Schools Unleash ‘Eco-Kids’ to Badger Their Parents
Educators sometimes give the impression that they are in the business of protecting their pupils from the negative influence of their parents. Schools are sometimes devoted to the project of correcting the “outdated values” that parents have taught their children. That’s bad enough! However, in recent times policymakers and educators have also embraced the idea that through influencing children they can reeducate parents. Instead of parents socializing their children they advocate a reversal in roles.
It is in the domain of environmental education that the project of socialization in reverse is most systematically pursued. Many environmental educators advocate pester power as a contribution to changing the behavior of adults. David Uzell, a professor of environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, recalls attending an educational conference a few years ago where “everyone was absolutely convinced” that pester power was “the answer” to the problem of climate change. Uzell’s own research has focused on what he calls “inter-generational learning through the transference of personal experience typically from the child to the parent / other adults / home.”
This casual reference to the transference of experience of child to parent illustrates the normalization of the practice of socialization in reverse. In the U.S., socializing children through the promotion of environmental education has been practiced in schools for over a decade. The New York Times reports that a new cohort of “eco-kids” devoted to green values “try to hold their parents accountable at home” and adds how adults become defensive under the “watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police.” School districts across the U.S. have sought to capitalize on the idealism of “eco-kids” to integrate environmental values into whatever subjects they can.
Politicians and governments have embraced environmental education as a potentially effective instrument for influencing and managing the behavior of the public. In England one Labor MP, Malcolm Wicks, argues that environmental values “can act as vivid teaching aids in science lessons, civics lessons, geography lessons,” and through absorbing these lessons “children will then begin to educate the parents.” He adds that “in this way we can start to shift behavior.”
A similar aspiration was expressed by leading cabinet minister David Miliband, who argued that “children are the key to changing society’s long-term attitudes to the environment.” Miliband is convinced that “not only are they passionate about saving the planet but children also have a big influence over their families’ lifestyles and behavior.” Former Education Secretary Alan Johnson wrote that “children have a dual role as consumers and influences” and therefore “educating them about the impact of getting an extra pair of trainers for fashion’s sake is as important as the pressure they put on their parents not to buy a gas-guzzling car.”
A report entitled The Role of Schools in Shaping Energy-Related Consumer Behavior is devoted to elaborating a policy framework as to how this objective of promoting educational initiatives can impact parental behavior. One such initiative which involves 5,500 schools is called the Eco-Schools Scheme. Andrew Sutter, who runs Eco-Schools, believes that it provides an opportunity for children “to be the teachers and tell their parents what to do for a change.”
This point is underlined in a government report on energy. It states that the “installation of renewable technologies in schools can bring the curriculum to life in ways that textbooks cannot.” Moreover, it observes, “with schools often being the focal point of communities, the installation of renewables could help to shape attitudes in the wider community.” Not infrequently the mobilization of pester power to alter the behavior of adults acquires the character of a frenetic crusade. The book How to Turn Your Parents Green by James Russell incites children to “nag, pester, bug, torment, and punish people who are merrily wrecking our world.” Russell calls on children to “channel their pester power and issue fines against their parents and other transgressors.”
In previous times the practice of mobilizing children to police their parents’ behavior was confined to totalitarian societies. Authorities who attempted to harness youngsters’ simplistic views of good and evil are reminiscent of Orwell’s Big Brother. But who needs Big Brother when the then-prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, can assert that “on climate change, it is parents who should listen to their children”?
No surprise, PETA has been using this tactic for years.
I thought we were to have separation of church and state. This is a religion, not a science. Indulgences are now called carbon offsets.
It needs to be fought on that basis. Nothing upsets the envirowhackos like demanding the production of data sufficient to satisfy Koch’s principles and when they can’t produce it accusing them of being a religion and a money grab.
Yeah- Well..
When our sons and daughters decide to clean up their rooms-
I might consider being nagged or pestered and maybe even paying a fine.
But it will come out of the kids allowance!
It wasn’t so long ago, here in the U.S., that leftist “educators” were (at the behest of the NEA) urging their captives (excuse me, I mean “students”) to find out if their parents owned firearms, and if so, to call the police to have the evil things taken away.
