Maryland now requires ‘environmental proficiency’ to graduate from high school

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http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/06/21/maryland-now-requires-environmental-proficiency-to-graduate-from-high-school/

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In an historic vote today, the Maryland State Board of Education provided specific guidance to all public schools to require that each student be environmentally literate before he or she graduates from high school. The vote cements Maryland as the first state in the country to approve a graduation requirement in environmental literacy, a credit to Governor O’Malley, to board members, and to Dr. Nancy Grasmick, State Superintendent of Schools.

In other words, despite the growing evidence of fraud within the global warming/climate change debate, Maryland schools will, by law, force feed enviro-propaganda in the classroom. And your kid will swallow it whole, or not graduate.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 10 • Views: 3,910 • Replies: 47

@gungasnake,

I looked around to try to discover what they might mean by environmental proficiency and found this:

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....The materials are correlated to the National Science Education Standards and the AAAS Benchmarks.

Modules are currently available to download from the Environmental Literacy Council's website on the following topics: Earth Science - earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate tectonics; Life Science - species diversity and the impact of mass extinctions; Biology - the science, risks, and tradeoffs of genetically modified crops; Physical Science - Earth's energy balance and global climate change; and Physics - the science of radioactivity and issues surrounding the disposal of radioactive waste.

These modules are not about how to persuade students one way or the other with regard to the political issues, rather, they are designed as a resource to help teachers foster the scientific knowledge and critical ways of thinking that students will need as they grow to be responsible adults. Each of the five modules is designed to build skills in critical thinking and analytical reasoning about complex issues. Each module includes background information detailing the environmental context of each topic; recommends supplementary texts and lists online teaching resources; and suggests activities for further classroom exploration.

Damn liberals pushing their godless science off on children.

<mutter, mutter>

Seriously though, people have demanded that we rid the schools of art and music to make room for more science and math. Now they come up with a science course* and people get pissed about that? What gives!?

*This is really nothing new. When I was in school 30 years ago they called this type of class ecology.

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@gungasnake,

Honestly I think it should be offered as an elective Science course, but just my opinion. With so many sciences courses being required and similar, there should be a year or so in high school where you get to choose what you would to study.

On an aside, I took Environmental Studies as an Elective - I forget which subject it actually was within as this course was a combination of math, science and social studies - where you studied environmental impacts and used all these subject areas in the course. Quite a unique course.

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@Linkat,

Of course this should be dropped from the schools. After all we dont want a bunch of kids who think for themselves. Just stand in line and do as your told like your parents, and Gunga of course.

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I sometimes wonder what the likes of Gunga think an education is?

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@Ceili,

Quote:

I sometimes wonder what the likes of Gunga think an education is?

It isn't being indoctrinated with bullshit. The thing which is galling in this is the libtards apparently thinking themselves entitled to their own reality, like the lost boys in Peter Pan who refused to grow up.

I've never had the luxury of living in fantasy worlds and have always been forced to live in the real one.

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@gungasnake,

youve chosen to acquire your "truths" from pajamasmedia and Freep. Im certain that they have no agenda to bend your mind in any specific direction.

Always keep multiple hypotheses in your mind. DOnt become a "conservitard" or a zealot based on zero knowledge. AS GW said, this seems to be issue oriented science. I dont see anything about Global Climate Change.
Of course Gunga is for truth and objectivity, he believes in Creationism, so hes not too subjective

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@farmerman,

Become?

Cycloptichorn

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I read in the paper the other day that we're paying 37% more for basic groceries this year over last year, and that due to the horrid spring weather we should anticipate paying a lot more than that by this fall.

I have high hopes for proficient environmentalists.

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@gungasnake,

This seems like it might be more of a requirement to understand basic earth sciences than anything else. And we certainly need a better understanding of basic science in this country (and probably in Maryland also).

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Sounds like a confusion with words. the word "environmentalism" is usually correlated not with sciences regarding the environment and how it works, but with the plant & animal life preservation ideology.

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@manored,

The term is used by the idiots at Free Republic and the like.
Gunga would prefer our kids wallowing in complete ignorance so that the likes of people like Rush and Glenn Beck can spread their **** ,To which the ignorant are daily addicted.

