Letter: Falmouth fails with Diversity Day

"These two posts have to be some of the most ignorant views out there." says  jstnsmmns..."Fag, homo, queer, retard,Jew"  If you ask me a little sensitivity training is just what they need.  If parents did their job instead of whining about how teachers are so horrible..".

Justin..teachers are not horrible, before they are teachers they are people. People with opinions. If you teach you should set your opinions aside and provide information for students to evaluate both sides of a subject. History is history. That Columbus explored a new world is fact. That he is demonized as evil using 21st century values applied to a 15th century explorer is revisionary propaganda "taught" as fact to sway thinking. 

Check out this Earth Day piece by John Lund...note that his information is facts. Not an emotional rant ending with personal attacks on those that disagree with the facts. The flat earthers.

The Graying of Earth Day

When Earth Day began 40 years ago today, the aim was to fight pollution and celebrate the planet's natural diversity. Much has changed. The planet is cleaner than it was in 1970, thanks in large part to technology that wealthier societies have been able to invest in. Meanwhile, the environmental lobby has turned into an institutionalized political force uninterested in any diversity of opinion on how to improve the environment.

Take public schools, where a mind-numbing orthodoxy has become entrenched. Steve Mroczkiewicz, a scientist for an Indiana crop protection company, found himself frustrated when teachers at his child's school organized a school-wide showing of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" during a class-time celebration of Earth Day. Until he protested, kids were not given a chance to opt out of the film even though it had already been shown twice throughout the school.

With each passing year, Mr. Gore's film looks more dated and shrill. After a British parent objected to it being shown to British schoolchildren because it was largely propaganda, a judge agreed it was "a political film" riddled with scientific errors. He held that showing it in school would be a violation of law, unless accompanied by "guidance" pointing out its errors.

In the U.S. teachers appear increasingly unwilling to provide such guidance. That's why it's up to parents to find out what is being taught in schools and press for a balanced environmental debate. Phelim McAleer, a former Financial Times journalist turned documentary filmmaker, produced his own film "Not Evil, Just Wrong," expressly to counter Mr. Gore's alarmist rhetoric about global warming and warn that following the former vice president's prescriptions would threaten the world's poor. Mr. McAleer has formed a group called Balanced Education for Everyone, which promotes showing his film along with Mr. Gore's.

The best way to celebrate Earth Day is to respect that people have different views on how to preserve the natural environment. That would also make for a much more interesting discussion than the stifling celebration of political correctness it has become.

-- John Fund