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Specious Science In Our Schools
Toogood Reports ^ | July 9, 2002 | Alan Caruba

Posted on 07/09/2002 11:34:46 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen

In September, millions of America's school children will return to their classrooms where their textbooks are teaching an utterly polluted stream of environmental and other science misinformation. Like so many issues involving our debased educational system, this is not evoking much public outcry. It should.

In January 2001, the Associated Press reported that "Twelve of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools nationwide are riddled with errors, a new study has found." The study compiled 500 pages of errors!

"These are terrible books, and they're probably a strong component of why we do so poorly in science," said John Hubisz, the North Carolina State University physics professor who led the two-year study. He estimated that 85% of the nation's school children used the textbooks examined.

In November 2001, USA Today headlined an article, "Tests show US Students are weaklings in science." It was the usual litany of statistics adding up to the fact that about two-thirds of US students have "a basic understanding of grade-level science, but only one-third or less can be considered proficient." This is a nice way of saying that, as in every other area of academics, the US educational system is failing to teach yet another generation anything of value regarding science.

Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education, noted this abysmal level of science education undermines America's economic strength and security. "Instead of improving our own science education, we have been relying on the education of other countries provide to their citizens." In other words, the United States of America is forced to import our scientists, engineers and doctors.

I recently received a rant about a Ford Motor Company program that supports good science in the classroom. Ford had previously tried to ingratiate itself with the environmental movement. Belatedly realizing it had allied itself with people who hated cars, trucks and anything else that utilized petroleum products, Ford came to its senses. One can only wish other US corporations would as well.

When John F. Borowski, a marine and environmental science teacher, emailed me his screed denouncing the Ford Motor Company for donating $1.5 million to underwrite a program called "Provider Pals", offering information about the way American industries extract natural resources or provide food, his name rang a bell.

On August 21, 1999, Borowksi had an opinion editorial published in The New York Times titled "Schools with a Slant". He decried "corporatism" claiming that public schools "are ripe for exploitation via dubious 'educational materials'" adding that it was not environmental groups that were intent on creating "ecowarriors", but rather it was "the business world that was "eager to turn our children into the ultimate consumers." Apparently, it has yet to have dawned on him that we live in a consumer society and that goods and the money spent on them have given us our extraordinary lifestyle, affording us the longest life expectancy in our nation's history.

Let us understand that people who harbor a hatred for corporations are, quite simply, socialists or even communists. It is corporate America, along with our countless small businesses, that generate the trillions that make our economy the greatest in the history of mankind. Where socialism exists, economies falter and stagnate, and people suffer.

In his latest diatribe, titled "Bastion of Ecological Literacy Under Siege: Our Public Schools", Borowski rants about Bruce Vincent, "an outspoken defender of logging, mining, and grazing on public lands" for creating a program that explains the role that loggers, miners, and ranchers play in providing the most essential resources this nation and its people require.

"It was the likes of Boise Cascade and Weyerhaeuser who butchered millions of acres of watersheds," says Borowski. No, it was the unrelenting refusal of environmental groups to permit the proper management of our national forests that led to the catastrophic loss by fire of millions of acres of timber. Starting with the Spotted Owl hoax and then suing every time a strand of forest was to be culled properly, the eco-maniacs like Borowski did more damage than all the timber companies combined.

Scott Blandish is an environmental science teacher in suburban Spokane, Washington who has written on the politicization of environmental curricula. "Kids are being terrorized in school every day with environmental nightmare stories about global warming, rising seas, desertification, (and) killer smog", Blandish told CNSnews.com in May 2000.

There are good science teachers and then there are the Borowski's whose only reason for teaching is the indoctrination of their students, filling their heads with environmental mush while fulminating against the evil "corporations" of America. As he says, "Corporate America knows as long as students have literacy in environmental issues, there will always be Rachel Carson and Cesar Chavez. Thanks to Carson, millions have died from malaria, deprived of the protection DDT once provided. Strange heroes for a world that must feed six billion people and protect them from Nature's predators.

Every Sunday, my local daily newspaper publishes letters from school children throughout northern New Jersey and, every week for years, some child is worried about global warming, forests, water, oil, the ozone layer, endangered species. These children and millions of others who have passed through the schools of our nation have had their perceptions of the real world, of Nature, perverted by the textbooks and curricula of their so-called science classes.

In science classes, in courses about history, civics, and throughout the perverted curriculum of our nation's schools, our children are being indoctrinated, not educated, to hate America, its economic system, and its values.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: academialist; caruba; educationnews; freetrade; geopolitics; govwatch; junkscience; nwo
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Here are links to various education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

Public Sector Subverting Productive Industry
Source: Toogood Reports; Published:| May 16, 2002;
Author: Henry Pelifian

History of America's Education Part 2: Noah Webster and Early America
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 27, 2002;
Author: April Shenandoah

How Communist is Public Education?
Source: sierratimes.com; Published:March 22, 2002;
Author: Chuck Morse

History of America's Education Part 1: Johnny is in trouble
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 20, 2002 ;
Author: April Shenandoah

Audit rips Georgia schools' curriculum
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Published: March 11, 2002;
Author:JAMES SALZER

Why schools fail: Samuel Blumenfeld warns Bush's education legislation is ineffective
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: March 2, 2002;
Author: Samuel Blumenfeld