The bottom line being that schools may not be able to teach actual facts (and indeed may have no interest in even making the attempt), but they are easily used for brainwashing. And our present crop of “educators” (as opposed to actual teachers) realize that as long as they follow the “party line” of their peers, their actual competence (or lack of same) will never be an issue. Especially not on payday.
cheers
eon
Teachers are so ignorant they can’t even do their real job of educating kids. So when they fill there heads with PC / eco garbage, they just create sitting ducks.
I never had any problem letting my child know I was the parent and he was the child. After silencing him with technical information and questions, I would explain the misinformation he was given and why it was wrong. Then tell him it’s their school and in there he should act by their rules.
Once I even told him I would deduct a dollar from his allowance for every time he bothered me with that ‘nonsense’. That worked best: Reasoning through his wallet.
Another great example why parents are ultimately responsible for their children’s education, and should be involved on a daily basis.
This type of hive mind agitprop is rampant in gub’mint schools and needs to be countered at every turn.
One extremely effective legal remedy available at no cost, right now, to every parent is called an IEP – an Individual Education Plan. Ask for it by name because the school districts sure won’t give you a clue.
These IEP plans are legal documents which require the schools to modify your child’s curriculum to your tailored made specifications. Be careful, though. Schools and districts approach these meetings with a CYA attitude, and are slippery as eels.
But once in place, the specific wording can preclude this type of indoctrination.
God save the Republic.
Like the first commenter said, this isn’t a surprise. Groups that rely more on emotion than logic regularly target children because their propaganda works better on those who do not have the experience to judge.
The Discovery Network’s Planet Green had a show where they shamed families into a more green lifestyle. I remember the first episode the hosts told the children in the family to report mom and dad to the hosts for any “eco-crimes” (the hosts actual words) such as not recycling or wasting food. Yeah, that was kind of chilling.
I wouldn’t use the socialist government here in the UK as a good benchmark for discussing the indoctrination of children with state propoganda.
Labour and Gordon Brown have deeply authoritarian roots and will stop at nothing to push their agenda through. Targeting children in an attempt to cover up their own failures in addressing climate change is pretty sick.
http://www.lettersfromatory.com
The answer is communication with your children. Can the schools harm them anymore with eco-teachings than they do with some of the sex-ed teachings? It all comes down to the values in your home and your child/children respecting you.
This has never been a problem at my house. I raisied my kids to actually question authority, this did not make them terribly popular with teachers. When some NEA bozo would babble on about the “baking of Mother Earth” or the “rising seas” my kids would ask them to explain why the last Ice Age ended (in an absence of carbon emissions from SUVs) and why the stone jetty that Eric the Red built in Greenland in the 11th century AD is still above water. The “teachers” had nothing to offer in reply except the Party Line, it usually ended up with a meeting between me and the teacher wherein I suggested that they stay away from political diatribes and remember that they are MY employee.
I also made myself unpopular at School Board Meetings. They do not like being questioned (having come from the education system where they are the Keepers of The Holy Writ and are never to be questioned) by some lowly boob with “just a B.A.” as they all have Masters or P.H.D.s. They get even more upset when you point out that their PHD is in School Management and Operations and has nothing to do with climatology, statistics or analysis of geological records and they have no background to support their claims knowledge of the “warming planet”. At this point they normally retreat into claims of “scientific concensus” and other platitudes. I then remind them that concensus is what led to the Salem Witch Trials and a lot of other unfortunate events.
My point is this; Nag Back! These idiots are supposed to be working for US. Treat them as you would any other employee, if their work is faulty point it out to them and demand that they improve the quality of their output. Make a lot of noise at a School Board meeting about homeschooling or voucher programs and watch their reaction.
Children and the enviro-moonbattery. Why is it that this topic makes my skin crawl? I guess because a) kids think everything should be free; b) kids don’t know squat when they think they do, and c) I heartily disapprove of children acting like tyrants.
Have you seen that commercial about global warming or some such with all those kids going “tick tick tick” with the last “tick” being especially shrill? Don’t you hate that commercial? It makes me want to build a belching smokestack in my backyard.
Educators forcing schoolkids to nag their parents is a form of CHILD ABUSE. Period.
If your kid(s) were instructed by their educators to nag, pester and bug you, the parents, call the Children Protective Services and the Department of Education to complain about educational/indoctrination abuse on kids by educators. Just keep on complaining with CPS and DOE, threaten lawsuit or the media if you have to.
