Climate change

[stui magpie]

Young people demonstrating engagement with important issues IS a good thing, taking a day off school to do it....meh. They miss enough school with teachers days off (curriculum days) anyway, so one more won't hurt.

My only concern is about idealism and activism with no comprehension of the consequences. That generally doesn't lead to good outcomes.

[stui magpie]

Interesting article about a long range weather forecaster predicting a mini ice age and very cold winters from now on, partly due to reduced solar activity called a Solar Minimum.

https://www.australianewsly.com/2019/03 ... ePc7x-7PLo

Interestingly he believes that the current reduction in solar activity is masking the true effects of global warming.

It could be a short event like the last one (the maunder minimum in the 1700's ) or it could be the pre cursor to the next glacial period which, as I've said before, we around on time to enter.

[pietillidie]

Angry crazies can create Iraqs, Afghanistans, and global financial crises; stifle health care reform; make guns more accessible to children and whackos; sabotage European peace and prosperity; hand tax cuts to millionaires; undermine social mobility; dismantle economic, competition and environmental protections; allow deeply corrupt families to poison government; prop up the dirty energy of oppressive regimes and unaccountable corporations; sell arms to brutal dictatorships; and whip up daily racial paranoia.

But no, folks. It's those young people siding with the best science on the planet you've got to watch, what with their menacing acne and enthusiasm.

[David]

I find the government responses to this (particularly from hopefully-soon-to-be-voted-out NSW Liberals) just totally ridiculous. I'm starting to wonder whether they even value education at all, or else just consider school a place that kids have to be between set hours because the rules say so (and because breaking them will usher in anarchy). Their reactions are so knee-jerk conservative that they've somehow taken a time machine back to the 1800s and a prevailing view that children should be seen and not heard.

As is so often the case with the ideologues in government, everyday conservatives who aren't obsessed with culture wars end up being the voice of moderation. Here's an op-ed from a Catholic publication, no less:

https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article ... d-citizens

High school protestors are good citizens

[...]

I found it interesting that our highest officials responded in the way they did given that in their own document, signed by all education ministers around the country, they committed to in the goal of developing active and informed citizens, including a goal for young people to develop 'national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia's civic life' (Melbourne Declaration on Education Goals for Young People (2008).

[...]

Advocacy is a very Catholic action. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) challenges us to work for the dignity of all creation, to work for each person's ability to participate in the life and decision-making of our society. To amplify the voices of those unheard in our society, including the very planet we live on, itself is a Catholic response to the call of the Gospel. The Australian curriculum also emphasises participation in society and the teaching of skills that enable this such as citizenship and ethical understanding.

Given these foundations, Catholic schools in particular should be educating for advocacy.

Hear hear. And if that's true for Catholics, it should be a standard held by secular society, too. If my son ends up being as informed or civically engaged as the students attending these protests, I'll actually feel confident that the education system has done a pretty good job.

[Culprit]

They shouldn't attend as they will miss important education. Ah this from the same party that wanted Compulsory Sport.

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news ... index.html It's their Future.

[stui magpie]

I find the government responses to this (particularly from hopefully-soon-to-be-voted-out NSW Liberals) just totally ridiculous. I'm starting to wonder whether they even value education at all, or else just consider school a place that kids have to be between set hours because the rules say so (and because breaking them will usher in anarchy). Their reactions are so knee-jerk conservative that they've somehow taken a time machine back to the 1800s and a prevailing view that children should be seen and not heard.

As is so often the case with the ideologues in government, everyday conservatives who aren't obsessed with culture wars end up being the voice of moderation. Here's an op-ed from a Catholic publication, no less:

https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article ... d-citizens

High school protestors are good citizens

[...]

I found it interesting that our highest officials responded in the way they did given that in their own document, signed by all education ministers around the country, they committed to in the goal of developing active and informed citizens, including a goal for young people to develop 'national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia's civic life' (Melbourne Declaration on Education Goals for Young People (2008).

[...]

Advocacy is a very Catholic action. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) challenges us to work for the dignity of all creation, to work for each person's ability to participate in the life and decision-making of our society. To amplify the voices of those unheard in our society, including the very planet we live on, itself is a Catholic response to the call of the Gospel. The Australian curriculum also emphasises participation in society and the teaching of skills that enable this such as citizenship and ethical understanding.

Given these foundations, Catholic schools in particular should be educating for advocacy.

Hear hear. And if that's true for Catholics, it should be a standard held by secular society, too. If my son ends up being as informed or civically engaged as the students attending these protests, I'll actually feel confident that the education system has done a pretty good job.

But are they really, or are they being used as a child army for political purposes?

Earlier this week I spoke to an office bearer from the Australian Education Union about his organisation’s support for Friday’s nationwide strike action by school students demanding “real action” on climate change.

It was a bit like sitting down for a chat with the late Whitney Houston.

He rejected any suggestion that these protests were in any way a union-inspired or union-organised party political exercise. It was all about the kids, he said.

To borrow from Whitney, he believed the children were our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. But it’s a live question whether the children are actually leading the way on this at all.

Term 4 last year finished on December 14 and Term 1 this year started on January 29.

By my count, that means there have been fewer than 50 days of schooling since the nation’s last student protest for “real action” on climate change, on November 29.

