While mentioned in Good Morning, News, this story is just too amazingly weird not to delve into a bit more deeply. SO: According to the Guardian, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has decided to accuse Portland of censoring books. Why? As you may have heard, the Portland public schools board decided last month to stop supplying student text books that “express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities." The board said, “there is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that the climate crisis is created by human beings” and “it is time for school districts to redefine what it means to educate students for a future of certain climate change.”
Sounds good, right? Well, it's not so great according to NCAC! From the Guardian:
The move has now raised “serious concerns” at free-speech organisation NCAC, which released a statement condemning the decision “for all its good intentions”.
“Social studies texts accurately describing the political debate around fossil fuels and climate change, for instance, would presumably contain comments from individuals who ‘express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis’. If such material is excised from the curriculum, will students be prepared to face – and argue with – climate-change denial when they encounter it in the world outside school?” asked the NCAC.
“Purging the curriculum of this kind of material will undermine public education, which should equip students for critical and informed consideration of important matters of public policy and controversy,” the statement continues. “Even if some scientists questioning the human causes of climate change do so apparently at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, it is still a fact that environmental policy is a subject of ongoing debate. Students should be conversant with, and equipped to address, the various questions and issues that are the subject of public discussion.”
They go on to say that the decision on how to present information on this controversial topic "should be left to those who teach about it."
READ THE WHOLE THING HERE, but if this doesn't deserve a Blogtown poll, nothing does! (Am I censoring you by saying that?)