It’s high time educators stop indoctrinating the young minds with false BS about the environment.
It’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their own kids about the environment, not the educators.
Back in the 70′s, I was one of those kids. This is when we were all going to run out of fossil fuels by the year 2000 (or so we were taught). As a 6 year old, I was compelled as soon as I got home to turn the thermostat down to something like 65 F or less. Mom & Dad put a quick end to that. They were ‘old school’ about rules and I feared them far more than I did my teachers.
When I got older, the global warming scare took hold. I remember reading in our Weekly Reader (a weekly pamphlet made for kids) about how if Antarctica melted Denver would be under water (long before Waterworld the movie). Yet earlier we learned that during the time of Dinosaurs, there were no polar caps yet there was a lot of land. Something just didn’t jive to what I was being taught. So started by journey into the land of the skeptics even before I reached my teens.
Personally, I use the opportunity to nag them back. Turn off the TV/video game, lights etc. Don’t hog the shower for too long. Clean up your mess. Eat your vegetables and clean your plate. Get outside and play, ride your bike. No you can’t have the latest, greatest xyz thing you are bothering me for. And I put it all on ‘it’s good for the environment’. The reality is that the supposed ideals of environmentalism put into practice runs totally counter to what most kids are about certainly in this day and age. If educators insist on co-opting our kids brains with this obsessive focus on the environment then I am going to show them in real terms what that actually means. Maybe they will develop some good habits and maybe they will truly see how painful it is to actually practice what is being preached.
I might welcome this, if I had children of that age. (Grandkids don’t offer quite the same opportunities.)
It’s an opportunity to counter-educate the kids, teaching them some valuable lessons, as M.P. suggests. Plus:
1. The correct lessons to be learned about the environment.
2. The teachers are not your friends. They lie.
3. The government is not your friend.
4. How to resist the brainwashing and still benefit from school.
Yet another reason to homeschool your child…
I just wish teachers were half as smart as they think they are.
My wife is a teacher and being the tag-along husband that I am, I meet these so-called “educators” all the time. Not one of them has the intelligence to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
When my son came home from school (long time ago) and reported that his 3rd grade teacher wanted all the kids in the class to tell their parents to be sure to vote for George McGovern a group of concerned parents made sure that the district administration knew teachers were supposed to teach, you know, things like math, english, reading, all that mundane boring stuff. When it was explained to the administrators that we all lived in a small district and their jobs depended on doing what we said they went and did it. And the teachers were told to leave the partisian politics at home.
Along with all the many good ideas above, make THEM lead by example.
Walk to school.
No TV
No new stuff – clothes, toys, games, etc…
No fun trips – beach, amusement park, mall…
Lights out at 7pm
No fast, frozen or prepackaged food – and THEY can do the dishes.
I believe it was PJ O’Rourke that said something along the lines of everyone wants to save the planet, nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
If I tried to tell my parents what to do (back in the 50′s & early 60′s) it would be off to bed with no dinner.
Actually, I think M.P. @ 14 handles it best. Dump the greenie jibberish right back on the spoiled little brats. Personal experience just might drive them to think for themselves. And public schools certainly don’t want that, do they?
17. John B:
I just wish teachers were half as smart as they think they are.
My wife is a teacher and being the tag-along husband that I am, I meet these so-called “educators” all the time. Not one of them has the intelligence to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
That is good. Nice one John.
LMAO at Anton. I wholeheartedly agree.
Teachers do not like to be questioned or called out on the propaganda they are shoveling down the throats of our children. If you have a problem with anything, they circle the wagons and stick by each other like glue even if none of them make any sense or even if they are clearly in the wrong.
Regardless of whether Global Warming is truth, fiction or some mixture of the two, the fact remains that we are stewards of this earth and we ought to keep it clean. That’s not propaganda, that’s just common sense.
And by the fact that every single reference to the environment causes you people to resort to temper tantrums, obviously you bozos are not teaching your kids to recycle, use less energy and generally be less wasteful. I’m glad that teachers are once again stepping in to fill the vacuum created by your failed parenting skills.
Steve P:
Do you think that teachers who spend their time teaching the kids to “recycle, use less energy and be less wasteful” are themselvse being wasteful and inefficient – since they use the time and money allotted for teaching physics, math, biolofy, chemistry and fine arts to brainwash the kids?
