unbearable.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that says “purt-near”. And yes, summer is awful in the south.
Now that you mention it…yeah – that’s probably an iron-clad law. It’s sure the first thing I think whenever I see that word in a title.
One word that doesn’t figure largely in their declarations is “evidence”.
Why do they hate science?
And Dennis Prager- “In the past century, the most dynamic ‘religion’ in the Western world has been leftism.”
Heat: Good.
It means we can grow more food, expend less energy on maintaining body heat so we can devote ourselves to higher cultural,pursuits.
Cold: Bad.
It means no food growing, people dying of exposure (in much greater numbers than from heat) . Not for nothing did Jesus, prophesying the coming disaster, advise his followers: Pray that it come not upon you in the Winter.
Back in the ’80s, people worried about a “nuclear winter” resulting from particulate debris in the atmosphere as a result of use of nuclear weapons.
But here’s the thing: we are extremely likely to encounter those world-wide prolonged winter conditions–brought to us, not by human activity, but by Mother Gaia herself.
The volcano at Yellowstone is sitting on a huge caldera, which we know is overdue to erupt, having been quiescent for at least 600 years. To name just one.
So why don’t the one-world people concentrate on expending resources to deal with the inevitable period of life-destroying catastrophic cold? The only hope for our species is more, not less, human innovation.
The planet is hostile to us; we couldn’t last here, outside the tropics, for even one winter week if it weren’t for our cultural inventions and achievements.
So sue me. I choose life.
Public schools were instituted to foster Christianity, now they’re being used to foster a different religion. Do we need public schools? Those who most need help educating their children are the most ill served by our public schools. Perhaps the school choice we most need is to choose to eliminate public schools, starting with all Washington money, mandates, and guidance then working down layer by layer until we reach the individual schools individual parents teachers and children. In desperately poor neighborhoods in the poor countries where public schools are even more dysfunctional than ours, parents find ways to get their kids educated in private arrangements. We could to. The idea that a central bureaucracy could guide millions of schools in the most diverse rapidly changing complex economy and culture in the world should be seen as absurd. Especially now that information, the best teachers and real people close to real things are at our finger tips in a digital world.
I could compile a list of tens of thousands of scientists who would now be banned from Portland schools, but we can start with these:
I was going to post a comment along the same lines. People such as the Portland school officials are so dedicated to what they believe to be the “truth” of their “religion” that they disregard the dissent that exists within the scientific community. Their assertions that “the science is settled” is an absolute lie. This is not about science or logic – it is about passion. It doesn’t surprise me that the passion in Portland has led officials to conduct the kind of school-based indoctrination usually found in totalitarian societies, but I am surprised that they are so open about it.
[Blank] Justice Warriors are products of their time and the passions then holding sway. During the late ’70s there was a “No Nukes” movement with a passion equal to the current “climate justice” movement. If they had had their way, all nuclear plants would have been shut down. They very well may have influenced decision makers to forgo building new plants. And today, what is the most significant form of carbon-free electricity generation?
I presume these “victims” will be able to “self-identify” as climate refugees. Otherwise, there are none.
There really are tens of thousands of scientists who are on record against climate change hysteria, but I chose that letter because of one name in particular. Freeman Dyson. Freeman friggin’ Dyson – probably the smartest man in the world. I suspect his IQ exceeds that of the entire Portland School Board combined.
What we are witnessing is a generational change. The old liberals were often wrong-headed, but they appreciated the need for discussion and debate, and they did not march in lockstep on every question. What we are seeing now, step by step, is there transformation of the Democratic Party into an instrument for tyranny. This is the true legacy of Barack Obama, and it explains why a communist sympathizer is winning presidential primary after presidential primary.
To your point, many years ago I considered myself a liberal and strongly committed to freedom of speech and debate. I still have the same views on speech and debate, but it seems that for many liberals it was just a situational position and now that they have attained dominance in many public arenas it is being increasingly discarded in favor of suppressing views they disagree with.
Could you provide a link for the source? I have been reading a lot of work at the GWPF and at Judith Curry’s site but this escaped my notice somehow.