Parents check on your children, Governments check on your schools – brainwashing the young with climate scares needs to be resisted before even more harm is done to them.

CLIMATE CONTROL: Brainwashing in Schools is the title of a report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).  

It was a huge privilege for me to work on this report with Andrew Montford, whose writings on climate matters I have long admired.  The GWPF in general, and Benny Peiser in particular, proved to be good to work with as well, as they provided critical reviews of our drafts over the past few months and generally encouraged our efforts.  I think of my blog here as mostly howling at the Moon, with some potentially worthwhile archiving of relevant information in the various reference pages I keep here.  But Andrew and Benny want a lot more than that.  Howling is not nearly good enough for them.  They want direct engagement with the mostly hostile or slumbering establishments of government, of scientific institutions, of all levels of education, of the mass media and political classes, and with the general public as well.  Without their drive, this report would not have appeared.  It was their idea, and I was pleased to help pursue it and help get it done.  I hope it will be widely read, and reacted to, and that much good may come of it.

Here is the text of the press release issued by the GWPF:

'London, 8 April: A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation is calling for Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, to institute an official inquiry into the way environmentalism and in particular climate change are being taught in schools.

In the report, authors Andrew Montford and John Shade describe how environmentalism has come to permeate school curricula across the UK, featuring in an astonishing variety of subjects, from geography to religious education to modern languages. Passing examinations will now usually involve the ability to recite green mantras rather than understanding the subtle questions of science and economics involved.

The authors review in detail the climate change teaching materials currently used in British schools, with disturbing results. There is ample evidence of unscientific statements, manipulated graphs, and activist materials used in class and even found in textbooks.

The report also describes how activist teachers try to make children become the footsoldiers of the green movement, encouraging them to harass their schoolmates and pester their parents to bring about “behaviour change”.

The use of fear of climate change to alter children’s behaviour is also highlighted. This is undoubtedly having harmful consequences on children’s development and surveys indicate that fear of the future is widespread. The report quotes one child as saying:

“I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die.”

Author Andrew Montford says: “The brainwashing of our children for political ends is shameful. Those responsible for education in the UK need to take action and take it quickly” '

This blog is about to go through the 10,000 page visits a month mark.  Not much compared to the big-hitters, but a progress nevertheless that I am pleased with.  But of course it matters little unless further actions arise from it.  If you, gentle reader, find this report worthwhile and important, please consider passing it on to every school in your area, to every teacher you may know, to parent-teacher groups, to educational authorities, and so on.  The effective life of such a pamphlet is probably quite short, a few weeks or months at best perhaps, so the more use you can make of it, the better.  You can download the free pdf here.  You might get printed copies from the GWPF (I don’t yet know what the price of them would be).

Post Script

James Delingpole has just written about the report here: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/08/Schoolchildren-terrorized-and-brainwashed-by-green-propaganda-says-damning-survey
Andrew had written about it earlier, and has attracted many favourable and informative comments: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/4/8/climate-control.html

Added 13 April 2014
The journalist Christopher Booker has referred to our report in a hard-hitting article today in the Sunday Telegraph.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10761597/No-A-level-for-climate-change-denier.html (the online version is accompanied with a picture with this caption: 'Schoolchildren are taught a one-sided Greenpeace-type view of the global warming scare'.  Unfortunately the photograph, a different one, in the print edition has this caption: 'Propaganda: the education system has been hijacked by global-warming believers'.  That is very seriously misleading.  For example, I think there is reasonably convincing evidence of some global warming in the 20thC, and should therefore be described as a 'global warming believer'.)
He includes reference to the Education Secretary's earlier response to the report, covered here: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/08/Teachers-Acting-Illegally-Over-Climate-Change

Added 27 May 2014
A newly published study into the responses of young people in China to an online survey (response rate c. 19%), points to some impact of a government programme to modify indoctrination in Chinese schools (nowhere does the study refer to previous levels of indoctrination efforts) which was introduced in a staggered way thereby encouraging the authors in their pursuit of evidence of an effect.  In a nutshell, they found that the indoctrination had an identifiable effect in most areas, but not on one of the stated government objectives concerning the environment.  See: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/the-power-and-limits-of-indoctrination.php  (hat-tip Instapundit).  The report is available here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20112  The authors conclude that 'Our findings
suggest that alongside other mechanisms of social and political control, political elites, indeed, can
shape students’ attitudes by choosing the content of the education system.'