Moreover, by a standard of an Afghan sheppard, 90% of your belongings is a luxury and a waste. Who are you to tell him he is wrong? And why are you wasting electrical energy and post on this website? Haven’t the teachers explained to you that wasting energy is a sin?
I constantly tell my children that climate change is a hoax and they shouldn’t let anyone tell them otherwise. I’m not at all afraid to tell a teacher to back the Hell off. If you can afford it put your kids in private school or home school them. The public schools are a tool of the extreme left in this country.
Love to hear from all the scientist here
Steve,
I doubt there are very many neandertals amongst the American public that gleefully and willfully despoil the planet. What makes many people defensive is being harangued by the morally superior eco-Marxists about how our comfortable, normal American lifestyles are “killing” Mother Earth. It’s ridiculous. Should we all live like the Amish? No one is advocating waste and everyone should seek to be efficient but I won’t forgo my Chevy Tahoe to “save” the planet. If a new Tahoe can be made more efficient while still providing me the qualities I seek then I’ll buy a new one. I won’t buy a toy car that doesn’t meet my needs in response to badgering by the earth police. Nor will I downsize my home, eat less, or any other activity I find of value.
I’ll make you a deal , Hurley.
I’ll let you teach my kids your mother gaia liberation theology, you give me yours for 16 weeks of military basic traning.
Then let’s compare notes at the end.
My guess is my kids will still be laughing as you on the last day as hard as they were on the first. Your kids will be Republican conservatives who won’t talk to you for 25 years.
Oh, by the way, Bob. You really should cash out your retiremet 401Ks etc, and go invest with Al in carbon futures. You Buy, he’ll sell. But do it quick; market volatility, you know.
Always a pleasure to scrape troll dung from my soles, Bob. Come again, won’t you?
Eric, I suggest you read Collapse by Jared Diamond, which in excruciating scientific detail outlines how many once-great empires, including the Vikings, Mayans and Anasazi self-destructed not due to any external threat or great catacalysm, but simply because individuals were unwilling to adapt their lifestyles to changes in their environment. By refusing to regulate their own consumption of resources, they all instead died.
Young Pioneers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_movement
First thing the parents should do is point out how many resources were wasted, and carbon outputs generated to make Little Susie’s IPOD and Cell phone, and immediately take those away. Inform them how DVDS take 1,000s of years to degrade in landfills and stop buying them every piece of Disney crap that comes out every year, and last but not least, stop all those wasteful trips in that carbon spewing SUVs, so no more soccer games, piano lessons, long family vacations and (if they are old enough)”Sorry Junior, you don’t get your liscence until you ar 18 and forget about that car for your sixteenth birthday. We will buy you a bike instead. I have a hunch that would do the trick!
The only thing more pathetic then this attempt to exagerrate and distort what is being taught in the schools is the reaction by all the dopes on this website. And we wonder how GW Bush got elected? Unbelievable.
Let’s all get on our hands and knees and pray to God that Steve P., Robert Hurley and Jack are NOT public school teachers. It’s posters like this that show where the term “bleeding heart liberal” came from. I’m betting the folks in Las Vegas would LOVE to talk about global warming with them today. Oh wait…I can hear it now…global warming is causing it to get colder now right? Please. Where IS Al Gore right now when all signs point to it getting COLDER not warmer? Funny how he just seems to have disappeared down the rabbit hole.
No Jack, what is truly unbelievable is that idiots like you elect clown/crooks like Barack Obama and expect a different result. Those on this site who recognize the failure of and propaganda spewed by the NEA and American schools are the one possible salvation for this country. Hopefully there are enough of them to counter the stupidity and ass-hattery of people like yourself.
I remember when my daughter came home from school complaining about environmental damage, she was very frightened about it. I asked her, “what are you prepared to give up, no driving,flying, take out etc”. She quickly shut up, but I was so angry that her teachers were causing her soooo much stress. She was just a child with little or no ability to change the course of the world.
I think a lot of you are against any sort of environmental concern just to be against it. You got caught on the wrong side of the argument and you’re too embarrassed to admit that your position makes no sense. I’m not a climate nut and I think PETA is an insane organization. But, I’m also smart enough to realize that there IS some truth to the environmental concerns that we hear so much about.
Lets all be grown ups. Lets realize that there ARE some issues to face and that we should do something about them.
