I am very happy when you raise it because people then suspect that you are not an education blog or a parent blog but just a right-wing blog.

The science is over. The overwhelming majority of scientists say it is true. Of the tiny group that is in denial, half have their bills paid by the energy companies.

I would love Hudak to run an election on “global warming may not be true”  Parents want Al Gore and David Suzuki in every classroom.

That’s true Malkin. Why I’m sure scientists all over the world would agree that much of the hot air contributing to global warming originates from leftist windbags trying to make a buck based on studies done by other leftist wingbags.

Pony up Dean-Doug.

lol!  I’m laughing so much I can hardly type!  It’s not only funny, Chuck, it’s probably true!

Please follow this link to a CBC 5th Estate Issue on the topic.  Might help to clear up debate.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/

To Malkin’s point Wayne.  Are scientists beyond making mistakes or spinning their findings?

Is it not reasonable to think that either side can make the “science” spin to fit their agenda? Including the agenda of the CBC?  ‘Cause we all know they play a bit fast and loose with their political bias.

I love it that as skeptics those who question the “science” have been neatly categorized as “deniers” (a term used by those on the left and their media to play on our historic sympathies).

I was educated in the 1960’s and 1970’s. My teachers, thankfully taught us to question all things…including the science and take nothing at face value.

THAT was over the last environmental crisis when David Suzuki was predicting the impending doom of a global ice-age. I remember writing an essay on it in my Man and his Environment class. A class that was canceled a few years later when the horrors didn’t materialize.

We’re living in a shock and awe world where media sound bites and tabloid journalism is being mistaken for intelligent discussion.

My concern is that as parents and educators our captive audiences of children are being fed only a steady diet of one side of the global warming discussion, which, to me is the same as cheating a student on a well-rounded education by presenting both sides of the issue and letting the student come to his/her own conclusions by using those fabulous learning resources and critical thinking skills that we like to brag about to the world.

Chuck,

I appreciate that all you say may be true - there may always be that possibility.  However, one must also be aware of the large amount of pseudo-science paid for by the petroleum industry.  I find it interesting that the link to a CBC story in 2006 is still active and the story perhaps more relevant today.  I tried following the link above to the suite101 article - the link is already broken.  So I googled “Royal Society” “Math” “Mistake” and I found hundreds of copies of the article - all on Climate Change “Denial” (for lack of a better term) websites.  This “article” was never written in a reputable newspaper or media outlet.  It was written by someone on a blog.  The hyperbole and the rapid vanishing of links bookmark this as a classic hoax.

The scientist named in the article, Klaus Kaiser, I believe, would appear to have his own agenda.  He is selling his own book on the green myths.  I followed that link.  All the ‘peer review’ of that book falls to everyday readers and “personal” scientists.  That’s a new term to me.  However, from what I can tell they have no links to any university or reputable scientific organization.

I’m beginning to wonder if Malkin, in her own crafty way, is using this as an object lesson.  The same pseudo-science fills much of the claims of ‘solid evidence’ that school boards and education ‘reformers’ (who shall not be named, just ridiculed ) use to justify their policies (like: no textbooks, BSD, yadda, yadda, yadda).

No Textbooks? Turns out that that particular claim came from someone who was a writer of computer games.  His research?  He “interviewed” children and asked them (paraphrased) “Would you rather read a textbook or play a computer game and ‘learn’ the same material?”  What do you think their answer was?

Our former director and our superintendent of secondary education were quoted in the Owen Sound paper as basing their views on a Dr. Susan Blackmore.  According to them, she has a Phd in Psychology from Oxford.  I googled her as well.  Turns out she has a Phd in Parapsychology from Surrey University.  She gave up the parapsychology long ago and is interested in medicating herself with huge amounts of drugs - both medicinal and recreational.  Although, she does dedicate herself to remaining sober one month per year.  She advocates giving these drugs to children to free their minds.

So, I do a lot of research.  I try to base my opinions on what I see before me, and what qualified experts have to say on any given subject.  Which is one reason I came to this site.  Many readers like Nancy, Bev and JoAnne take pains to back up all of their views.  Don’t fall prey to vague claims from people who have padded their resumes in education, or climate science, or any other topic.  Use the critical thinking skills instilled in you in the 60’s and 70’s.

Oh there are always 2 sides to issues Chuck. There are 2 sides to Creationism but only one has any credibility. The Flat Earth Society feels like you do, not all the evidence is it. There is no proven link that smoking causes cancer and other ailments but the scientists certainly believe it does.

