From September, secondary school students in Northern Ireland will be
offered the opportunity to study for a new qualification in climate
change and environmental action.
The Department for Education
has just approved a new course which is entitled, Reducing Carbon
Footprints Through Environmental Action.
According to The BBC:
The new qualification is awarded by the Open College Network, Northern Ireland (OCN NI). A GCSE equivalent, it will be assessed by coursework rather than exams. A
new natural history GCSE has recently been introduced in England, which
includes teaching pupils about climate change and how to protect the
planet. In Scotland, the national exams body will no longer ask
pupils to give explanations on the “positive” effects of climate change
as part of a geography course. Many pupils in Northern Ireland
already cover environmental topics in subjects like geography, but the
new qualification brings a number together on one course. It
includes modules on things like understanding the role of carbon in
climate change, tackling single-use plastics, fast fashion and climate
campaigning.
The environmental education manager at Keep Northern
Ireland Beautiful, Charlene McKeown, has helped produce resources for
schools offering the subject.
“There’s a definite need for our
young people to become aware of the environmental crisis that they are
essentially living in and about to face,” she told BBC News NI. “At the moment there’s a huge gap in our curriculum for environmental education specifically focusing in on the climate crisis. We
believe this essentially is a quick solution for our teachers to get
stuck into it rather than waiting on curriculum change.”
The
number of pupils who study the new qualification will be down to the
number of schools who decide to offer it to GCSE or AS-level students.
This
is indoctrination, plain and simple. One could also make the argument
that it’s tantamount to child abuse. They are effectively terrorising
children now. There is no climate crisis. The world isn’t going to end
or become uninhabitable anytime soon.
Roger Waters put it best:
We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control. No dark
sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave them kids alone. Hey, teacher,
leave them kids alone.