Or, ignore the issue entirely and call me a “Marxist” idiot, like normal.
ONLY NUCLEAR POWER WILL SAVE THE PLANET
Conventional wisdom and anti-nuke enviro propaganda will keep us dependent of fossil fuels:
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/12/smart-clean-plentiful-power-to-people.html
there should be a legal way to sue the school for spreading false information about global warming and some other things
those things are very much out of scientific consensus and using children in this setup definitely constitutes a ACT OF CHILD ABUSE
100% may be brought as a Class action
We need to teach our children and grandchildren that even vegetables can be hazardous to our local environment.
Please call Barrack Obama and have him put an import tax or quotas on Brussels sprouts in order to protect our endangered Zoos and environment.
Thank You….
How big a fart could an 800 pound gorilla make?
Wonderful posts. I have gotten great ideas. If we want to save the planet, they can start by cleaning their room. The doing dishes for a cleaner planet is so dandy.
Someone wanted to hear from a scientist? Well, I am one: Caltech and (Ta-dum) Harvard. Chemist of the theoretical ilk…like a quickie on Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics….can do.
Further, as a scientist I was thought to do a form of “due diligence”. Examine experimental data with an open mind. Search the literature for past knowledge. Analyze and calculate, calculate and analyze. The “appeal to experts” is sometimes a lazy way to avoid (or squelch) argument. Examine your own conclusions…examine others’ conclusions.
The above procedures are not always followed by faith-based religious systems. Gaia, Mother Earth, and Anthropological Global Warning are entirely ( Mom and G.) faith based and AGW is certainly partially faith based. As such, the purists (former examples) can be ignored and the partial faith based have a load of explaining to do.
And the explaining should be easily understood and verifiable (or falsifiable).
The MumBo JumBo of the latter faith types is what turns this person off. And in a big way.
So why do gullible “educators” fall in the latter category? It’s fashionable…nothing more. My grandmother would make a remark about weak minds in weak bodies…she was right too.
Maybe the NEA would like to teach the kids to rat out their parents for eating salt or smoking. To quote the old movie: “The Running Man”, “earn double points for informing on a family member”.
Why is it that the big push about Anthropological Global Warming is coming from Britain? Its population seems even more intensely “into it” than ours is. And they are really hot to get the U.S. on the carbon tax/Kyoto penalties/fines program!
The “science” of AGW is collapsing like dominoes all over the place, and yet we are seeing an increasingly shrill and strident political/propaganda push to make everyone think that AGW is still “the consensus.”
Some European countries are now backing out of the carbon tax regime because it’s killing their economies. Even Britain is having second thoughts about it and it appears that the government and Parliament are not going to pull the trigger for economic suicide.
But, we gots to stick it to them Yanks, eh?
This kind of thing enrages me. These environmentalists are pompous asses without peer.
Like Glenn Reynolds has said, I’ll get serious about global warming when the people who tell me it’s serious actually act like it’s serious.
Al Gore, the primo snake oil peddler of our day, uses at least a thousand times more energy than I do (although he doesn’t use it on a treadmill, as you know if you’ve seen him lately. The man has become his own planet.) Gore is becoming a very wealthy man jetting around Gaia peddling gloom and doom to rich idiots. Celebrities own 6 or 7 houses, each of them big enough to have their own zip codes, have a dozen cars and a private jet – and they have the gall to tell us not to drive SUVs. Because we’re not rich enough to absolve our sins by buying carbon credits from Fat Al, the flim-flam man.
It’s b.s. as anyone old enough to remember the “ice age” scare of the ’70′s should know. It’s an excuse for some to enrich themselves by fooling gulliable boneheads and an excuse for others to foist more government controls and stupid and expensive laws on us. It’s the second group that worries me – the ones who try to scare the bejesus out of little kids so the children can act like the Pioneers in the old USSR and rat on mommy and daddy for not being PC.
On the plus side, the left government of Kevin Rudd in Australia has downsized their goals for cutting emissions from 25% to 5% and the Greens are spitting mad down there. Methinks that once Rudd actually had to govern and someone explained to him what a 25% cut would do to the Aussie’s economy, he faced reality. Methinks (hopes?)Obama will do the same.
our school system has is testing breathing classes for all the students. gore can regulate
his breathing to emit 25 to 30% less co2 with one hand tied behind his back.