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@boomerang,

What these guys are talking about most certainly is not teaching kids the magic of Amish farming. They are talking about indoctrinating kids into a belief system which posits that humans harm Gaea, that man ruins Gaea's weather systems by emitting CO2, and that Gaea needs human populations to return to medieval levels.

I may have mentioned this previously... I can remember the day I started hating environmentalists and it didn't even involve American environmentalists. I was watching some PBS thing about the Mara river in Kenya and some black African yuppie ecologist was guiding two PBS wonks on a tour of the river. They were watching a bunch of zebra trying to get up the nerve to try to cross a narrow section with what looked like a billion crocodiles, and the ecologist was describing the wonderful government program which had brought the crocodiles back from the brink of extinction over the past 30 years. They were almost to the point of taking down bets as to how many of the zebra weren't going to make it when one of the Americans noticed a village two or three hundred meters downstream, and women washing clothes in the river while keeping a wary eye on the water and what might be underneath it.

One of the Americans asked the obvious question and the answer came back, roughly, as:

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"Yeah, well, we lose a dozen or so of those silly Negroes a year that way but, hey, that's a small price to pay for restoring the balance of nature the way we have!!!"

I mean, you know perfectly well that jackass would not tolerate crocodiles within 100 miles of HIS family. I mean, what could possibly be more fun than providing those villagers with a crate of AK47s and sufficient ammo and letting that idiot yuppie watch them kill every ******* one of those crocodiles?

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It is typical that the rightwingnuts make an "-ism" of out this. They make an "-ism" out of any subject which they don't want discussed. They attempt to convert all discussions to political discussions, and then question the patriotism of anyone who doesn't fall in with their dog and pony show.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

What these guys are talking about most certainly is not teaching kids the magic of Amish farming. They are talking about indoctrinating kids into a belief system which posits that humans harm Gaea, that man ruins Gaea's weather systems by emitting CO2, and that Gaea needs human populations to return to medieval levels.

Can you support that with a link to the actual curriculum?

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http://www.climategate.com/

http://www.russiablog.org/2009/12/spy-story-russians-blamed-for-climategate.php

The hero of the tale:

I mean, you'd like to think that by exposing That East Anglia email database to the world (Climategate), Putin and Russia's top hackers had saved the entire world from this nefarious power grab and they almost certainly have.

Except for Maryland of course... Maryland was the one state which voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and the shitbirds who run its educational system clearly view themselves as immune from reality, or entitled to THEIR reality, in which Algor is the hero, and the righteous people of the world are villains.

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@Thomas,

I'll say it again, I do not do other people's research for them. If you want slaves, donate a million or two to the DNC and then ask them for a couple.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

They are talking about indoctrinating kids into a belief system which posits that humans harm Gaea, that man ruins Gaea's weather systems by emitting CO2, and that Gaea needs human populations to return to medieval levels.

Gaia is a hypothesis forwarded by Lynn Margulis and others. It is unevidenced and is more of a romantic thought process than a scientific discipline > Unlike Creationism and ID , which are evidenced out of existence aand are supported by parallel evidence from other sciences, Gaia is a nice campfire story with a great cast of characters.

Teaching kids the interrelationship of the forces and the lives of the [planet is on;y a threat to the teeny minded douche bags who make believe that everything is descended fromon high by decree.

That includes "Abiotic oil" "stable platform earth", ""hollow earth" and fossils in a meteorite.

All are easily refuted

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

They are talking about indoctrinating kids into a belief system which posits that humans harm Gaea, that man ruins Gaea's weather systems by emitting CO2, and that Gaea needs human populations to return to medieval levels.

I didn't see any mention of Gaea in the sources you linked. Are you sure you're not just over reacting to this based on your hatred of "environmentalists"?

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In an earlier post I quoted the Environmental Literacy Council. They seem to be the ones designing the curriculum. Here is a list of the labs they recommend for the course: http://www.enviroliteracy.org/subcategory.php/243.html

There is a lot of information on their site: http://www.enviroliteracy.org/subcategory.php/1.html

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Maryland now requires ‘environmental proficiency’ to graduate from high school

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