Indoctrination! Teacher’s geography ‘lesson plan’ turns K-12 students against the Keystone Pipeline project
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
Via EAGnews.org
MILWAUKEE – Every year, 1.7 million college students take remedial classes to acquire basic academic skills they should have been taught in high school.
How is that possible when Americans are “investing” record levels of money in K-12 schools and demanding greater levels of accountability?
A popular high school “geography lesson” being promoted around the nation may offer a clue. Students spend five days getting a steady stream of one-sided political propaganda with little in the way of real learning involved.
New York City high school teacher Abby Mac Phail recently used the debate over America’s energy future as the basis for a five-day lesson designed to turn students against the Keystone pipeline project.
Her lesson plan – “Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline” – was included in the list of resources that the left-wing teachers group “Rethinking Schools” emailed to educators across the country.
The proposed pipeline would transport oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in the United States. The project is a major source of political controversy. In general terms, Republicans believe the Keystone pipeline would help kick-start the sluggish economy, while Democrats argue it would only contribute to America’s oil addiction, which is a major cause of global warming.
Mac Phail explains the purpose of her lesson plan in an accompanying essay:
“As a Canadian teaching at an international school in New York City, I had long been planning to teach about the tar sands. Although many people are aware of the devastating effects of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Shell’s human rights abuses in Nigeria, few know about the enormous environmental and social injustice caused by oil extraction just to the north.” (emphasis added)
MILWAUKEE – Every year, 1.7 million college students take remedial classes to acquire basic academic skills they should have been taught in high school.
How is that possible when Americans are “investing” record levels of money in K-12 schools and demanding greater levels of accountability?
A popular high school “geography lesson” being promoted around the nation may offer a clue. Students spend five days getting a steady stream of one-sided political propaganda with little in the way of real learning involved.
New York City high school teacher Abby Mac Phail recently used the debate over America’s energy future as the basis for a five-day lesson designed to turn students against the Keystone pipeline project.
Her lesson plan – “Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline” – was included in the list of resources that the left-wing teachers group “Rethinking Schools” emailed to educators across the country.
The proposed pipeline would transport oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in the United States. The project is a major source of political controversy. In general terms, Republicans believe the Keystone pipeline would help kick-start the sluggish economy, while Democrats argue it would only contribute to America’s oil addiction, which is a major cause of global warming.
Mac Phail explains the purpose of her lesson plan in an accompanying essay:
“As a Canadian teaching at an international school in New York City, I had long been planning to teach about the tar sands. Although many people are aware of the devastating effects of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Shell’s human rights abuses in Nigeria, few know about the enormous environmental and social injustice caused by oil extraction just to the north.” (emphasis added)