When my children begin to foot all our bills, including the car payment, electricity, natural gas, food and so on, then they can lecture me on “green” issues.
Wben my oldest was a freshman, she complained about having to watch Al Gore’s nonsensical film in three different classes. I gave her my copy of Channel Four’s (UK) The Great Global Warming Swindle and told her to ask her science teacher if they could watch it. To my surprise he showed it to the class – and to all of his classes. Then other teachers asked to borrow it for their classes. I never got the DVD back, but that’s OK. Having the students shown both sides of the story was a wonderful thing. My daughter said about half of the kids in her science class ended up changing their minds about global warming.
Hmm, one week of walking or biking everywhere, and turning in homework on homemade paper (or reused. Print up Reagan speeches or verses from Deuteronomy about homosexuality or something, and turn in homework on the back of that.) and they’ll get over it. If not, have the kid weed the yard so you don’t have to spray chemicals. No computer, no ipod, uses too much energy. Handwash dishes. Go for it, kid.
I work at a public university in a western state, where I also happen to represent my division on the faculty senate. During the past few months, I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the fact that one of our loudmouth envirowhackos on the faculty (a geologist by training who likes to make moralistic pronouncements about AGW and sustainability) is trying to figure out a way to introduce more enviromental indoctrination into the curriculum, and perhaps even require a course in it. I am troubled because no one else on the faculty senate seems the least bit concerned by any of this, and most of this nonsense seems like it will inevitably become part of the university requirements.
Great, our schools no longer teach our children to be scientists, historians or mathematicians. But they are going to teach them to be garbage men.
#39 grand-father, I bet your info is a “hoax”, that the Brussels sprouts aren’t used to make Gorillas Christmas menu for the vitamin C sake, cause if so, then they must be from frozen packings, therefore the vitamin C is already “killed”… but nice try to make LMAO
I rather think that these Gorillas are fond of bananas, and of fresh fruit salads, that are more vitamin C providers
May-be a good ol “chili con carne” make them fart, or “baked-beans”, also some nice “cassoulet” …
Did I already met you at the zoo, so that was you the “farter”
Take away their cells phones,ipods,junk food,video games and mall visits, in the name of ecological correctness, and watch the little turds shut up and stop their hypocritical posturing.
Another tactic could be to print out leaflets pointing out that the teachers has the lowest sat scores among professionals,and give them to the problem kids to distribute them to the public.This should the next school budget meeting more intersting.
TO: All
RE: Interesting Juxtaposition, This
Especially with the item from Dr. Helen Smith about trying to keep ‘students’ from becoming little Marxists via the vaunted American public education system.
This looks like it is evidence that Dr. Helen Smith is onto something.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Teach your children well. Teach them at home.]
Pam:
> To my surprise he showed it to the class – and to all
> of his classes. Then other teachers asked to borrow it
> for their classes. I never got the DVD back,
It was cheap at the price. And good on them, actually doing some educating.
So what? That’s how I got my parents to start wearing their seatbelt and advertising companies train kids to pester their parents all the time! Anyone driven past an american girl store with a daughter in the car? You’d buy one of those overpriced fads if she asked you but not a green lightbulb… puhleeeeeze!
This author is a real nutjob who seems to confuse simply taking contrarian stances on *everything* with true academic reasearch or contribution.
what if `green` lightbulb is more dangerous in other respects?
for yout eyes? in recycling? in production? what if it has cancerogens?
how do you know?
what if i know it better?
what if i dont want to know?
it is a parent’s responsibility to look after his kids not the other way around
things MUST be done ina proper traditional way
because we dont know what we risk otherwise
think about it
>53. deguello:
Another tactic could be to print out leaflets pointing out that the teachers has the lowest sat scores among professional
APPLAUDS !!!
All I ask is that people set aside their assumptions and look at both sides. That’s something many people here are unable to do. Almost everyone that has posted already has very clear ideas.
First of all, equating environmentalism has NOTHING to do with Marxism. Anyone who thinks there is a connection is an idiot. Period. Marxism is your catch-all “insult” and you have no idea what it even means.
Second, the complaints against environmentalists being pompous simply will not stand to reason. I can be a huge jerk, but I can also be completely correct. I can be a nice guy, but i can be completely wrong. To dismiss something because you don’t like the messenger is beyond stupid.
