For those that want to be informed, here’s the animation produced by PragerU and enforced for the Florida school’s curriculum:
https://www.prageru.com/video/poland-anias-energy-crisis
And here’s a more thorough article with facts and details, that does beyond calling a Reddit user and expert for a clickbait headline:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/08/prageru-climate-skeptic-science-florida-education/
Review the details and draw your own conclusions, don’t listen to Reddit (or Lemmy) users. Because knowing is half the battle.
The “expert” quoted was an unidentified Reddit user! Nowhere in the article was it stated what was being taught. This isn’t an article for information, it’s just an attempt to fan the flames of division.
Not saying I agree or not with what’s happening in (surprise) Florida. Just saying nothing in this article provides for discussion or critical thinking about the topic.
“It’s evil more than it is stupid,” said a Reddit user discussing the Guardian article, while another lamented the forces enabling this and anti-environmental policy planning like Project 2025 as “doing the bidding of oil companies.”
Read the three lines right above that quote. Those are the experts.
Adrienne McCarthy, a researcher at Kansas State University, told the Guardian why this is particularly troubling.
“It’s propaganda 101,” she said. “Equating people concerned about climate change with Nazis can have long-term impacts on young, impressionable people. The beliefs PragerU are pushing forward overlap with far-right extremist beliefs. The fear is that they will bring this sort of extremist beliefs into mainstream society.”
In a piece for Mother Jones, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists Kristina Dahl annotated the transcript of one of these videos, demonstrating how the visuals and script are trying to convince the viewer to ignore the findings of scientific research.
The title of the article Experts sound alarm over concerning ‘propaganda’ found in public school curriculum: ‘It’s evil more than it is stupid’ is suggesting the quoted are the experts. They are not, they were an unnamed Reddit.
What McCarthy stated may be true, but it doesn’t share what was being taught to kids so that you and I could assess if, in fact, she is right. She should have been referring to some other material created by the same author, though not taught. What was actually included in the curriculum was not shared in this article. No opportunity for you and I to have our own actual opinion on the topic. That’s not news, that’s propaganda.
The article does explain what is being taught to students.
The Florida Department of Education has approved screening videos that deny the Earth’s changing climate to schoolchildren in the state, according to the Guardian.
The videos approved to be shown to children from kindergarten to fifth grade feature characters who question several sustainable actions, such as moving away from dirty energy sources, switching to renewable energy, and reducing reliance on plastics.
Now, videos featuring climate-denial talking points could be shown to children as young as five years old.
If you want to complain about the toxicity of sensational headlines, I don’t think many people would disagree. But it’s two posts in a row you’ve claimed untrue things about the article without having clearly read and digested it. Maybe you should consider why you’re so quick to assume it’s “propaganda” and rush to prove yourself correct.
This seems to be kind of on point with the current political issues surrounding the Turów brown coal mine in Poland:
