The Church of Global Warming

Coming to a School Near You


Something strange happened at my son's school during the parent-teacher conference. Me, the parent, got an education. Something else happened too - the teacher (or priestess, if you prefer) was confronted. You should have seen the look on her face!

As I quickly looked over my 8th grader's progress report (by the way - another school that did away with A,B,C,D and F in favor of good, close, tried hard and disadvantaged) I saw a class called Global Warming. I did a double take. There it was surrounded by Math, Phy-ed, Spanish and Art. My initial reaction was "you've got to be kidding me?"

"You have a class called Global Warming?" I asked incredulously. "This is part of the regular curriculum?"

"Oh yes," she said. "It's a combined Earth Science and Social Studies unit."

With a look of grave concern I said that I had a problem with that. She was stunned. I assume not one other parent had raised an eyebrow. I said, "Let me ask you something, you do realize that the climate is always changing, that there have been times on this Earth when it was a lot hotter than it is now and other times when it was a lot colder, right? I'm talking about a time long before SUV's , coal fired power plants and Al Gore." She sheepishly agreed. "You do tell these kids that there is still a debate over the "human caused theory" despite what Al Gore says, don't you?" Slack-jaw stare... "How about the Sun? Do you discuss the Sun's role in our climate?"

"Well, we watch documentaries and look at models and talk about ways we can all save energy. We talk about melting glaciers and species extinction."

I smiled "I don't think that mankind should wantonly pollute and we should do all we can to cleanup after ourselves and we should develop high tech solutions to the problems with fossil fuels. I have absolutely no problem with conservation as a personal virtue, but you know what would bother me?" I said sternly. "If you are pointing your fingers at these kids and telling them that they are to blame for global warming, I got a huge problem with that!"

"Oh no, we don't do that."

I could clearly see that I had taken this teacher quite by surprise. In my mind I could see these teachers taking the role of the nuns at the Catholic school and laying the proverbial guilt trip on these young kids. You'll go to hell Johnny if you don't save the world - and your little dog too!

As I left I was convinced that all my son's teachers were going to hear how much of a kook his father is. Oh well.

I have no doubt that they are going to know who filled out the "anonymous" survey that said simply, blah blah blah for my opinion on how important diversity was in my child's education.




CW