As I’ve said many times, I’m not a save-the-planet nut, nor am I a self-righteous zealot. There ARE some important environmental issues. Anyone who doesn’t admit that there are at least SOME issues is too stubborn to be taken seriously.
Oh please – I am not going to let some kid tell me what car to buy – PERIOD. Schools should not have kids badgering their parents to do certain things. If the kid wants to recycle more, etc more power to them. THEY can do it, but to harass someone else to do the same is completely out of order.
That being said, I am not about to be wasteful and dirty and such, but this whole global warming thing IS crap – it’s hysteria, plain and simple. Anyone who says otherwise is the idiot, not me.
Oh, and one more thing. Before I read anything recommended by these enviro-nuts (you ARE enviro-nuts, by the way) you might want to read this, recommended by a poster at FreeRepublic:
“Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. And a choice quote by the author:
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Quite frankly, there isn’t a better description of this global warming hysteria.
This is pretty easy to fix.
Just tell the little EnviroJugend that you are going to start with them. Take aways all their electronic toys-their Wii’s, XBoxes, iPods, cell phones, computers, etc. When you do tell them that they are made out of plastic and other materials that are “hazardous to mother earth” and that you and your EnviroJugend are going to take them down to be recycled. Remove all elecrical items from their room-including lamps. Explain to them that it will help save “mother earth” by their not using electricity. Tell them that watching TV is out, too. If they are bored they can go outside and play.
Next go through their closets and remove any man made fiber item of clothing for recycling, including their shoes.
Then, if you have a yard, plot out a garden and have them start growing their own food and that is what they will hae to eat-transporting food from far away generates greenhouse gasses. They will also not be allowed to eat any foods that are not made at home-no fast food, no candy or other treats that are not home made, no school lunches. They will have to get up early and make their lunch.
Next inform them that they will no longer be allowed to ride the school bus, they will have to walk no matter what the weather is. They can ride their bicycles. The majority of schoolchildren in the world have to walk to school, so can they.
Then tell them that vacations or outings to places like amusement parks, Disneyland/world, etc are out. The family will be going camping at the nearest state park.
If they howl about it (which should kick in when the Wii gets unplugged) just tell them that if they are going to talk the talk they better walk the walk.
Does Fidel Castro sound familiar? He has used this “education” tactic on Cuban schools for decades, and now he has a couple generations of indoctrinated subjects whom adore him. And Prince Obama (soon to be crowned) is jealous.
This is a great time for American parents to teach their kids family loyality to the bonds of love above all else. American kids need to learn about the danger of following orders from self appointed mob leaders who are filled with hate and fear.
Talk to them about how the teacher makes them feel – afraid?, hopeless?, angry? Tell them that is not who “we” are (it is against our values to bully others) and that we also know that everything will be okay and the parent should say that they have looked into it and there is nothing to be afraid about. Tell them that in the 1970′s teachers filled with hate and fear did the same thing to young people saying that we were all going to die of global cooling if we did not stop driving our cars and heating our homes.
It’s a good chance to teach them about techniques of people lying to get a fearful and angry emotional response from them. Vocabulary “word of the day” – manipulation for power over others. They want to get the people so afraid and angry that they will obey their orders to hurt other people. Talk about the same technique being used to stir up mobs of racists to hurt people of other races. Or mobs who are jealous hating and hurting people who have worked very hard to be successful at work. Tell them they are never to obey people who try to make them angry and order them to be bossy and mean to or hurt other people – especially their family. Tell them all their family life is private and they are not to tell these nosey and mean teachers about their private life. Keep calm so you don’t scare your kids.
Finally, parents need to understand that these leftists at the schools will do all they can to hurt your child if they find out the kid does not agree with them. Talking to them about manipulating your kids will put a price on your kid’s head. They hate and do not respect you as a parent. I saw a unified far left social studies teaching staff try to fail my son after he wrote a politically incorrect essay on the US dropping the A-bombs on Japan that angered a far left teacher in the ninth grade. I had a full time job just getting him through high school and he is very smart and he’s a good kid and a great athelete. Had I known then what I know now, I would have pulled him out of the high school once he had been tagged by the nutters at his school. I did not realize the harassment was bulling and orchestrated until looking back at it and talking to my sister who is a teacher and has seen them in action.
