Gaines: Youth Summit Trains Climate Activists Not Critical Thinkers, Says Educator

By Cory Gaines | Complete Colorado

As a decades-long teacher I see education helping someone learn how to think, to be able to understand novel situations. In this, education is separate from training.  For example,I might train a student how to do a particular calculation in physics.It would be something they could repeat later with other numbers, but it’s not transferable.  They’ve not learned to evaluate or apply what they know in a new context.

Given the name, you might think that a recent Youth Climate Summit held in Carbondale (covered in both a Post Independent piece and later a Colorado Sun effort) would be about teaching youngsters about climate and climate change. You’d be close, but the point of this summit was not education, it was activist training, something readily apparent in the headline of the Sun article which loudly–and falsely– proclaims “Climate denial is fueling federal policy. But these Colorado kids still hope to save the planet.”

From that headline, to the event sponsors and backers, and even on down to some of the presentations, it’s obvious the “summit” was less about a thoughtful look at climate change and more about gathering up likely souls for conversion and missionary work.

Nurturing activism

A quick look at names involved shows a who’s who of activist incubators.  Quoting the Sun: “The Lyra team and Johnson believe young people have power, too, but that they need direction on how to use it.”

Lyra was one of the sponsors of the summit, to the tune of about $77k, but their motives fit hand in glove with fellow summit backer Earth Force. Both are pushing what Earth Force labels “environmental action civics,” which they define as “…an educational approach where youth work in partnership with adults to identify a local environmental issue and engage with community members to take action by advocating for systemic changes to policies or practices.”

The “Johnson” in the Sun quote is Sarah Johnson, an environmental education specialist, and founder of Wild Rose Education, also pursuing environmental action civics, just by another name. They refer to their work as teaching people “…’how to see’, to become better observers, and how to take action in the world through our participant-centered learning experiences.”

What the young attendees are taught to see, and the policies they are taught to engage with, are of course the ones that Lyra, Earth Force, and Wild Rose Education want.

I couldn’t help but wonder, too, looking at some of the other groups mentioned, if the climate activism pushed here is intended to spill over into other left-wing causes as well.

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