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By Jo Nova
In the ecosystem of civilization, the OECD is just another batch of multinational barnacles slowing the ship down. These invertebrate filter feeders use taxpayer money to bore the taxpayers kids into submission to The Blob. They presumably hope the kids will grow up to vote for the Big Government Blob, thus boosting the river of money that flows past the barnacles.
In the end, improbably, a foreign committee is pretending it can save children in some of the wealthiest nations in the world from “misinformation”. As if the first world needs some remedial assistance teaching chemistry to their teenagers. The gargantuan arrogance of this is only surpassed by the intergalactic chutzpah. The OECD are, after all, just a bunch of economists, wiggling their finger at nations full of doctors and engineers, and telling them how to teach their kids science.
The gibberish, it grows: What is “action” in response to “climate anxiety”?
How to teach climate change so 15-year-olds can act
The Guardian (of course).
OECD’s Pisa program will measure the ability of students to take action in response to climate anxiety and ‘take their position and role in the global world’
In 2025, for the first time in nearly a decade, science will be the major focus of the OECD’s program for international student assessment (Pisa) – which runs every three years (give or take Covid interruptions), its focus rotating between reading, maths and science. … This year it will measure the knowledge and ability of 15-year-old students from 92 countries and economies to act on climate change, under a new heading: Agency in the Anthropocene.
The point of measuring children’s abilities is to collect statistics for the next batch of press releases the OECD want to browbeat the West with.
They say they want to teach children to “distinguish scientific evidence from misinformation” except that they don’t appear to know what scientific evidence is, or what science is either. If they did, they’d talk about the dangers of consensus and computer models, and the importance of observations.
Let’s have a small revolution in logic and reasoning instead:
Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education, describes the refreshed science framework as a “small revolution” addressing students’ capacity to distinguish scientific evidence from misinformation in the context of the “biggest challenge of our times – our environment”.
Look out, a foreign committee influenced by multinational corporate powers wants to provide a “non-political space” for your children.
Amelia Pearson, at the Monash climate change communication research hub, says there have been more “climate change dot points” added to the curriculum, but mainly in subjects such as science and geography.
“Climate change impacts every area of society and our lives,” she says. “So it’s really important that people who might not engage, particularly with [science, technology, engineering, maths], still have the opportunity to learn about these different challenges.”
Education isn’t about persuading children to think a certain way, she says, but providing a non-political space to understand the issues and make up their own minds.
Aren’t our schools supposed to be “non-political spaces”?
I say we survey the OECD instead to see if they know what science is — then cut off their funding when they fail.
The biggest threat to the world today is big-government. We need to teach children that cold weather is terrible, but big government is worse than an ice age.
Thanks to Tony Thomas, and Eric Worrall…