Public School Isn't Like I Remember It
Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author: Phyllis Schlafly

What Is Lacking In Our Educational System
Source: Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author:| Ben Cerruti

The charade of education reform
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: February 2, 2002;
Author: Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

American public schools: Working just as designed
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: January 21, 2002;
Author: Vox Day

High Schools Fail Thanks To Grade Inflation And Social Promotion
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 5, 2001
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

WHY AMERICANS CAN’T READ
Source: Accuracy in Media; Published: December 4, 2001
Author: Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid

The Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 3, 2001
Author: Glenn Sacks

Time for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: November 27, 2001
Author: Linda Bowles

Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel Blumenfeld

NEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda Harvey

COOKING THE BOOKS AT EDUCATION
Source: Accuracy In Media; Published: June 5, 2001;
Author: Cliff Kincaid

Why Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas Sowell

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: February 21, 2001
Author: John Leo

Free Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: Various

Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}

Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. Wild

Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Deconstructing the Western Mind: Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education
Source: www.petersnet; Published: Winter 1997
Author: Frank Morriss

Littleton Crisis to Government Control

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health


1 posted on 07/09/2002 11:34:46 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
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To: *Academia list; *Education News; Home School; First_Salute; George Frm Br00klyn Park; EdReform; ...
indexing

2 posted on 07/09/2002 11:35:40 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
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To: Stand Watch Listen
It is a shame when good science is trumped by political correctness
3 posted on 07/09/2002 11:55:03 AM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: madfly; editor-surveyor; Ernest_at_the_Beach
fyi
4 posted on 07/09/2002 1:12:50 PM PDT by Free the USA
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To: Stand Watch Listen

He decried "corporatism" claiming that public schools "are ripe for exploitation via dubious 'educational materials'" adding that it was not environmental groups that were intent on creating "ecowarriors", but rather it was "the business world that was "eager to turn our children into the ultimate consumers."

It's impossible for consumption to outpace production. In the short term yes, but certainly not in the long term. For it's a contradiction to say that something can be consumed when that something hasn't been first produced or created. When we inspect government we see that it consumes massive amounts which makes it a parasite on those that do create products and services. How irrational and dishonest does one have to be to imply that ultimate consumers would not first be producers/creators in order to earn the money required to consume? ...Not to mention that their work also injects products and services into the market for consumers. How irrational and dishonest? Ask John F. Borowski, a marine and environmental science teacher.

5 posted on 07/09/2002 2:17:10 PM PDT by Zon
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To: Free the USA
Thanks for the flag
6 posted on 07/09/2002 2:17:24 PM PDT by madfly
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To: ppaul; Fish out of Water; Carry_Okie; 2Jedismom; 2sheep; 4Freedom; Aliska; Alabama_Wild_Man; ...
ping
7 posted on 07/09/2002 2:20:09 PM PDT by madfly
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To: summer; 2Trievers
ping
8 posted on 07/09/2002 2:29:46 PM PDT by shaggy eel
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To: madfly
Specious science...

the shield between state and religion(evolution/atheism) is gone---

this is... chernobyl---radiation poisoning---

NUCLEAR SOCIAL ANTARTICA/AMERICA---gulag!!

9 posted on 07/09/2002 2:32:35 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: madfly
Stop the attacks by the wacko, extreme left-wing, enviro-nazis terrorist's on our Freedoms !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

10 posted on 07/09/2002 2:37:35 PM PDT by blackie
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To: Stand Watch Listen
bttt
11 posted on 07/09/2002 2:42:47 PM PDT by SuperLuminal
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To: madfly; Stand Watch Listen
Bumps!!
12 posted on 07/09/2002 2:54:40 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: madfly
Thanks for the ping! This article is on the mark!
13 posted on 07/09/2002 3:28:07 PM PDT by Bigun
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To: Stand Watch Listen
millions of America's school children will return to their classrooms where their textbooks are teaching an utterly polluted stream of environmental and other science misinformation. Like so many issues involving our debased educational system, this is not evoking much public outcry. It should.

It's not going to, because most parents have abdicated their parenting to the school. There are few that really care. They wouldn't dare rock the boat for fear someone might make them take their kid home.

14 posted on 07/09/2002 4:52:34 PM PDT by 2Jedismom
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To: 2Jedismom
bump
15 posted on 07/09/2002 5:18:38 PM PDT by PatriotReporter
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To: JediGirl
Public school moonies---zombies!
16 posted on 07/09/2002 7:01:27 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: madfly
tx for the ping, excellent article and dead on.
17 posted on 07/10/2002 4:56:42 AM PDT by countrydummy
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To: Stand Watch Listen; Carry_Okie; *"NWO"; *"Free" Trade; *Geopolitics; *gov_watch; Black Jade; ...
"When John F. Borowski, a marine and environmental science teacher..."

Guys, A leader among those teaching YOUR kids and the future generations of political leaders. And, Teachers and unions alike are deafening in their silence to his lies. And EVEN deafening in their support of said lies. Peace and love, George.

18 posted on 07/10/2002 6:29:51 AM PDT by George Frm Br00klyn Park
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To: Democratic_Machiavelli
unliterate ping!
19 posted on 07/10/2002 6:33:54 AM PDT by HarryDunne
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To: Stand Watch Listen
Wednesday morning BUMP
20 posted on 07/10/2002 6:38:52 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
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