Letter to the editor: Keep ‘unproven’ climate change out of textbooks

According to modern historians, the only objective truth is that one can’t know an objective truth. This rejection of absolute truth will soon be the accepted norm for Minnesota students put forth by the Department of Education in the new academic standards for social studies. The new standards do not reflect the principles of freedom and economic success that have made the United States the most successful country in the history of the world.

For example, in Sub-strand 3: World History - Standard 9, climate change receives equal footing with disease as causing sharp, periodic fluctuations in global population. Climate change is a theory rather than an accepted scientific law, one for which scientific evidence and consensus is decidedly lacking. The goals of those who push the proposed solutions to this unproven concept as a crisis appear to be international taxation, power, and a shifting of our nation’s sovereignty to international entities in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

When textbooks stress such a controversial concept as sustainable development rather than teaching facts, it appears that the government school system is being used to promote a position to realign the minds and actions of impressionable children and their parents. We know that the most fundamental and powerful method of disseminating information to a population is through the public education system. The new standards do not promote critical thinking but seem to be promoting Agenda 21 and the Decade on Education or Sustainable Development.

New standards should not be imposing a particular ideological world view on students in our public schools that is not grounded in fact consistent with the principles of American government or helpful in preserving our republic. The proposed 2012 social studies standards must be reworked to improve the knowledge of our students and reflect American principles of liberty.

Susan Richardson - Woodbury

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion, updates