SCHOOLCHILDREN are being brainwashed with an environmental message in the classroom. Children are not just being pinned down in the classroom and force-fed what to think: it's worse than that. The next generation - from primary schoolchildren through to college students - is being taught not to think, merely encouraged to accept the official line. It ought to be a national scandal but no one seems to think that there is anything controversial about environmental indoctrination in schools.
The UN is midway through its global Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, a strategy initiated by UNESCO to integrate the principles, values and practices of sustainability into all aspects of education and learning. In its latest action plan, Living Sustainably, the Australian government states - with Orwellian overtones - that it will be "reorienting education". Who would have thought that any government would have the chutzpah to boast it "seeks to ensure that education is integrated with other policy tools utilised to deliver Australian government policy and program outcomes."
Indeed, the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, argues: "Higher education is pivotal to achieving environmental sustainability, improving social inclusion, engaging with our region and strengthening the institutional framework of our democracy." Knowledge, learning, critical thinking and intellectual development don't feature in the list of aims of sustainable education. This is hardly surprising because sustainable education has nothing to do with education. Read more.