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Australian climate change high school classes funded by major oil companies

Johnoshea311

New Blood
Joined
Jan 29, 2016
Messages
12
I've written my story of why I think oil companies are paying to write the science curriculum for climate change in Western Australia below. Has anyone seen similar in their own states or countries? Is this a widespread problem?

I was looking at the high school curriculum for science in my home state of Western Australia and discovered a new course called earth sciences that wasn't there when I was at high school. Interested to find out what the course was I googled "earth sciences Western Australia" and instantly came to the website of the organisation who lobbies for changes to the curriculum and provides text books for students.

ESWA is the lobby group name and their involvement is apparently to get more more geoscientists from schools to fill the already existing glut of unemployed geoscientists. ConocoPhillips, shell, Woodside, chevron and eight other oil companies sponsor this organisation (alongside the government) The thing is these companies aren't the employers of geoscientists in Western Australia. mining (not oil) companies are the main employers. In fact, I can't find one job advert for a geological scientist with those first four companies in western Australia advertised anywhere at the moment.

So why would these oil companies be so interested in training 800 geologists a year when they hire 10? Well, it appears they are bundling climate change into the earth science section of the curriculum. The wording used to describe how climate change works is similar to the strengths and weaknesses of climate change in Texan evolution books. The vague overviews provide readers with less evidence than a Fox News story on climate change. I can gain more knowledge about climate change from the 5 minutes of cosmos on climate change than I did by reading the curriculum and textbooks for year 8-12 of earth science.

The goal appears to be replacing real science content with mass amounts of information on rocks. It's a smart plan. Students would need rocks in their head to study the course these days. Students interested in environmental science won't sit through 2 years of memorising rock names and stories of how mining is helping to solve climate change (Shockingly, I'm paraphrasing the textbook) for 1 term of environmental science. The oil companies have effectively postponed students from learning about issues like climate change until university.

I went to the library and read the textbook to confirm my suspicions. I really do feel like students that take this course are missing out. They aren't getting the critical thinking skills they should be because they are rote learning rock names and they are getting a very biased view of several phenomena. Do you guys think it will stunt their critical thinking too? Or am I over reacting?

I personally am shocked that people are letting a conflict of interest exist like this and would love to hear the thoughts of other skeptics.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I've written my story of why I think oil companies are paying to write the science curriculum for climate change in Western Australia below. Has anyone seen similar in their own states or countries? Is this a widespread problem?

I was looking at the high school curriculum for science in my home state of Western Australia and discovered a new course called earth sciences that wasn't there when I was at high school. Interested to find out what the course was I googled "earth sciences Western Australia" and instantly came to the website of the organisation who lobbies for changes to the curriculum and provides text books for students.

ESWA is the lobby group name and their involvement is apparently to get more more geoscientists from schools to fill the already existing glut of unemployed geoscientists. ConocoPhillips, shell, Woodside, chevron and eight other oil companies sponsor this organisation (alongside the government) The thing is these companies aren't the employers of geoscientists in Western Australia. mining (not oil) companies are the main employers. In fact, I can't find one job advert for a geological scientist with those first four companies in western Australia advertised anywhere at the moment.

So why would these oil companies be so interested in training 800 geologists a year when they hire 10? Well, it appears they are bundling climate change into the earth science section of the curriculum. The wording used to describe how climate change works is similar to the strengths and weaknesses of climate change in Texan evolution books. The vague overviews provide readers with less evidence than a Fox News story on climate change. I can gain more knowledge about climate change from the 5 minutes of cosmos on climate change than I did by reading the curriculum and textbooks for year 8-12 of earth science.

The goal appears to be replacing real science content with mass amounts of information on rocks. It's a smart plan. Students would need rocks in their head to study the course these days. Students interested in environmental science won't sit through 2 years of memorising rock names and stories of how mining is helping to solve climate change (Shockingly, I'm paraphrasing the textbook) for 1 term of environmental science. The oil companies have effectively postponed students from learning about issues like climate change until university.

I went to the library and read the textbook to confirm my suspicions. I really do feel like students that take this course are missing out. They aren't getting the critical thinking skills they should be because they are rote learning rock names and they are getting a very biased view of several phenomena. Do you guys think it will stunt their critical thinking too? Or am I over reacting?

I personally am shocked that people are letting a conflict of interest exist like this and would love to hear the thoughts of other skeptics.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sounds like the usual lying ******** to me!!!!!!! Cowards and the paid off are what allows this to happen!!!!!!
 
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