Climate change non-education

An effective way to keep people from opposing or supporting something that elites want or don’t want is to keep the public as ignorant, deceived, disinformed, confused and/or distracted as much as possible. A great way to foster ignorance and disinformation is to simply not teach subjects that elites want the public to remain ignorant and disinformed about. The NYT writes:

Many States Omit Climate Education. These Teachers Are Trying to Slip It In.

Around the United States, middle school science standards have minimal references to climate change and teachers on average spend just a few hours a year teaching it.

In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of seventh graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them.

It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year-olds, Ms. Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of online disinformation. But she also thought it an important capstone to the end of two weeks she dedicates to teaching her Miami students about climate change, possible solutions and the barriers to progress.

.... in Florida, where Ms. Vazquez has taught for more than 30 years, and where her students are already seeing the dramatic impacts of a warming planet, the words “climate change” do not appear in the state’s middle or elementary school education standards.

“Middle school is where these kids are starting to get their moral compass and to back that compass up with logic,” said Michael Padilla, a professor emeritus at Clemson University and a former president of the National Science Teachers Association. “So middle school is a classic opportunity to have more focus on climate change.”

For those who do receive formal instruction on climate change, it will most likely happen in middle school science classrooms. But many middle school standards don’t explicitly mention climate change, so it falls largely on teachers and individual school districts to find ways to integrate it into lessons, often working against the dual hurdles of limited time and inadequate support.

Ms. Vazquez really went out on a limb to admit she teaches climate change in Florida, which politically is anti-climate change science. She has moral courage, but maybe not a job for much longer. A way to fire her will probably be found soon. And, radical right Republican climate science deniers like Rick DeSantis will look into ways to get laws passed in Florida to stop the teaching about climate change and science. DeSantis will attack it as socialist lies, groomer indoctrination and whatever other crackpottery seems good enough to keep the base angry, fearful, distracted, deceived and ignorant.

An ignorant public is a much more gullible and deceivable public than a well-informed public. The Republican Party understands this. That underpins ruthless Republican efforts to maintain ignorance and deceit about climate change.