Wayne has probably picked up the best on Malkin’s point.

SQE did a cross-Canada K-12 curriculum comparison, led by some pretty notable science experts.  What we did find were many errors and dogmatic statements unsupported by scientific evidence. 

http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/reports/SQE_Science_Report.pdf

Sorry Malkin but I am with your critics. Global Warming is a highly complex issue worthy of its own blog. Just to start with there are actually two questions: Is the climate changing? and Is human activity causing the climate to change? I happen to believe that the climate is changing and that it is unclear how much human activity is contributing to that change.  By taking a hard line position on global warming you do risk alienating readers.

Thanks Wayne. I hear you.

Doug - yes you’re getting it. Two sides to everything. Give students both and let them make up their own minds. That way when they grow up they will not be dependent on the state making their decisions for them.

It’s their choice. Let them make it.

“Wayne has probably picked up the best on Malkin’s point.”

Then based on Wayne’s last paragraph and advice how does SQE characterize the experts used in your study?

Why not read the study at the link I provided?

Doretta - I read the study when it first came out. I’ve been following and supporting SQE for quite some time. If you’re busy, not a problem.

It’s very easy for Wayne to point to contributors to this forum who provide links to prove their points or to offer reference.

What I was asking is, after having read the study and knowing what the intent of SQE was, if as Wayne suggested studies by so called “experts” be taken as fact, could that also apply to the study SQE did?

If we’re qualifying experts, shouldn’t that be applied to both sides of the debate here?

I guess I felt that in re-reading Wayne’s post and your response to him that it was condescending.

Wayne - how do the science teachers in your school approach this subject? Do they subscribe to your philosophy?

Not busy, it was Sunday.  So now I’m back at my desk, here’s the list of contributors to our study:

Case H. Vanderwolf, Professor emeritus, Department of Psychology and
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario;
Michael Cook, Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.
R.T. Coutts. Professor emeritus, Neurochemical Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta;
Donald Cropp,  a retired high school science teacher.
and: Christopher Essex, Professor, Department
of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, who read and commented on
several of the Grade 11 and 12 physics programs.

Chuck,

Sorry, I didn’t intend to be condescending.  By using your critical thinking skills, I meant that it is alright to question - in fact, I would encourage it.  Questioning authority and expertise is extremely important.  It’s all too easy to find some ‘expert’ on any given subject that will tell you exactly what you want to hear.  People need to dig deeper to find out what qualifications these ‘experts’ have (all too often they pad their resumes to sound better than they are. EG: Doug Little, “Taught in the hard scrabble schools of North York” God, give me rest!).  Even if they have the qualifications, are they basing their views on research, opinion, or skewed statistics?

In the case of education, I am sad to say that most senior administration (directors and superintendents) have a preset agenda and they look around to find some ‘expert’ (usually a paid education consultant like ...) to back them up (like the examples I outlined above).  Then they happily tell the public that these ‘facts’ are ‘a lock’ and therefore indisputable. Most parents, like sheep, go away thinking that these people really know what they are doing - when reality is quite different.

As far as your question about science teachers in my school, I am assuming you are referring to climate change.  Most approach it (which you won’t like) as a fact.  Not so much because they are being pedantic about it, but because they have looked at all the ‘research’ disputing it and have noted that it is all psuedo-science.  They don’t want to present a ‘side’ to an argument that has no credibility.  I would assume (and this is only me speaking for them) that if some credible source could be found they would present it since they are rational people and want to instill critical thinking in their students.  The only science teacher willing to teach ‘debunking’ climate change also fully believes (and has taught his students this) that ‘cabbits’ exist.  A cabbit is supposedly a cross between a cat and a rabbit (biologically impossible - different # of chromosomes).  He knows they are real because he has a ‘friend’ who saw one.  Sorry, but even in the microcosm of my school, the only people willing to entertain the other side of the climate change argument are those with questionable ‘taste’ in research.

As far as my personal view on the subject, I will allow that any ‘theory’ by definition is not proven.  However, as yet, like my science colleagues, I can find no credible source to dispute it.  In fact, the more I read about the subject, the more I have to find it is fact.  The most damaging argument comes from the CBC video.  If you watch it, you will see that the purpose of the ‘debunkers’, ‘deniers’ (or whatever term you wish to use) is not to counteract the fact of climate change - because they can’t (words of one of the marketers) - they are simply planting the seeds of doubt.