Today, it has been decreed that it’s time to down pens again, that the clock is ticking for Mother Earth, and that kids have more important things to be doing than maths and English when the planet is in such dire need.

For the record, I believe in climate change, and fully endorse the right of young people to get out and express a political opinion. I spent much of my youth lying on roads and marching around chanting, and have no quarrel with the fact that school kids, even some kids at upper primary level, want to get out and have their say.

The problems with this protest are pretty obvious. The first is that it is held during school hours. The second is that it appears to be becoming a regular event. The third is that, far from being student-led activity, it looks for all the world like a staged and partisan event organised by politically obsessed adults, held deliberately on the eve of a federal election, and sponsored chiefly by a union movement that is hellbent on ousting the Morrison Government.

It is an insult to the collective intelligence of the community for the AEU to suggest otherwise.


If you have a look at the Facebook page promoting today’s protest, it features a roll call of every union in the land as proud sponsors of the event. From the Australian Workers’ Union and the Australian Services Union to the maritime union and CFMEU, it is easier to name the unions that aren’t involved than those that are.

This level of union endorsement is of particular interest when it comes to the AEU, which is having an increasingly incredulous time of it convincing intelligent people it isn’t hugely partisan in its operations.

The union had a bit of explaining to do last year when one of its own delegates, Woodville High School teacher Regina Wilson, wrote on the AEU’s own Facebook page that she saw it as her role as a teacher to educate students about the evils of the Liberal Party.

In her own confused way she thought she was doing so in a manner that wasn’t party political.

“I am going to try to ensure that the next generation of voters in my classroom don’t vote Liberal, without being political of course, as I won’t tell my students what to think, but I teach them how to be critical thinkers who question those in power and especially those who seek to keep the status quo for the rich, upper classes and refuse to acknowledge the rest of us,” she wrote.

You can find this same line of impertinent thinking in the AEU’s advocacy of these climate protests.

The origin of these protests is in western Europe, principally Sweden, where a girl by the name of Greta Thunberg decided to go on strike for several months in protest at global inaction on climate change.

If Greta is so fired up about the issue that she wants to make such a dramatic point under her own steam, good on her, but the Australian protests look nothing like Greta’s actions. This is less a case of kids taking it upon themselves to take action, rather kids being invited or even urged to take action, with all of the organisational infrastructure being operated by adults.

Within this Facebook page you can find adults giving kids tips on cool slogans to write on their placards, which invariably involve the direct denunciation of the Morrison Government over its carbon policies, or lack thereof.

Far from being an exciting kids’ revolution, as we saw in the US over guns, this is in fact a mundane and transparent adult protest, with kids being enlisted as the frontmen and women to achieve a party-political gain.

If that’s the way organisations like the AEU want to operate, that’s fine. But they should stop pretending they’re simply following the will of the children and admit that it is actually their political intention to campaign against the Liberals by whatever means they can.

As for the timing of these protests, it is clear they have been scheduled during school hours to maximise their perceived radical edge.

The protests could have just as much impact if they were held after school or during a lunch hour, and they would be more likely to win over mainstream sentiment if that were the case.

While you can make the case that young people can on occasions learn more outside the classroom than inside the classroom, the truth is that in Australia today, the rate of meaningful classroom time focused on traditional subjects has been declining for years, with literacy and numeracy rates falling accordingly.

I am not sure what these bimonthly school day stoppages to ratify the Paris protocols will do to reverse that trend, a trend that seems of less interest to the AEU than revving up the kiddies to go to war with the fascist Scott Morrison regimen.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/rendezview ... fbd7208730

Now may suggest that's a very cynical take, I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but there's little doubt there's an adult political agenda here.

[David]

[stui magpie]

^

I very much doubt the Labor party had much to do with it at all, Shorten would have complete deniability. The ALP don't get to approve Ads run by unions attacking Liberal policies in the lead up to elections, why would they have any active involvement in this?

There would be little doubt that the unions are involved not just to support the youths on climate action, but to ensure the whole thing paints Sco Mo and the Libs in the worst possible light. Certainly opportunistic and deliberately so, a step back from actually hijacking it though.

[Wokko]

Kids going along with left wing orthodoxy with the blessing of teachers, unions and establishment politicians. How brave

[David]

Nobody said they were being especially brave, though. Not all good things have to be.

[stui magpie]

^

when you've got all the kids chanting "Sco Mo has to go" try to tell me that's not political.

[David]

But of course it’s political. And it’s unavoidably true that nobody has done more to hold back progress on climate change in this country than the Libs. I saw a graph the other day of Australian CO2 emissions in the past decade and things took a pretty bleak turn around 2013.

[Wokko]

We're a cow fart next to China and India. We could go back to the stone age tomorrow and the climate wouldn't be effected one iota.

[David]

Nothing would change if you stayed home on election day, but you still vote, right? Australia is one of only 197 countries in the world and far from the smallest of them. We need international co-operation, either with the big-polluting superpowers or else to pressure them to get onboard. Certainly, looking over our shoulders and deciding not to do anything unless everyone else does isn’t going to achieve anything.

[Pies4shaw]

Voting is for "soft" people without guns and jackboots, too, David.