As if last week's shenanigans weren't enough, my boy (5) comes home with more environment stuff today. Now some of it's OK-ish: a chart to log when he takes the three-pin plug out of the socket after watching TV and so on ( , but included in the documents was a sheet entitled "Top Tips for Parents". This includes the usual stuff like not using the car, but walking, cycling, taking the train or bus etc (like the teachers do  ), not flying when you go on holiday (which is tough if you want to visit granny in Oz), eating less meat and so on.

Great. I've always wanted to be lectured to by someone just out of teacher training.

But it gets worse...

Tip No 9 is: Become an expert. It contains three web addresses...all for kids. You couldn't become a climate expert if you spent the next 50 years at these sites. What you could become is an expert in indoctrination. The worst site is Tiki the Penguin. The climate pages are full of the usual guff, but I took a wander round the rest of it.

From Tiki the Penguin interviewed by a friend
http://tiki.oneworld.net/display.html#team

What is Tiki's mission?
He has no strong views about his own - or penguins' importance - in the web of Life. But he has very strong views about self-important humans who are messing up the life of his penguin friends and relations and of practically all life everywhere. This is his mission. He wants to take you on a journey to see what humans are doing to other life and to the planet all of us are supposed to share.

Are animals cleverer than we think?
Tiki knows perfectly well that they are. 'You humans think we animals are dumb,' he chuckled, 'but we're not. Just long suffering and patient. I want to hijack your cleverness - with Internets and computers and high-speed communications - and try to put matters to rights a little if I can … using your methods.' As just one example of how dumb people can be, he noted, 'You get lost and have to make special machines to tell you where you are. We birds never get lost. Some of us can fly or swim thousands of miles and find our way back to our nest sites. So can turtles and many other apparently simple creatures. Yet you folks don't know how we do this … and I'm not telling you how. I bet you used to know - once - before you got so clever.'

Don't you think 'being clever' is a virtue?
'I don't think so. I've noticed you rate 'clever' people highly. To me, what you call 'cleverness' usually means trouble. 'Clever' people invent nasty things - like atomic bombs, deadly pesticides, guns, engines which burn oil and wreck the atmosphere. You now play God with life itself. And almost all this damage seems to be because of your lust for those most dangerous things: money and power.'

This is an odious, misanthropic site which I would probably ignore if it was meant for adults. But it's not.

Your kids may well be reading this propaganda at school.

Be worried. 

Martin Imber wrote on 16. Nov 2009 at 21:54:


You've lost me there! 

Martin Imber wrote on 16. Nov 2009 at 22:08:


My boy's only 5, so I don't think he'll be going there..at least not from home. At school? Every chance that this will be accessible.

Driving him home from swimming lessons, he once again piped up about all the cars "making the air bad".

I need to de-program him when he's a bit older.

Vamps wrote on 16. Nov 2009 at 22:16:


.. instead of educating them on the insignificant amount of energy used by appliances when they are switched off these days... and the fact that messing about with sockets will kill them. 

I wonder if they teach them to block the holes up so the electricity doesn't leak out over night and melt the ice caps, etc. 

Kevin

Vamps wrote on 16. Nov 2009 at 23:21:



Just to clarify: In the child's chart, it says "Switch the television off stand-by" to earn a star. We have one TV (in my daughter's room) that requires the three-pin plug to be pulled to achieve this. So, that one alone would require the child to isolate the TV from the mains.

My TV has a switch on the top I use that.

PVRs, Humax is good, Pace not bad BT Box better since update

Actually, how much leccy does a TV in standby consume? 

Nickbat wrote on 16. Nov 2009 at 23:36:



More than one turned off.

TBH it is easier turning them on and off on the TV - while it is powering up - look for the remote - ready to press green to get rid of that stupid press red message