Thanks Wayne, Doretta

My point was that with anything offered as being from an expert of anything whether it’s being offered by Al Gore or SQE the process of asking questions behind the studies and facts being presented as well as the motivation of the source is fair practice.

I learned my lessons well and am skeptical of just about everything that comes across as being the word of an expert.

Often as I have found what experts have to say isn’t even close to actual experience.

I am fortunate that my children had teachers who when presenting the whole climate change issue did look at both sides of the issue even though the curriculum didn’t allow for that to be the case.

Too much of fact can be spun out to make the case from either side.

Sometimes and much too often it’s the spin that gets the media’s attention and the attention of “experts” allowing a whole snowball of interpretation to be misunderstood to be fact.

Then we have the political correctness of the day which as to the confusion of facts even more.

Do you think that SQE is planting similar seeds of doubt with respect to not just this issue but how too many view public education in general?

And would those seeds of doubt, in your view have anything at all to do with the organization being one of a very few, if not the only organization championing the growth of school choice in Canada?

Malkin,

SQE would have no credibility with me if you and the organization were endorsing Global Warming!  I have never believed in it, and never intend to.  Sorry, but I look sideways at folks who do…....I tend to think of them as the semi-educated lemming types, adherents of society’s present left-wing secular religion, and not too thoughtful to boot.  It’s trendy to believe in Global Warming, I’ll grant you, but it’s not smart.  I choose my alliances very carefully, and I have chosen SQE because I think they recognize many truths in education.  I would truly lose all respect for them if they backed Global Warming.  By taking the high road, particularly against the popular views, you gain credibility rather than lose it.

Should have added that I have phoned the principals of my children’s schools, and told them that they are not to show that piece of ridiculous propganda, “An Inconvenient Truth” to any of my children.  Too late.  The eldest was shown it last year by his gym teacher.  Gym teacher? How did this make it into gym class?  Seems that many of our teachers are the usual dyed-in-the-wool graduates of the school of leftwing nonsense that perpetrated Canada in the late 60s and 70s.  They don’t even understand what objectivity means, so we certainly cannot expect them to espouse it in the classroom.  Those views are the Canadian orthodoxy now, so they are very rarely questioned.  I recommended that the high school principal have a look at Melanie Phillips’ books, or those of Theodore Dalrymple, or Lawrence Solomon or Mark Steyn for a more balanced approach, but she seemed shocked that I would be asking her to read….....

Junk science abounds, everyone.  Isn’t that common knowledge?  No, the science certainly is not settled, and if it were cast in concrete, it would not be science. 

I am sort of perplexed that folks astute enough to read the SQE website would be the Global Warming types.

Woah.  No one is endorsing anything but making sure that schools teach science that is backed up by evidence proven with properly followed scientific method and supported by legitimate plausible, unmanipulated peer review.  No one is disputing whether the earth is cooling or warming—it has done both so far for billions of years and I expect will continue to do so long after human beings are gone or evolved into something else.

Having students debate on whether climate change is human caused, I would have no problem.  It would be an interesting debate which could include how the politics of science works no doubt.  Having a science curriculum that uses An Inconvenient Truth as “scientific proof”, I DO have a problem with.  That’s Malkin’s point and she was pretty clear about it.

The science is over. The overwhelming majority of scientists say it is true. Of the tiny group that is in denial, half have their bills paid by the energy companies.

I would love Hudak to run an election on “global warming may not be true”  Parents want Al Gore and David Suzuki in every classroom.

The ‘science’ is never over.  Anybody who believes that is not a scientist and doesn’t know much about science.  Scientists (even most skeptics) agree the planet is warming.  It has been doing so since the end of the LIA.  What they don’t agree on is by how much, exactly how and why it is warming and finally on our ability to predict the future based on current scientific knowledge. 

That piece of CBC typically anti-Bush/US agit-prop is biased and out of date.  I would hope it is never used to further understanding of Climate Change in the classroom, media studies maybe, but not science.

Here is a much better authority on the state of Climate Science:

http://royalsociety.org/Royal-Society-launches-new-climate-change-guide/

It is certainly not true that parents want Al Gore and David Suzuki in every classroom. See the following:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/TenWays/story?id=3719791&page=2

I would characterize both as activists and zealots, not without their own personal reasons for keeping AGW hysteria alive.

You have no more authority than I to suggest what parents want in the classroom.