If this brown/black shirt movement is extreme at your public school, the best thing to do is pull your kid out of the school and put them elsewhere until this fad is squelched by the public. With Obama as their fearless leader and them feeling power, it is going to be bad for a while. Don’t let your kids be bullied and harmed and turn them against education or you. This is not education. These are pumped up stupid and mean socialist/communist activists (or useful idiots) pretending to be teachers. They put adoration on kids who respond in the extreme to them and they put rejection and hate on kids who blow them off.
Sorry to go on so long. But this is serious and we experienced it in a school system outside of Boston.
I can agree that trying to turn school kids into secret police against their parents is presumptuous, and that *good* science tends to breed level heads and open minds instead of smug zealotry. But what the hell??
Most of the responses I see posted on here rail on against environmentalism as though caring about healthy ecology and taking care of the only planet we have to live on were a bad thing! Is it some conservative “party line” to *hate* the natural world, or is it just some hysterical reaction against anything that ‘ebil liberals’ espouse? If tomorrow Al Gore declared that the sun was round and hot, would you people be shrilling “nuh uh! it’s a cube of solid ice!” Is there some reason that you folk can’t endorse your fiscal conservatism and your small government and your conservative ‘morality’ and also give a crap about clean air and drinkable water and not turning the whole globe into a toxic landfill?
I tried to tell my grandson about Norse mythology, you know a harmless tale of where lightning comes from in the viking world, Thor with his mighty hammer.
What I got back was an argument over “THE ONE TRUE GOD” that stopped all of the stories of any myth or fairy tale.
He is 6 years old for the love of horses what does he know about desert dwelling savages and their 8,000 year old monogod religion.
Everything the teachers can teach him.
TO: Barry 0351
RE: Sooooo….
And where does this child, your son, go to ‘school’?
Sure doesn’t sound like the vaunted American public education system.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. That IS if you really do have a son. Based on your report, I suspect you’re a liar about SOMETHING here…..
Dear Ken stop stereotyping conservatives; they have to drink the same water,breathe the same air,and live in the same planet you do.However, we believe that global warming is being used as an excuse to impose impoverishing collectivism on most of the american people,while the liberal elites continue to spend millions private jets,and ostentatious luxury.Everything, everything, liberals have espoused has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster ; busing,affirmative racism, the great society, castro’s cuba, stalin’s russia, Mao’s china,whole language,feminism,and recently freddy mac and fannie mae;Icould go on;with a record like this, why should we buy your environmentalist bull? The real haters of the natural world are liberals,who hate reality, especially natural human nature,and who believe that totalitarianism can transform it in line with their pathetic fantasies. Keep on hating the natural world ken;reality will keep biting your posterior!
One can tell that modern enviros are informed by Marxism is to simply look at who they demonize, which is capitalism, industrial societies and “the rich”, who they praise and laud, which are third world countries and cultures in which they personally would never live and finally, their solutions, which are always some sort of redistribution of resources by the State. Many leading “environmentalists” have admitted as much.
SOP for oppressive socialist regimes. It seldom works. The Nazi’s and Soviets didn’t have much luck. I doubt that the Obamatrons will do any better. For every kid that rats out their parents you have a million or so that don’t. Besides, I would guess that the creator of that program doesn’t have children. If they did, they would understand that it is the parents that nag the children, not the other way around.
If a parent’s mind is so weak as to allow their child to nag them,, then they are most likely already hard core swampies.
“Dad, you didn’t seperrate the cans from the plastic”
“Jr., have you looked under your bed lately? Clean up your room doesn’t mean push everything under the bed.”
No, a parent has too many advantages in the contest of wills to lose to their child. You just have to out think them. When it gets to the point where they are out thinking you, that is natures way of telling you that you need to take them down to the recruiting station and introduce them to the nice Marine that works there.
TO: All
RE: Barry 0351
Since Barry 0351 has failed to defend his contentions…..
….I honestly believe he/she/it is a liar of the first waters.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....]
After a good undeserved spanking from the media’s for being a pest, just remember they’re still our little ECO KIDS and it’s going to be their world. It’s our mess that they have been left to clean up and the world’s ECO KIDS are trying to do it the best way they know how as kids, probably not too differently then what you would have done at their age if you had been giving a similar challenge; so give the ECO KIDS a pat on the back instead of the smack, it just may go a long way in solving two problems. Thank goodness for the world’s ECO KIDS.