"teach your children well"

[mdenise]

"more than 40 percent of teachers frame climate science as controversial. They tell students that some scientists believe natural forces could be the primary drivers behind the recent accelerated temperature changes."

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/see-where-climate-science-conflict-has-invaded-us-classrooms-180956707/

[Mikko-kun]

All kinds of things they teach at school. Why not just teach basic math chemistry physics biology sports arts and be done with that? And languages. All other should be voluntary and views from both sides should be presented.

[Doug1029]

Nothing new about schools teaching stuff that isn't true. A few examples:

Ponce de Leon who explored Florida wasn't looking for a "fountain of youth." He had heard there was a spring whose waters cured impotence. He was planning to bottle it. You can't really tell that to a classroom of grade schoolers.

When my wife attended school in Charleston, SC she was kept after school for daring to write about the Underground Railroad. When I was in high school in Ohio, they took us on a tour of Underground Railroad stops. Were they teaching the same history?

My daughter took a course on Cold War history - in Russia. When she came back to the US, the college wouldn't grant her credit for the course. She had to take it again here. Her comment: "They thought of us the same way we thought of them." So which side was the aggressor?

The Battle of Lake Erie was fought in 1813. In my home town are a number of houses that were under construction when Perry issued the call for carpenters and volunteers to build the fleet. They just dropped what they were doing and went to Erie. In one of them was a huge wooden door about to be mounted to a stone arch. The carpenters just left it leaning against the wall. It was so huge it couldn't be removed and was still there when the house is torn down in 1986. One of my high school classmates has it now. My junior high school history teacher had no idea that less than three miles from where she was trying to teach history was a magnificent example of the history she was trying to teach.

Anyway, the harbor at Erie had a sand bar at the mouth so that there was less than four feet of water in the channel. British ships with cannons were too heavy to cross the bar and American sharpshooters controlled the land so troops couldn't be landed. Perry would have to launch the fleet and float it over the bar unarmed, then load cannons under the guns of the British fleet. It was a standoff. Then one stormy night the British commander decided there was little chance of the Americans launching the fleet that night so he sailed off to Buffalo to see his girlfriend. While he was gone the Americans launched the fleet, floated the ships across the bar and loaded the cannons. And the rest, as they say, is history. That lady was worth a couple regiments, but if you tell that to a bunch of junior high kids, they'll fire you. "Don't Give Up the Ship!"

Q: What did Cornwallis do after surrendering to Washington at Yorktown? A: He became president of the British East India Company. Remember that sand bar in the above story? It was dredged out to make Erie into a fine harbor. When I was in high school I took a boat ride through the channel. Tied up at a dock was a British East Indiaman with it's green elephant logo on the funnel. History came to me.

In my Ohio history class (same teacher) they taught us that "Rufus Putnam was Ohio's first settler." He wasn't. He was the first Surveyor-General of the United States. When government surveyors fell more than a year behind schedule with the Seven Ranges Survey Congress decided to sell the public lands to private corporations because "business can do it better than government (They were having that same debate back in 1786.)." Rufus Putnam resigned as Surveyor-General and organized the Ohio Company which bought a block of land from the govt and started selling lots. The idea was that they would use the proceeds to buy more land, sell that and thus make a killing.

But it was Indians who made the killing. They attacked the settlement at Big Bottom near what is now Stockport, Ohio, killing eleven. Four settlers hid out in the woods and then walked to Marietta (named for Putnam's granddaughter). The story got out and other settlers started demanding that the company supply the militia they had agreed to. But the company had invested its money in the stock market (Wall Street, yet) and lost it. They couldn't supply a militia, nor could they make the next installment to the govt. The company eventually went broke, Congress supplied the Donation Tract to pay for the militia and cancelled the Ohio Company's contract. Why Congressmen thought the same guy who couldn't get the job done as Surveyor-General would be able to do it as President of the Ohio Company is beyond me, but there's no understanding Congressional thinking.

So if Rufus Putnam wasn't "Ohio's first settler," who was? John Martin bought the first homestead west of the Appalachians for $640 on March 4, 1788. It was Lot 20 Township 7 Range 4 of the Seven Ranges Survey. If you'd like to see what it looked like in 2013, call up Google Earth and enter the coordinates: 40 03 07.5 N 80 57 09 W. It is about two miles southwest of St. Clairsville, Ohio and about a mile south of I-70. There is a runway for a private airport in the northwest corner.

But about climate science: the big problem is that teachers at the junior high/high school level are not taught climate science in college and have no idea what is true and what isn't and how to teach it. We must do a better job of educating the educators.

Doug

Edited October 7, 2015 by Doug1029

[SHaYap]

Socrates wept ...

`

[mdenise]

Teachers should be educated enough to teach the facts and not fiction, higher education definitely accepts climate change, 97% of scientists accept the facts of global warming, how is this controversial? Future generations should just wait and see what happens?

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm

[robinrenee]

"more than 40 percent of teachers frame climate science as controversial. They tell students that some scientists believe natural forces could be the primary drivers behind the recent accelerated temperature changes."

http://www.smithsoni...ooms-180956707/

Glad to hear that.

[Doug1029]

Glad to hear that.

Consider that most teachers have no training at all in climate science and the results aren't surprising.

Doug