HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A legislative proposal in Connecticut would mandate instruction on climate change in public schools statewide, beginning in elementary school.
Connecticut already has adopted science standards that call for teaching of climate change, but if the bill passes it is believed that it would be the country’s first to write such a requirement into law.
“A lot of schools make the study of climate change an elective, and I don’t believe it should be an elective,” said state Rep. Christine Palm, a Democrat from Chester who proposed the bill. “I think it should be mandatory, and I think it should be early so there’s no excuse for kids to grow up ignorant of what’s at stake.”
Some educators have questioned whether it’s necessary in light of Connecticut’s adoption in 2015 of the Next Generation Science Standards, which include climate change as a core aspect of science education beginning in middle school.
“I do believe if the state has adopted standards, you’re teaching those standards, you’re going to be assessed on those standards,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. “If you’re a district in Connecticut, your curriculum is addressing it already.”
A similar proposal was introduced in the last legislative session but ultimately failed to win approval.
A total of 19 states and the District of Columbia so far have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, which indicate what a state hopes students will know. Typically, states leave the specific curriculum and instruction up to the districts.
The bill apparently would be country’s first to make climate change instruction a matter of statute, according to the National Center for Science Education. In several other states, legislation has been proposed in recent years to allow or require teachers to present alternatives to widely accepted viewpoints on topics such as climate change.
Palm, who represents towns along the Connecticut River in southeast Connecticut, said climate change deserves a more prominent place in children’s education because of the urgency of the threat posed by global warming.
“I’d love to see poetry be mandated. That’s never going to happen,” she said. “That’s not life or death.”
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionUtah's new law says children of "sufficient age and maturity" can be unsupervised without fear of neglect charges for their parents
On Tuesday, Utah will become the first state in the US to have a "free-range" parenting law. Victoria Oldridge takes a look at how the law came to be and the debate over what's an appropriate amount of freedom for children.
When Alexander Meitiv dropped his two children - 10 and six - off at a local park near their Maryland home to play for the afternoon in late 2014, he was not expecting the firestorm that would follow. A bystander called 911 after noticing the children walking home by themselves. Police stopped them and brought them back to the Meitivs' home.
Shortly after, the family was visited by Child Protective Services (CPS). Danielle Meitiv says they were threatened with arrest and removal of their children.
Months later, the Meitivs allowed their children to play at another park they'd been to "dozens of times" - but didn't come home by their curfew. It was only after the family called emergency services that they learned their children had been taken by police to CPS.
"They have the power to snatch our children from under our noses," Danielle Meitiv says. "That's when I decided to take the story public."
Both charges against the Meitivs were eventually dropped and policy changes were made in their local county, but the experience galvanised Danielle to run for local office. In her campaign material she describes herself as a "free-range mom".
But "there's no such thing as 'free range' parenting," she says. "This is normal parenting."
Cases like the Meitivs - and the debate they spurred about safety and independence for children - have led to the first "free-range" parenting law in the US.
On Tuesday, the Utah law will come into effect. It changes the state's definition of neglect to allow children of "sufficient age and maturity" to engage in independent activities like walking to and from school.
The bill's sponsor, State Senator Lincoln Fillmore, says the measure was inspired in part by a hope his own children "grow up learning how to be responsible for themselves".
Media captionMum of three Vickie said 'unschooling' is about giving kids freedom.
Filmore confesses he doesn't yet know if he's a "free range" parent (his children are all under four years old), but that's not the point.
"My law is not an attempt to say that this method of parenting is better than another method; we're not making that judgement in law," he says.
"We're simply saying that for parents who do choose to give their kids some independence, there's protection in the law for you doing so."
While Filmore wasn't aware of any similar incidents in Utah, he says he wanted to be proactive about preventing parents from facing punishment for allowing their kids to do "all the things I did when I was a kid".
"Even though Utah's law was basically the same as the rest of the other states in that we say that neglect is illegal, we don't give guidance about what neglect really is." Filmore says. "We leave it to government agencies to interpret what neglect is."
One of the first mums to advocate "Free Range" parenting, Lenore Skenazy, believes allowing children to be unsupervised at times will help them become more effective adults.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
She said she first realised there was a disconnect between what parents want and what they actually do when she was brought on a popular US morning programme to discuss a viral blog post about allowing her nine-year-old son ride the subway alone.
The staff of the programme all remembered having similar freedoms as children, but confessed they wouldn't allow their own children to do the same.
"We're being hypocrites because we're coming to the erroneous conclusion that any time a child is unsupervised they're automatically in danger and it's not true," she says.
So what's changed? "Parents' perception of how dangerous the world is has changed over the years," says Dr Gail Saltz, a professor of psychology at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Parental anxiety, Saltz says, is inflamed by a global, always-on news cycle, as well as increased connectivity on social media platforms, which recycles "over and over again" kidnappings, rape and other threatening incidents.
Saltz also says present-day parenting is less communal than it used to be and has turned into a "competitive sport" for many. This results in parents' tendency to "helicopter" their children more often, Saltz says, to appear as though they're "winning" against their peers.
Media captionThe experiment tested whether adults chose toys for children based on their gender
Researcher David Finkelhor, who heads up the Crimes Against Children Research Center, cautions lawmakers against jumping on the "Free Range" bandwagon, urging them to assess the broader picture before passing widespread legislation based on a few known cases.
"A key presumption of the Utah law is that police and CPS are investigating and charging parents for allowing their kids to navigate public spaces on their own," he says.
"We have over 1,000 neglect fatalities every year from kids left unsupervised around drugs, loaded guns and parked cars and in many cases neighbours or bystanders were concerned but failed to act."
Finkelhor believes the focus should be on better training for child protective services.
"The important thing is that when the police or CPS come to check-up, that they are able to distinguish, quickly, the worrisome situations from the false alarms.
"This is a problem better handled by training than legislation."
Whether other states will follow Utah's "free range" parenting precedent remains to be seen, however. Arkansas has already rejected a similar measure.
New guy in the cell: I aged cheese on wooden boards.
Old guy: Oh. (Moves away slowly.)
The news broke on CNN that a Utica child, Sally, had fallen ill after eating some cheddar on her well-done burger. Her parents were interviewed, mother crying and father angry. “How?” he yelled. “How can they let a child get sick because of cheese?” The mother added in a soft, quiet voice, “we have to stop this so no other mother has to suffer watching her baby suffer the agony of a tummy ache. We have to do this for the children.”
From Walter Olson at Overlawyered, the FDA has interpreted the Food Safety Modernization Act to preclude the aging of cheese on wood boards. Much as you may not think this touches your life, it does if you happen to enjoy any better cheese than velveeta. FromCheeseUnderground:
A sense of disbelief and distress is quickly rippling through the U.S. artisan cheese community, as the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week announced it will not permit American cheesemakers to age cheese on wooden boards.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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