I would suggest, however, that what most parents want in the classroom, at least in terms of science, is a thorough education in the scientific method and a fundamental understating of the elements, properties and processes underlying that science, including the important role of skepticism and the concept of certainty and uncertainty (confidence) especially as it pertains to our ability to predict the future. 

They want classrooms that encourage curiosity and teachers that reinforce the pleasure that can come from scientific discovery.  Most importantly, they do not want a classroom propagandized by either the shrill doomsday promoters, or by those who cannot accept that human activity can and does indeed have an effect on our planet and its systems.

Disclaimer:  I am not, nor have I ever been, a paid shill for any energy or tobacco company.

Thank you for weighing in, Jan!  We need bloggers like you on this site.

“Having a science curriculum that uses An Inconvenient Truth as “scientific proof”, I DO have a problem with.”

Then that’s the Ontario science curriculum because there was huge fanfare and maybe even a photo op. headed by the former Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne when she explained how the gov’t was providing copies of the Inconvenient Truth to schools in the province.

Our taxdollars paid for it.

Truthfully anything that’s being taught to students has been massaged and or supported by some sort of “expert”. How often do we question those in the same way that we question the climate change issue?

I would be shocked if you can still find a student in North America that has not seen the film and further been told by their teachers that the debate is over and the film is true. I happen to know friends in OSSTF who purchased enough copies for every HS in Ontario.

Chuck, I am one of those individuals who has questioned everything in many school curriculums, and school mandates, for a very, very long time.  I have been most un-Canadian is that sense, as apathy is the name of the game in this country (mention educational innovations that have been known in the U.S. for 40 or 50 years, and you get a blank stare on this side of the border).  I am well-versed in the language of school reform.  I know all the arguments.  I am aware of all the options, even though these seem to be available to only small numbers of people in geographic locations I never happen to be.  I like to think nothing has escaped my examination.  I have both an M.Ed. as well as most of a middle-aged lifetime of observation and questioning of “education” .  I am the parent of school-aged children.

Trouble is, that unless vast numbers of people with political power see and question and get vehement about change, all at the same time, nothing is going to happen.  I came, I saw, I questioned, but in the end, the system still grinds along doing just as it pleases, and all I get in return are rolled eyes and snippy comments from school board trustees and administrators who feel they must humour me, as a taxpayer and parent, but nothing more.  I have done everything —and the list would astonish — that most people assume will bring about change, but it hasn’t.  It looks as if my children will go through their entire school careers immersed in the nonsense their mother so loathes; my husband and I spend more time, it seems, de-bugging them from the nonsense and propaganda of the school day than we have available for actual learning.

Homeschooling?  Yes, tried.  Not a long-term answer for us, for many reasons.  Private school?  Yes, again.  There is no guarantee, however, that because a parent pays a tuition of say, $7,000 - $20,000 per year, the education is going to be of star-quality.  Believe me on that one; not just any private school will do.  These are operated from many different mandates, not all of which have to do with what a parent might consider an excellent platform for real education.  What’s left? 

Oh, I do indeed question every little detail of what passes for education in Canada, but unless I am joined by vast swaths of others, and we all clamour for political reform,  I sincerely doubt that any real improvement will take place.  Most Canadians, after all, seem to believe a myth that has gone around for years about our school systems being good (not like the American system…......), and hardly in need of an overhaul.  Their delusion upsets me almost as much as the schooling here itself.  And yes, I could literally write a book on it.  Must see to educating my own children first, however.

A, many of us mothers have been through exactly the same thing, and at the present time, you’re right, nothing’s going to happen.  Too many people are ill-informed (thanks partly to our media) and so there aren’t enough of us to effect change.  This blog is here to help inform people of the problems with our educational system.  We can’t give up.  Children deserve so much more than they’re getting.

In Ontario the present gov’t has worked to buy off parents and school councils with their own taxdollars to become “engaged” in their childrens’ education.

On the surface the gov’t appears to be supporting parents and school councils but dig deep and it’s nothing more than preparing parents for the next election.

Effective school administrators and education savvy parents know that you can’t buy or pacify parents by buying their silence.

In Simcoe yesterday a school council that knew how to exercise its statutory responsibilities to it’s school community effectively has managed to get WiFi taken out of their school where kids were falling ill.

Had school councils in Ontario been allowed to evolve and be trained on the secrets behind their power instead of being side-tracked by those who found the notion of parents as partners in the system a threat, we may have learned to be more locally focused on all things educational.

That works as much for the supporting and educating on effective programs, methodologies and processes the system uses that are considered best practices.