Yes, They’re Indoctrinating your Kids!
Today Glenn Beck shone a much-needed spotlight on this revolting video.
What’s even more interesting is that the Old York Times did a breathless, front-page story about how this video was being used to indoctrinate your kids:
So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.
It has also won support from independent groups that advise teachers on curriculum choices. Facing the Future, a curriculum developer for schools in all 50 states, is drafting lesson plans based on the video.
…
“Frankly, a lot of the textbooks are awful on the subject of the environment,” said Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a quarterly magazine that has promoted “The Story of Stuff” to its subscribers and on its Web site, which reaches about 600,000 educators a month.
…
The video certainly makes the facts stark and at times very political: “We’ll start with extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet,” she says at one point. “What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.”
…
After Jasmine Madavi, 18, saw it last year in Mr. Lukach’s class at Woodside Priory, she began nagging her parents to stop buying bottled water. Her mother resisted, saying that filtered tap water, Jasmine’s suggested alternative, would not taste as good. But Jasmine bought the filter on her own, and the household is now converted.
“You just have to be persistent,” said Ms. Madavi, who is now a community college student. “When you use a water bottle, it just doesn’t disappear. That’s Annie’s message.”
Yes, they’re indoctrinating your kids. What are you going to do about it?
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September 23rd, 2009 at 5:18 am
Yes, they’re indoctrinating your kids. What are you going to do about it?
The far right: indoctrination should begin and end at home. The parents, inspired by Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, feed that information to their children.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:16 am
Telling people that using and consuming, throwing away stuff,and that all of this has a cost, is revolting? What she says is essentially true. Every since the first human chipped rocks, we have been using up the planet. It was necessary, but with several billion people on the planet, it now is becoming a serous problem. fisheries are failing, water supplies are contaminated, forests are being cut down, species of plants and animals are being pushed out of existence, etc. And many people in the world suffer because of it. sorry, I don’t think caring about such things is revolting.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am
The video presents a valid viewpoint that seems to be based on many indisputable facts and can serve as the starting point for a discussion on the issues. Which is the purpose of our educational system.
You folks like throwing around the word “indoctination” these days in the hopes of scaring parents. Unfortunately, to you, it seems to mean “any opinions that don’t match our own”, regardless of where the truth or the facts lie.
“Indoctrination” is when you restrict knowledge to conform to a viewpoint, such as in Bible Studies class, or when you tell your kids that Obama is a Bad Man rather than give them a chance to come to their own conclusions.
Anyway, I don’t see any evidence that “kids” or anyone else are being forced to watch this video and then are discouraged from presenting or discussing contrary views. DO YOU?
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
This woman is an idiot. For one thing, resources are not limited. And the video is just plain silly. Someone should check to see if this is a parody of liberal indoctrination.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
Republicans idea of countering alleged “Indoctrination” (giving kids facts)…substituting their own Indoctrination:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmHN3JtyUXg&feature=player_embedded#t=151
Your agenda is clear for all to see.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:51 am
Good point, there is no better example of indoctrination in the schools than the attempts to use taxpayer money to bring creationism…er…intelligent design into the classrooms.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
Jeez, less than 2 minutes into that video, and they got the marxist, anti-corporatist megaphone in full dudgeon.
No, kids, no place for this commie rot. We call these types of envirowhackos: “watermelons”.
That truther kook that Obambi just ran out of the White House was one of these types.
Nice try, but this foolishness is easily exposed, and easily avoided, assuming the teachers’ unions don’t sue the parents for the right to show it to THEIR children, of course.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:53 am
The shortage they most fear is a shortage of individual energy, brains and courage, which lead to innovation and solving whatever problems come up. Without innovation we’d still be riding horses and growing our own vegetables and burning whale oil or using candles for lighting. How sad it is for the younger generation to have so little faith in its own intelligence and fortitude!
September 24th, 2009 at 8:04 am
How sad it is for the younger generation that an older, insurgent commie generation is attempting to poison their minds with commie rot, rather than providing them the same educational base that was provided to previous generations, who used that same educational base to bring on the innovation you speak of.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Can somebody tell me where the commie rot, anti-corporatist paradises exist on the surface of this planet?
I’ve looked all around, and back in history, and haven’t quite seemed to be able to spot out that paradise… but I’m sure it musta worked and be working somewhere.
There’s probably dozens of them. Way more than all these evil corporatist/capitalist running dog hellholes like the USA and all the rest.
I gotta look harder.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
My faith teaches me that God created the Earth and he is the only one who can destroy it.