A spokesman for Michael Gove has said that teachers who do not offer a balanced view on issues like climate change are breaking the law. The Department for Education's comments came after a report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation raised serious concerns about the lack of balance in British classrooms. The Secretary of State for Education's Spokesman said: “The Secretary of State read this report with concern. Schools should not teach that a particular political or ideological point of view is right – indeed it is against the law for them to do so. Great care should be exercised to make sure information provided to students is scientifically rigorous. It is important that any material used in the classroom is rooted in science, not driven by the aims of a campaign.” --Andre Walker,
Breitbart London, 8 April 2014
Teachers Breaking The Law Over Climate Change Bias, Education Department Says
Breitbart London, 8 April 2014
Andre Walker
A spokesman for Michael Gove, [the Secretary of State for Education], has said that teachers who do not offer a balanced view on issues like climate change are breaking the law. The Department for Education's comments came after
a report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation raised serious concerns about the lack of balance in British classrooms.
The report by Andrew Montford and John Shade, warned that "eco-activists" in the education system were frightening children and using "pester power" to ensure parents are forced to adopt lifestyle choices dictated in schools.
The report said: "We find instances of eco-activism being given a free rein within schools and at the events schools encourage their pupils to attend. In every case of concern,the slant is on scares, on raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as on what they should think."
However, shortly after the findings were reported at media outlets including Breitbart London the Secretary of State for Education's Spokesman issued a statement pointing out his "concern" about the findings.
He said: “The Secretary of State read this report with concern. Ministers are clear that the new national curriculum must equip young people with the core knowledge they need to understand the weather, climate, the earth’s atmosphere, physical geography and the interaction between nature and the environment.
"That means in both science and geography, pupils must learn the facts and processes which underpin public discussion of climate change. They must be equipped with the scientific knowledge to make their own judgments about political responses. They must not be directed towards a particular campaigning agenda.
“Schools should not teach that a particular political or ideological point of view is right – indeed it is against the law for them to do so. Great care should be exercised to make sure information provided to students is scientifically rigorous. It is important that any material used in the classroom is rooted in science, not driven by the aims of a campaign.”
Dr Benny Peiser, from The Global Warming Policy Foundation, welcomed the comments but called for an independent enquiry into the actions of teachers.
Peiser told Breitbart London: "We are pleased that the Secretary of State is clearly concerned about the evidence we have put forward in our report. But we are worried that there is a discrepancy between what the Secretary of State wants and what is going on in Schools.
"This is a positive response but the next step is to ensure anything that contravenes these standards is weeded out."
There has been concern for a number of years about teachers using the classroom to preach radical ideas. The Thatcher government introduced the National Curriculum in 1988 because some schools spent so much time on 'trendy' causes that they had little time left for the basics.
Report Finds Schoolchildren Being ‘Brainwashed’ Over Climate Change
Voice of Russia, 8 April 2014
Andrew Montford, blogger and author of a new report on climate change in education, says children in England and Scotland are being brainwashed over climate change. He blames the United Nations for setting an agenda which has been blindly adopted in schools. VoR's Scott Craig asked him to explain.
Andrew Montford told VoR: “Environmentalism and, in particular, global warming alarmism, is all-pervasive in the curricula in England and in Scotland. We found that global warming is being taught in almost every area of the curriculum. In one examination board we found global warming being tested – as it were – in papers in economics, in chemistry, geography, religious studies, physics, French, humanities and one-and-on-and-on.
“It’s absolutely everywhere and it’s not being taught as something that is there for debate, that there are different views on it. It is being taught in a quasi-religious fashion. You are being taught a dogma. You can get marks for following the dogma and repeating the dogma, but you cannot get marks for questioning it and for challenging the aspect of it.
“There are actually very few people – including most people who are termed ‘deniers’ – who actually deny that global warming is something that happens. People don’t deny that Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The question is how much it’s going to affect us. What we find is that global warming is being taught as a definite disaster that is impending. And that just isn’t true from the science.
“The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] working group report, the scientific report, reported a range of possible warming that ranges for relatively un-alarming to really quite alarming. Now that range of different outcomes leads to very different conclusions. If warming is going to be slow and potentially even beneficial for the next 50 years, you adopt quite different policies to those you would adopt if we’re going to see very serious effects in the short term.
“Again, you see none of that in what our children are being taught in school. This is being mandated by the national curriculum and by the curriculum for excellence in Scotland. We traced it right back to the United Nations, who are promoting sustainable development as something that really can’t be disputed (although, if you read the academic literature, it is a disputed concept – it’s a rather nebulous concept at the best of times – but people certainly dispute whether it’s the right way for mankind to move ahead), but – yes - it carries on from the United Nations into the curricula and into the schools.
“I don’t really point particularly point to the teachers as being the problem here. They have a curriculum that they’re required to teach. Now I think some of them are all for the green agenda and they bring environmentalists’ activists material into their classes. Others pay lip-service to it and try to teach knowledge and questioning in the way that you would hope would happen in schools. But the overall impression is that the activists are winning here.
“We are calling for the ministers who are responsible for the curriculum to examine our report in detail and to institute inquiries into exactly what is going on. We’ve done a desktop review of what appears to be going on, looking a publicly available documents and trying to get a feel for what is going on in schools and this really needs a proper study to see just how bad it is. There are signs in the new English national curriculum that the level of environmentalism is being toned down. In Scotland, it appears to be getting worse, if anything. So there is a real cause for concern here, I think.”
Download interview with Andrew Montford
Climate Control: Brainwashing In Schools - Full Report available
here (pdf)
